If you were transported to (and marooned in) the wild west, which occupation would you obtain?

Sheriff and saloon owner in some town going to seed after the gold rush went bad.

I am a sucker for bad girls and lost causes.

The “bad guy” dressed in black duds and black cowboy hat who terrorizes the townsfolk! lol!

Sheriff, gunsmith, or traveling curiosities show ringmaster.

Madam. ‘Nuff said.

Blacksmith, every one had to do business with him at some point.

School teacher if they needed one. Otherwise, a cowboy or wrangler (armed and dangerous like the gunslinger, but not looking for a fight). Maybe the mayor when I was older and couldn’t do anything useful anymore.

Interesting question. Web developer probably wouldn’t be a plausible career solution.

I worked my way through school building garages, doing home renovations, additions and even a few new homes and businesses. And that was long enough ago that I actually built some things with just a hand saw, plane, framing square, hammer and such. We built one home deep in the woods of North Carolina with no electircal power at the site. So the whole thing went up with hand tools. I’d be a carpenter.

undertaker, casket maker.

Trapper, buffalo hunter or whiskey maker.

Prostitute.

Cowboy by day—drunk, card gambling sex maniac by night…though not with @zensky. Lol.

You know you want me.

Bordello owner/madame. Finally, my whip might come in handy! My husband would run the attached saloon.

Ah’d be the the old maid school marm in the one room school house.

Oh I’d be the town doctor…

Lots and lots of snake oil sold to the men…

Lots of hand rubbed ointments all over the women… LOTS & LOTS OF EM’!!!

I’d be the enigmatic stranger with no name, a piece of carpet for a jacket, a cheroot surgically attached to my gob & a wicked glint in my eye.
Or…......the smelly fucker chewing tobaccie who falls off his rocking chair when said stranger mosies into town.

I would write and publish the newspaper and in my free time, I would invent crazy steam powered shit. Oh.. here I am… http://ageofsteam.files.wordpress.com/2010/08/outfit9.jpg

I’d want to be Thomas Edison.

I’d be Tesla…. or his sidekick. Try to keep him focused. Why do I always seek out the difficult geniuses? I even do it when I fantasize!

I’d be a surveyor or the guy that has the accurate scales to weigh the gold… or a gunslinger.
I’d probably be infatuated with @Sunny2 but wouldn’t have the nerve to tell her.

School marm, most likely. And I’d secretly long to be the barkeep, the madam or the newspaper editor.

@Imadethisupwithnoforethought James Garner?

@MRSHINYSHOES What about when there was a bounty on your head? Would you carry on with the bad guy occupation?

@Fiddle_Playing_Creole_Bastard Quite a wide assortment of jobs…. I suppose you could roll them all up into one and run the place though

@Hypocrisy_Central Would you have to learn how to do this or do you think you could already manage?

@SavoirFaire What do you suppose would be the differences in what they taught then as opposed to what we teach now? Would it differ?

@ETpro Carpenter is a good bet for any era as there is always something that needs to be built with the plentiful resource of trees.. especially back then before all the rules and regulations for tree cutting were in place.

@rojo Perhaps not a fun job, but you’d probably never go out of business.. what with all the gunslingers running around

@Aethelflaed What does that mean? Nvm, I figured it out.

@WestRiverrat All of those would likely be lucrative professions.. especially whiskey maker. How do you make whiskey?

@zensky Your lifespan would be awfully short.

@mazingerz88 Cowboy as in mending fences and herding cattle? Or just a guy who wanders the street preparing for his night job?

@augustlan Well played. Did the Madame’s carry whips? o.O

@Sunny2 You and SavoirFaire would be in competition for school teacher. Who wins??

@RealEyesRealizeRealLies Hmm.. I can’t find fault with that one even with effort. (unrelated: your nick looks familiar .. perhaps stickam.com?)

@ucme Clint Eastwood?

@cazzie If every town had a newsprint lady that looked that hot there’d be trouble.

@CWOTUS You would have the knowledge required for the most part. Probably a good idea.

The sex god.

@digitalimpression it isn’t legal now, so I won’t tell you.

@digitalimpression I’d win, I’d be the mayor’s daughter.

@digitalimpression Good question. If it was early on when schools had one room and teachers weren’t trained, I think it would be mostly writing, reading, and arithmetic. The reading would not be focused on literature the way contemporary English classes are, but more about oratory and rhetoric (which I actually take to be more valuable than how we teach English today).

By the mid-1800s, though, teachers were trained (to some extent, at least) and schools were bigger. Then I think I’d be teaching some American history, a little more literature (though still mostly oratory and rhetoric), Latin or Greek, and maybe some basic science. That’s a lot to do, which is why I probably wouldn’t be doing it alone.

@Sunny2 Twenty paces at dawn!

I have experience caring for horses so I would probably be doing that in some capacity or other.

@SavoirFaire You win. You sound much more like a teacher than I. I guess I’ll just sit and pine for the gunslingin’ surveyor who doesn’t know I’m alive.

@Sunny2 Well, we only have to duel if we’re in a one-teacher town. But if you were the mayor’s daughter, I bet you really would win. I never was good at educational politics.

Why do I get the idea there is a roll-play group in this somehow…

wanna buy some snakeoil @cazzie? Perhaps an ointment rub down? I make house calls.

Did I mention that I hope I don’t need your doctorin’. I do play a doctor in another roll play group.

<<<—- Stops stalking… I mean Stops Following this question now.

If I remembered what I know now, I would be a fortune teller.

Would you have to learn how to do this or do you think you could already manage? There might be a learning curb, but a short one. I think I could manage fairly well right off the bat. If I had to hit the ground running, I would be a carpenter, or illustrator for @cazzie newspaper. If it was the time photography was being developed, there is where I would be, I would be Eastman Kodak before there was Eastman Kodak.

Horse whisperer.

I’d love to be a cancan dancer, with sexy stockings, and guys offering me beer and money and a good time haha.

Unfortunately, I’m not that kind of girl. Too moody and angry. I’d be the legendary sniper, they would call me Velvet Tongue, a sort of sarcastic nickname for a mercenary of few words. I’d have a large black hat with a big flowing black trenchcoat. My face would be pale, and my visage disfigured. But you wouldn’t see it, because I’m always smoking, and the smoke would cover everything that might be visible beyond the rim of my hat. A mercenary for hire with a dark past, kind of like a Western version of Xena. But with a freakin awesome rifle. I’d snipe people from church bell towers. The crows would sing my countless victories. They sez no one ain’t ever seen her cry er bleed.

Or at least, I’d try to act like that, so people would be scared of me, and would leave me alone. XD

Seriously though…I really don’t know. I’d find some simple and humbble occupation, and hope Velvet Tongue wasn’t paid to destroy everyone in whatever town I ended up in. I’d also just get drunk offa lighting fuel.

I apologize for this very stereotypical outlook of the wild west. But I don’t know anything about it at all beyond what I saw on The Quick and the Dead, so it’s hard to say what I could actually do if I found myself over there.

@digitalimpression If there were a bounty on my head, I would still be the “bad guy in black”. In the Wild West, with no real laws, I can do what I want and still look like I’m “stylin”. It’d be fun! Lol.

I’d bake bread for the local cat house and eventually open a bakery when I was an old, old maid.

A criminal on a black horse, who likes to shoot things.

I’d be the street sweeper that no one likes.