Cowboy poet Rod McQueary has made a couple of appearances on NBC’s “The Tonight Show,” but he’s not likely to get so big for his boots that he forgets where his roots are.
McQueary likes to tell a story about one of his TV appearances.
“We had worked cattle that afternoon (on his ranch in Ruby Valley, Nev.), and then I flew down to L.A. and was met by a chauffeur and carried around in a limousine,” he said. “We did the show. Johnny Carson was the host, and Jerry Seinfeld was on it.
“Then the next morning I was back in Nevada with the same old cattle to feed, and they couldn’t care less where I had been.”
McQueary, 42, and fellow Vietnam War veteran Bill Jones have written “Blood Trails” (Dry Crik Press), a book detailing their therapeutic recovery from problems caused by their war experiences.
They are also are working on a screenplay about four rodeo cowboys going across Montana by train in the 1930s, and there’s a chance he might have a shot at writing for a prime-time television show with a Western setting.
And then there’s his poetry, which can be found in five anthologies now.
That got started when a couple of poems he wrote about how bad the cattle business was got him invited to the second of the now-famous annual cowboy poetry gatherings in Elko, Nev.
Even though he’s now given up ranching, his poems promise to keep McQueary close to his roots and the Western tradition.