A writer friend came to town recently, and we got to talking about horses, cowgirls and cowboys – the working, rodeo, and Hollywood kinds – of the ’30s and ’40s. I told her about Glen Vernam, the late Sheep Creek author of a well regarded history of “Man on Horseback” and of several western novels.

I had a book signing for Glen in the Bookloft in 1976 or ’77. He was a tall man with a tall Tom Mix hat and I wish I could remember the stories he told then of his connections to Mix and other early Hollywood cowboys. But that big black hat, his face and a slight limp are what stick in my mind now.

And the fact that Turks introduced pants to the world. I had only recently returned from a few years living with the Turks, and “Man on Horseback” traces the story of riding “astride” to the Turks and Central Asia. I guess that Europeans were still in togas and skirts riding carts and chariots before the Turks came along.

Then I told my friend that I know a singing cowboy from that era, which led to a phone call and a visit with Lloyd and Naomi Doss. My first memory of Lloyd and Naomi is in the Imnaha Store and Tavern, where they kept shop and we listened to “Sons of the Pioneers” albums and drank beer after trying to pull fish out of the river or picking peaches at Inez Meyers’ place.

My second memory is a night at Cloverleaf Hall in fall 1971 when Lloyd “Tommy” Doss came on stage with the Pioneers, all of them decked in the finest fanciest spangled Western garb I’d ever seen, to hoots and hollers from all the cowboys from up and down the Imnaha River, the Lower and Upper Wallowa Valleys, and most of the townsfolk from the major settlements along Highway 82. The crowd, the Pioneers’ performance and Fred Bornsted staying on to sing into the morning hours were all part of my falling in love with this place.

It was just a couple of weeks ago that my friend and I sat in Lloyd and Naomi’s living room and tried to coax them back to times and places of 50 and 60 years ago – Lloyd going on the road with “Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys,” playing and singing with “Ole Rassmussen and His Nebraska Cornhuskers,” and then his years with the “Sons of the Pioneers.”

This was not name dropping, but remembering. Remembering dinners at Gary Cooper’s, singing at Carnegie Hall and making movies with John Ford. Lloyd remembered vividly sweltering in a woolen U.S. Cavalry uniform on the set of “Rio Grande” in Moab, Utah. Actors Ben Johnson and Harry Carey Jr. were friends, and John Wayne brought his kids along on the set (Naomi said she and her kids were back in Burbank, where she laughed about selling and buying houses while Lloyd was on the road. And reminisced about the small town atmosphere of Burbank and their close family friendships with other performers).

Although Lloyd had grown up in La Grande and was by the time of “Rio Grande” a seasoned cowboy singer, he went to Griffith Park in Los Angeles with fellow Pioneer Ken Curtis (who would gain fame as “Festus” on “Gunsmoke” a few years later) to practice riding for “Rio Grande.” He’d skipped that part of growing up in Eastern Oregon.

But Eastern Oregon was always home. They bought the Imnaha Store in 1963, while Lloyd was still with the Pioneers. One time he had a day between shows in New York City and just wanted to get home. Naomi laughed about him somehow figuring out plane rides to Pendleton, and then being picked up in a helicopter in Pendleton and flown right down to Imnaha for the day. It was Ted Grote who picked him up. I asked Ted if he’d just set him down on the bridge. “No, we landed in the school yard,” Ted remembered.

Lloyd is now the last of the old-time “Sons of the Pioneers” – a successor group lives on in Branson, Mo. He remembers his sidekicks, the old Madison Square Garden, rodeo performers, prize fighters, Billly Graham coming back stage, and fishing trips between shows.

Naomi remembers the whole gang of Pioneers coming to Imnaha to try to talk Lloyd into going back on the road. I remember “Man on Horseback,” Glen Vernam’s hat, Cloverleaf Hall, the music in the Imnaha Store, Naomi running across the street to perform postmistress duties and one of the sweetest afternoons I’ve had in recent times sitting in Lloyd and Naomi’s living room remembering it all.