Came to Laugh, Left With Profound Respect

National Cowgirls Hall of Fame and Museum, 1720 Gendy Street, Ft. Worth 76107 817-336-4475 cowgirl.net

Ft. Worth is very down to earth in this respect: they put the cowgirl museum, the science and industry museum and the modern art museum in one neat section of the city, labelled the whole thing "Cultural Center" and left it at that!

I had thought it would be somewhat like the Rangerettes museum in Kilgore -- all fancy costumes and photos of women in their gowns and sashes, many of them improbably named for their fathers or mother's maiden names thus giving us such as Frankie Lynn, Blinn Joyce and so forth.

The show featured was "No Glitz, No Glitter" but it was a traveling exhibit and therefore quite contained in a pair of rooms in comparison to the two floors of life-as-she-was-lived-back-in-the-day rest of it.

Those women were tough! They ran ranches by themselves at a time when it was hard enough work for a man -- growing, cutting, pitching hay, keeping the horses, cattle and sheep in good stead along with raising children and keeping house. I'd walked in thinking we'd have a bit of a giggle about the showbiz aspects of cow girling - rodeo announcer about a girl who missed three of the four barrels in her event - "Cute outfit, long ride home" - but I walked out with a profound respect for these settlers in a very tough part of the country. Hats (10 gal.) off to the ladies!

And if you do go, plan to have lunch at Railhead Smokehouse, 2900 Montgomery St., Ft. Worth 817-738-9808 We all had chopped beef sandwiches which were moist, but not overly sauced. Barbecue is as subjective as one chili from another or one spaghetti sauce from another - basically, they're all good!