The neatly lettered signs are wired to a fence just outside Park City on the road to Kamas, one facing east, one facing west:
Cowboy Lessons
801-388-0485
I've seen signs advertising piano lessons and dance lessons and golf lessons. I once saw a billboard for a sky diving course. In Las Vegas I saw an advertisement for blackjack dealing school. I've seen plenty of signs for horse riding lessons.
But I had never before seen an ad for cowboy lessons.
So I called the number.
A man who sounded like he just crawled out of an episode of "Rawhide," or maybe the other side of a Skoal can, answered.
"R.C. Collard," he said.
That was it. No, "You have reached the offices of Cowboy Lessons, please wait for a company directory to make your selection."
No perky, "Good morning! How can I help you?"
Not even, "Cowboy Lessons."
Just "R.C. Collard."
"I saw your sign about cowboy lessons," I said.
To which R.C. replied, "We do 'em."
I was prepared to believe this was the real deal.
R.C. Collard agreed to meet me for an interview. He looks just like he talks. If they hadn't cast Jack Palance as Curly Washburn in "City Slickers," they could have done all right by casting R.C. He's tall and lanky and talks like he swallowed a handful of gravel. He even looks a bit like Jack Palance but with a mustache.
I wanted to know how he teaches city slickers to be cowboys.
"Basically there's eight lessons," he said. "The way I've got it outlined it takes about two years to go through all eight, although when you get totally cowboyin' you get to talkin' and thinkin' about an entire approach to life. It's not something that can be done overnight. I'm still encountering cowboy lessons myself."
R.C. doesn't look it but he's 64.
"It's been good to me," he said, meanin' the cowboyin'.
The eight lessons, by the way, are basic horsemanship, practiced horsemanship, faster horsemanship, fastest horsemanship, handling cattle, cow penning, cow cutting and stewardship.
Stewardship is a 16-hour final to help get you and your horse in touch with the cattle and the land.
Pass that class and you're on your way to being a cowboy, or, more accurately, a buckaroo.
"Buckaroo comes from the Spanish vaquero," said R.C., "which means someone who cares for the cattle and the land the cattle are on. You're really a steward, is what you are."
R.C. and his colleague, Dave Peterson, have been giving cowboy lessons for the past year, ever since Ed Rogers, the man who owns the ranch R.C. and Dave work on in Brown's Canyon, suggested the enterprise.
"It was Ed Rogers' idea and it got started with me teaching his son, Adam, giving him horsemanship lessons and what it means to live life astride a horse," said R.C. "From what happened there, Ed said, 'you should offer this to the public.' Ed in fact came up with the simple name of cowboy lessons. 'Call it what it is,' he said."
R.C. termed it "a privilege" to be able to pass on some of the fine values he's learned from a lifetime in the saddle.
And at this stage of his life it's a lot easier on his body than the rodeo arena.
"As a rodeo cowboy I broke every major bone," he said. "Several of them several times."
Just a year and a half ago he broke his collarbone, separated his shoulder and cracked seven ribs when a jittery mare he was riding stepped in a badger hole.
"One minute I was thinking, 'I'm 63 and still doing this,"' said R.C. "The next minute that horse is on top of me."
It didn't stop him though, or even slow him down much. He got back on the horse and recommends the same to anyone who will listen.
"I would encourage anybody to do this," he said. "It ain't about them wild shoot-em-up guys in the movies; it's about those who stay there year after year and take care of the land.
"To be astride a horse and breathing God's grand air, who could discourage that?"
Lee Benson's column runs Sunday, Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Please send e-mail to benson@desnews.com and faxes to 801-237-2527.