The Fight for the Orchards West‪.‬

Growing up, watching old movies with my grandfather, I was convinced I would end up in the West. The life! Where good and evil are so black and white and treachery is daily business; the vast lands and the desire for that extra dollar to get by, and outsmarting everybody by using your head; being the purveyor of goodness, setting things straight when the crooked so easily ran amok. When you're a kid you have no concept of the past, so pictures of the Old West, to me, were not glorifications of an ancient time, but a reality that one could live up to in life. I read books about it and started planning my way of getting there. I would have to run away, no doubt about it. Mom would cry and I had already made her cry enough. I had spotted a horse tied to a tree in the monte half a mile away and I would free it, then it would thank me by letting me ride it. We would be friends until our untimely deaths, the deaths of men with no fear, and I would name it Thunder. Off we would ride to start setting things right in a world that needed it: reuniting screaming children with their mothers; getting rid of the outlaw gang; looking for our treasure, our escape, and meeting that lovely senora at the end of it all to convalesce. To me there was nothing else worth being.