Americana

How's this for a classic photo? It was taken in Monument Valley, Utah. The cowboy in the red shirt is a Navajo who sits behind a little wooden shelter topped by a sign -- "Photos $2.00." When a tour jeep pulls up, he rides his horse out to the mesa while dozens of people take the same picture.

[I was with the North American Cultural Tour, which paid for the photo.]

Monument Valley became synonymous with the American West because the proprietors of the local trading post sent photographs to Hollywood producers encouraging them to make Westerns in this spectacular landscape. So they did. Especially John Ford (in movies starring John Wayne).

This testament to American entrepreneurial spirit, lives on --- in the cowboy in the red shirt