The draw of old westerns

I’ve never been a big fan of western movies. I remember being a little kid and being over at my grandparent’s house. My grandpa would always be watching a western and I always complained that they were so boring and why didn’t he watch something fun. It’s amazing how we can grow to like something that we hate when we’re younger. It just goes to show that you never know as much as you think you do I guess.
A few months back I watched The Good, The Bad and the Ugly starring Clint Eastwood. I had seen the movie before, back when I was in junior high. My dad had the film as part of his collection and for some reason I was going through an epic movie phase where I wanted to find very long movies and then watch them. Stephen King’s The Stand was the first film that I watched and this one was the second. I didn’t really think much of it at the time and didn’t really enjoy it that much either. This last viewing, however, was different. Maybe it is the fact that I’ve been to the dessert and the "old west" now, who knows, but that movie really struck me.
Since then I’ve been much more open to watching westerns. I recently watched The Searchers, which is credited by many well-known film makers as their most influential movie. I have Stagecoach coming from Netflix as well and I plan to watch that as soon as possible. There’s a great sense of history, romance and adventure that is packed into all of the westerns that I’ve seen so far.