An Accidental Cowboy

by Jameson Parker

In 1992, Jameson Parker, the former star of Simon & Simon , was shot and almost killed while living in Los Angeles. The incident drove him into a ten-year struggle with the psychological aftereffects of trauma. It also drove him and his wife into the California mountains, where he stumbled into a world of unruly cattle, uncertain horses, the timeless routines of ranch life, and the solace of the land.

An Accidental Cowboy is the story of what it's like to have one's life go spinning out of control and how it is possible to pick up the pieces and begin again in an entirely different sphere. With stunning, crisp writing, remarkable detail, and a flair for description, it's a captivating story of loss, depression, and the beginnings of hope set against the backdrop of the American Southwest.

Genres: Nonfiction, Memoir, Biography

288 pages, Hardcover

First published October 1, 2003

About the author

Jameson Parker was a working actor for over a quarter of a century. While he has appeared in countless movies, television movies, and plays, he is best known for his role as A.J., one half of the team of "Simon & Simon," the long running hit television series in the '80s.

Jameson has been a freelance writer for the past twenty years. As an actor-turned-author he is unique, because his work has appeared in such a wide range of outdoor magazines, including Gray's Sporting Journal, Sports Afield, Western Horseman, Ranch & Reata, Ducks Unlimited, and many others. Currently he writes regular columns for Sporting Classics and Texas Sporting Journal.

He lives on a small ranch in the mountains of California with two rescue dogs, three rescue cats, and an ever-changing number of horses (down to two, at the moment).

The above paragraph used to be accurate, but due to a major horse wreck (you can read about it on my website in series of blogs lumped together under the heading "Fistfuls of Balloons") which ultimately resulted in eight hours and a quarter of a million dollars worth of spinal surgery, I can no longer ride and we have sold all our horses and the ranch. The proportion of dogs and cats has also shifted, being now two cats and three dogs. Since two of the dogs are Australian shepherds, we are still very, very busy.

You can read more about his books on Amazon (http://www.amazon.com/Jameson-Parker/...)

He is married to the actress and singer Darleen Carr.

Reviews

[Oceana2602 · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you've been following my reviews for a while, you might have noticed that I'm a huge fan of tv shows. All sorts of tv shows, old and new ones.

What you might not know (cause I sure tried to hide it), is that I tend to get a bit obsessed while I'm watching a show (I usually watch entire seasons in a week or two, since I own everything I watch on DVD and therefore do not have to rely on tv schedules). I obsess and read fanfic and obsess some more and then I stalk the actors - in a very non-stalkery not-caring-for-their-life-but-trying-to-watch-all-their-movies-sort-of-way.

This has lead to all sorts of embarassing events, including the fact that I own every movie Kevin Costner ever made on dvd, as well as mostly everything Pierce Brosnan ever showed his face in, and I thank god that the majority of Don Johnson's works were never released on DVD or elsewhere, as far as I know, but trust me when I say that the ones that you can buy are probably not movies you want to buy.

Anyway...

A while ago, while I was rewatching Simon&Simon, a show that I learned to love as a kid and am still loving today (so maybe for different reasons), and found myself wondering what Rick and AJ have been doing with their (professional) lives. Rick is of course, fairly well-known, and has shown up in all sorts of movies and tv shows, but AJ? I had no idea.

The internet helpfully pointed out that Mr. Parker had indeed left moviestardom and had done whatever, including writing two books. Both of which were not readily available over here and cost a fortune on amazon, so I put them on my wishlist and patiently waited until one became affordable.

That was, uhm, probably three years ago.

So when I happened to buy this book early this year, I wasn't even sure why I had put it on my wishlist in the first place. Alas, there was a horse on it, so I went and read it.

Had I remembered why I bought it, I probably would have expected some account of an actor buying a farm and getting used to life outside Hollywood, likely containing lots of "important" and funny little anecdotes from his life as a tv star.

This book is nothing like that. It is, however, a very personal account of a man trying to deal with the trauma of being shot, while coincidentally moving out of the city to spend his days riding horses and working with cattle. But the story is not about that man, it's about ranchers, about branding, about selling and buying cows, about horses and what they can mean to you, about people and what drives them. Parker tells about his own trauma and how he deals with it, yes, but he succeeds in making that story the glue that keeps this book together without taking the focus away from the people he writes about. He's an observer who just happens to be in the middle of the story.

He comes across as an intelligent, thoughtful person who doesn't take himself too seriously, without any arrogance. And he completely lets you forget that he is the guy who once played AJ on Simon/Simon (in fact, I think he mentions the show only once when he explains why he had heard about PTSD before).

If you are buying this book to hear some good 80s Hollywood gossip, you'll be very disappointed.

But I'm rather sure you'll like it nonetheless.

P.S.: Now I want to watch Simon&Simon again. Damn, not enough time... :-(

[Gayle Schlaefli · Rating 4 out of 5]

Margie Jo Rovarino wrote;

This is a terrific book and nothing like what I expected. I picked up this book because I was familiar with Mr. Parker's story and was interested in it. What could have easily been a "how I survived", victim saga, since Mr. Parker WAS indeed a victim, turned out to be a wonderful tour of survival. The book adroitly takes the senses back and forth. The horror of Parker's shooting incident and subsequent depression could have been dispiriting and cheerless had he just concentrated on it...but instead he takes you to interesting, informative and joyous heights in the form of glorious cowboy/ranch life stories and then brings you back to why he had the need to focus on the positive side of life and the outlet cowboy life provided for him. To me, this is a true "survivor" story without focusing on the victim. It is extremely well written....needed a dictionary to help me out in a couple of places. I recommend this book as a story of every man and not just a celebrity telling his story. It clearly shows how people can work through their problems instead of caving to them or diving for the medicine cabinet. Good for Mr. Parker in writing this page turner. I highly recommend this book!!!!!

I agree with this review.

[Christine Ashworth · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you're a fan of the cowboy way of life, this book is a MUST READ. A memoir focused mostly on California cattle ranching and a rapidly vanishing way of life, Parker dips into emotional darkness that ravaged his life after being shot twice...at close range. The blending of the two results in a wry, drily funny, at times painfully emotional and extremely well-written book that is hard to put down. Parker has a deft way with words, and I look forward to reading his other books.

[Liz · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved the richly descriptive language, among the best that I've read.
I'm not by any means a country girl, so anything to do with horses or cattle or ranches is not what I am familiar with. Yet I was drawn fully and willingly into the lifestyle of ranching simply by the beautiful storytelling. The underlying autobiographical tale of the author's depression and post traumatic stress disorder is compelling and told in an honest and forthright tone throughout the book. The result is a realistic look at one man's mental anguish and newly found peace in the sierras.
Highly recommended.

[Miles Watson · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am a writer. A pretty damned good one. My first novel has won three medals, including the Best Indie Book Award for 2018 and "Book of the Year" in 2016. I love to read, and consider myself a pretty tough critic, albeit not by choice: I grew up in a house full of books, and got exposed to some amazing writers when I was still too young to be intimidated by them. Why do I mention this? In the hopes the following torrent of praise for Jameson Parker's memoir, "An Accidental Cowboy" will carry a little more weight.

In my life, many books have inspired me and left deep, very welcoming marks on my spirit. But only four have actually triggered a physical reaction, a heart-hammering response to what I was reading: "The Keep" by F. Paul Wilson, "Red Dragon" by Thomas Harris, "Pet Sematary" by Stephen King"...and "An Accidental Cowboy" by Jameson Parker. This is not a perfect book, but it is a terrific one.

Parker was a staple of my youth. As A.J. Simon on the long-running and excellent SIMON AND SIMON, he fooled me into thinking he was just like his character: tough and resourceful, but also snobbish, fussy and very much a city-slicker. In reality, Jameson is an outdoorsman, horseman, hunter and all-around dude. In other words, he's more like Rick than A.J., but never mind.

COWBOY is the story of how Jameson, who was a remarkably hot acting property in Los Angeles the 1980s (he also starred in John Carpenter's cerbral horror movie PRINCE OF DARKNESS in 1987), ended up living and loving the life of a small-time rancher in the Sierras, a place where being a hot actor counts for less than a shovelful of bullshit. A bullet runs through his tale: actually two of them, fired point-blank by an unstable and psychopathic neighbor, who blasted Jameson twice over a piddling dispute involving Jameson's dogs. Unlike his character, which would have shrugged off such trauma with a quirky remark, the real-life man had to deal with the trauma, the aftereffects, the post-traumatic stress. How he did that is this book.

COWBOY is a memoir told in the style of an introspective thriller, suspense story or even mystery. I say that because Jameson begins in the 90s, when he has already turned his back on Hollywood to a degree, and is trying to learn how to cowboy from the very best cowyboys and ranch hands that California has to offer. He takes us through the complex, beautiful and often brutal mechanics of ranch life, from the glory of riding 1,200 pounds of quarter horse to the exhausting, sweat-drenched reality of herding cattle, to the disgusting necessity of lancing a balloon-sized abscess full of pus on a heifer's jaw with a jackknife. If you ever wondered whether cowboys still exist and what they do in the twenty-first century, from Stetson to rowel, saddle horn to horseshoe, it's all here. But the reality of ranch life is only part of the story. Jameson also reveals to us that he is terribly depressed, anxious, panic-prone, rage-filled, and generally fucked up. He doesn't tell us why: he merely hints at it. As the story progresses, the hints, in the form of flashbacks, pile up, but like a good poker player, he doesn't show his hand. At last, somewhere between 2/3 and 3/4 of the way through the book, he sticks his jackknife into his own mental abscess, and tells us how one of the more successful TV actors in Hollywood ended up turning his back on L.A., the industry, and acting generally -- not out of choice per se, but because it was where his life led him, perhaps in the same way a divining rod leads a man to water. Parker was a skilled and accomplished actor, but his heart belonged elsewhere, and if you'll forgive the phrase, when the bullet hit the bone, he stumbled on this fact. He truly was an accidental cowboy.

