One of my most memorable birthdays took place when I turned 6 years old in 1965.

Television and the downtown Butler movie theater screens were filled with cowboys and Indians that captivated a generation of “city slicker” children to dream about the “Old West.”

That year for my birthday I received a much anticipated gun and holster set my mother purchased at Aland's Toy Store on Butler's bustling Main Street.

This gunslinger reproduction included plastic bullets held in small loops attached around the waist belt and was advertised as being made out of “authentic” fake leather.

My six-shooter shot rolls of red paper caps. The caps had gunpowder filled slightly raised paper buttons that never seemed to quite align with the trigger hammer to create the non-stop shooting action as promised on the box!

I so wanted that make-believe cowboy outfit because summer would soon arrive and our family planned a two-week trip to Montana to visit my great-uncle Frank's ranch and see real cowboys. My father's uncle, German-born Frank Fassbach, had left the coal mines of Gastonville, Pa., to find a new life as a rancher in the great American West around 1910.

Uncle Frank wrote letters home with rattles sealed inside the envelopes from the snakes he killed, and his words painted the pages with tales of encounters with bears and wolves.

He had purchased a 2,000-acre cattle and pig ranch and had built a small “modern” house for his wife and stepson that replaced his log cabin.

Sadly, he had died at the age of 48 in the winter of 1930 while tending to his herd. He had hitched up two horses to pull a sled for the purpose of feeding his cattle.

After sighting a wolf or coyote, Uncle Frank reached into the coffee sack carrying his rifle. The firearm discharged accidentally when his finger touched the trigger that did not have a safety. The bullet struck him in the breast and traveled down through his body and came out his lower back.

Uncle Frank somehow made it back home and, though bleeding, staggered through the kitchen door where my great-aunt Geneva had dinner simmering on the stove. The closest hospital was 40 miles away and for two hours Aunt Geneva drove her severely wounded husband on snow covered, mostly dirt roads.

Three doctors frantically tried to save his life after telling Aunt Geneva that there was little hope. Tragically, the doctors who worked tirelessly to save him had the sad task of telling her that her husband of only six years had not survived.

So with my head filled with this sad family tale, we headed out in July to Montana with five kids jammed packed in our 1963 Mercury Monterey to go visit the ranch now owned by Uncle Frank's stepson Lacey Taylor.

Air conditioning was not yet common in automobiles, but we did have a “breezeway rear window” to attempt to ward off the blustery heat of the American West. We arrived early afternoon in a Roundup, Montana, that still very much looked and felt like the towns from the TV westerns I had watched on our black-and-white set. It was like being in one of my childhood fantasies as there were real cowboys on horseback riding through town, as well as Indians from the nearby reservation.

We stayed in a motel on the edge of Roundup's small Main Street. My family was able to walk through a town filled with stores carrying cowboy boots, hats, guns and other western attire that were meant to be sold to real cowboys and not to tourists like us.

My father the next morning went to the courthouse to locate his uncle's ranch that would not have telephone service until the 1980s. We headed to the ranch that afternoon and arrived unannounced and without invitation.

As we drove through the ranch's gate in 105 sunny degrees and oppressive humidity, Lacey's wife was working in the garden wearing a beat up round straw hat that had seen far too many Montana summers.

Being 19 miles from the middle of nowhere, the Taylors were not used to many visitors and looked at us with suspicion. Upon learning that we were relatives from back East and thinking my father had ventured West to claim the ranch, they became pretty cold and standoffish.

My father assured the Taylors that he did not have any interest in staking a claim to the only home they had ever known. He explained his only wish was to see where his uncle had once written exciting letters back home filled with wonderful tales of life in the West.

The Taylors, relieved by our trip's purpose, quickly warmed up and invited us to stay.

Lacey showed us around the ranch including the original log cabin Uncle Frank had built with his own hands, but now was used for storage.

When dinner time came, we sat down at their small dining table to a meal of venison and baked beans. Knowing we were dying from thirst, Lacey's wife mixed up a large glass pitcher of cherry Kool-Aid in the kitchen sink.

There were no modern spigots for hot and cold water. The hot water came from boiling it on the wood fired stove and the cold water flowed out of a cast iron well pump due to the strength of Lacey's wife's arm pulling and pushing the handle up and down.

With no electricity, we had no ice to cool our drinks and the temperature in the house hovered around 100 degrees. The cherry Kool-Aid flavored well water was also flavored with just the right amount of iron rust floating in our clear drinking glasses. It refreshed me and tasted better than any other beverage before or after that day!

After dinner we said our goodbyes and expressed our appreciation for their western hospitality.

The remainder of our vacation took us to Yellowstone National Park and the Wisconsin Dells where we visited Fort Dells, a make-believe wild west park. Neither of these places, however, left memories as vivid or as real as that hot day on great-uncle Frank's Montana ranch.

Even with the passing of over 50 years, I will sometimes sit on my white painted front porch swing on a hot Western Pennsylvania day and enjoy my favorite drink, a tall glass of cherry Kool-Aid. Its watery coolness still quenches my thirst and its taste takes me back to a long ago time in Montana. I just wish I had a little rust!

Bill May is a local historian, speaker and tour guide.