Chris Ledoux came on my radio while I was driving this morning and of all things it brought me back to Germany. Germany you may say, hell Chris Ledoux is a person most likely many that would read this have not heard of. Nonetheless, Chris Ledoux and Germany do have a link in my lifetime. 

It was around 2001 not long after September 11th. I was currently serving in the Illinois National Guard and trying to get back on active duty. To our surprise, while everyone else was going to Afghanistan, we were sent to Germany. Basically to reinforce the European bases since the units on them were the ones sent to Afghanistan. 

At this time, I was in my peak country music phase, and Chris Ledoux was an artist shared with me by one of my buddies. Chris was a real cowboy, and a musician. I still knew little about him, but he had some great songs about riding horses, the rodeo, and cowboy life. I really loved that "Cowboy" dream I guess. Needless to say, I brought a ton of Chris Ledoux music with me to Germany. Mini-Disk players were the big thing at the time, and I loaded some minidiscs with Chris's whole darn discography. I listened to them constantly while deployed there. 

I spent a lot of time daydreaming about being a cowboy and rodeoing. Mind you, I was already in my early thirties, and I was born and raised in the Chicago area; cowboy was not in my future. But the daydream of it all, the romantic picture of the lonely cowboy on the range; it really seemed to comfort me while away from home. 
 
At one point during the time in Germany, there was even a rodeo, yes, a rodeo in Germany. The US Army rodeo team was there and to my ignorant surprise, there were German Cowboys. Little did I know the culture spread as far as to have Europeans willingly getting on the back of an unhappy bull. 

Myself and a few other guys were actually put on security for the event. We had M16s with no ammo, and instructions of "If an animal gets loose, try to get him back in the arena". Like we were going to point our unloaded weapons at a thousand pound bull and say "bang!bang!" if he got out, with the hope he would come to his senses and return back to the arena. Luckily, it never did happen. 

It was a fun tour, with some good memories, stuff I hadn't thought of for a bit, until Chris Ledoux came on this morning. We had a lot of good times and Germany was such a beautiful country with some of the friendliest people. I would love to go back again someday.

Well that is enough of memory lane this morning. 

Cheers!