As a writer, Jameson is the real deal. There are touches of Hemingway in both his style and his philosophy, but his scope of reference, the combination of historical facts about California cowboying and amusing personal tales, the erudite phrases and the poetic prose, the see-saw between the Olympian and the vulgar, are a flair all his own. Once in a while he'll overload a sentence in the way of the (talented) amateur, but this book is only amateurish in the literal sense of the word, an amateur being "one who plays the game for the game's own sake." J.P. is not flattering his own vanity or putting on airs by attempting a book. He is gifting us his talent by succeeding in writing one. He not only shines light on the sadly dying breed of the contemporary cowboy, but examines with terrifying honesty the aftereffects of casual violence on a human being. We even get tantalizing glimpses -- all too few for my taste -- of the perils and pitfalls of being a once-successful actor struggling to remain relevant in Hollywood after cancellation and middle age take ahold of him.

AN ACCDIENTAL COWBOY is a terrific book. It takes a little patience here and there, because Parker is telling the story at his pace (the way a cowboy would), but its well worth the wait.

[Jennifer · Rating 3 out of 5]

For an overview of ranch life and the reasons for its demise in California and across the United States, read "An Accidental Cowboy." With vivid descriptions and interesting action, it offers a firsthand picture of what ranching is like.
Some of those vivid descriptions involve hunting, trapping, branding and other cattle ranch activities that may trouble sensitive readers. As the author states, "My twentieth-century queasiness is a direct result of urbanized society that is completely insulated from the natural processes that sustain life."
Author Jameson Parker also uses this book to share a bit about his life story. In alternating chapters between descriptions of his cowboy activities, he vulnerably shares details about the attack that caused depression and PTSD and led him to move to a place where he could discover horses, cattle and the country life. Readers learn a bit about his childhood and the reasons he left acting.
For anyone interested in celebrities, ranching, mental health, or cowboys, read this engaging, thoughtful and humerous book!
Note: The book does include some sexual references and profanity.

[Jan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jameson Parker was one of my first crushes when I was a kid. I have to admit I picked up this book because I was curious about the shooting incident that preceded his departure from LA. He speaks little about it (and I suppose it was a bit morbid of me to want to know). This is more about cattle ranching in California, how Parker fell into becoming a bit of a ranch hand, and his struggle with PTSD after being shot.

Sometimes the ranching stuff got a bit too much for me (the details made my head spin), but otherwise I really enjoyed this book. Parker writes beautiful, lyrical prose, which I wasn't expecting. I also really respect him for being honest about his PTSD and the dark places it took him. Overall, this is a very moving read.

[Elisabeth · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not at all my usual genre, but librarians and writers are encouraged to read broadly....
Who am I kidding? It's entirely 80s nostalgia that brought me here.

I kept reading because of Parker's excellent storytelling and expansive vocabulary. I grew up in California, camping in the Sierras, and this is a piece of California history and culture I knew nothing about. I ate up the details of cattle ranching, cowboys, and conflicting views on conservation. Each of the ranchers he talks to stands out clearly and speaks with their own voice, so you feel you're along for the visit.

Parker also makes his battle with depression and PTSD achingly real. This memoir takes you all the way from the mental anguish of depression to the unbridled joy of a newborn foal. A wild and wonderful ride.

[Donna · Rating 5 out of 5]

As a retired educator, I am gratified to read a well-written ( I was an English teacher) plus informative literary narrative. Thank you M

As a retired educator and a farmer’s daughter, I am gratified to read a well-written — I was an English teacher — plus informative literary narrative. Thank you, Mr. Parker, for your historical and contemporary knowledge of California, cattle + horses, and cowboys. Your personal story, your humor and wit, along with your knowledge, total a dimensional perspective worthy of reading.

[MK · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was a huge fan of Mr Parker's work on Simon and Simon so when I found out this book existed, I had to read it. It wasn't what I expected but it was a great glimpse into what drives him and explains why he quit acting. An enjoyable read.

[Jeanetta · Rating 5 out of 5]

Interesting twists on how things "work out" when everything is going wrong and down the tubes.
The Scottish element was unique along with a female bronc rider drafted as a desert guide. Found myself rooting for both protagonists.

[Diane Esson · Rating 5 out of 5]

I laughed, I cried and I curled up in a temporary spasm of terror at Jameson Parker’s story. Beautifully crafted, honest and clever, this is an excellent book.

[Jo Bower · Rating 5 out of 5]

An unexpected journey in two directions at once....

In curiosity I entered the author's name, being a fan of Simon and Simon. I found his blog and followed the trail to this book. I read it in the space of a few hours, snatching time between bites at mealtimes and scheduled activities. It truly is a remarkable document of the convergence of two different ways of life. It is well written and I learned as much about his new life as I did the man whose acting often made me smile. Good work, Jameson Parker.

[Sharon · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a hard review to write. I watched Simon & Simon and it is one of my favorite TV shows. I remember reading about Mr. Parker being shot but not all the details. I understand his depression but I don't understand why he wanted to work with cattle and horses. He was rough with the cattle and horses and didn't seem to be worried about their care. I wish, him well and I hope he finds peace in his life.