It’s 1970 in southern California, and ten-year-old Bobby is bummed out. His mom split and his dad’s no help, and the only way Bobby can deal with it is to wish he’d lived in the old days he sees played out in his favorite Westerns, when a cowboy could tell the good guys from the bad guys as easily as seeing whether they were defending the homestead or attacking it.
Things get worse after Bobby’s dog, Junior, defends him from a redneck, and the fuzz want to put Junior in the pokey. Bobby calculates he’d better hit the trail with Junior, and they cut out for the Mexican border. