My Time With Cowboy

Cowboy Bill Wadsworth was an extraordinary man. He was a pillar of the community in the Valley and it is pretty rare to come across anyone who lives here who hasn’t at least interacted with him once.

I really started getting to know him during my time working at the Bear Trap. He would always come down for a good soup night, get himself a bowl or two, and a quart of it to go. Every time I saw him, he had a smile on his face. I always loved it when he came in. He had a special way of making you feel like the most important person in the world when you were talking with him.

I took a closer interest in him when I realized how much I didn’t know about the man and how much there was to uncover. This happened when I was closing at the Bear Trap one night and someone was talking about Cowboy and how he nearly had a doctorate in psychology. I later learned it was nearly because he never completed a final thesis project but he had done all the coursework. I was shocked because the side of him I had seen up to that point would have never suggested he knew so much. I began asking around about him and the more I heard what people knew about him, and also how little, intrigued me. It was at that point that I chose to do a feature length documentary on him, which is still in the works.

I presented the idea to him one day when he was in the Bear Trap to get his soup and initially he said he would think about it. He stopped me one day and accepted. Eventually, I did an interview with him and had the pleasure to listen to his life story. I was in awe about all the things he had seen, the people he had met and the things he had done. From his time in the Navy to a story he told me about riding camels next to the Pyramids of Giza. He had been all over the country and across the world. He did volcanic research in Hawaii, walked around Jerusalem, spent days hanging out with country music stars and even took a picture which ended up in the Encyclopedia Britannica. I walked out of that interview with an incredible amount of respect for Cowboy.

That interview was the start of a good friendship between Cowboy and I. We would occasionally have coffee at the 307 Pub & Grub or dinner with him and some of my family. He became like family to me and even came to my graduation.

Hearing the way Cowboy lived made me look differently at my own life. I realized I want to live like he did. See the world, meet amazing people and do extraordinary things. I am very grateful to have known him and to have heard his stories. Not only will I miss him, but I am proud to be working on this documentary so his stories can be immortalized. I hope people can see the way he lived and find inspiration to go out and be like Cowboy.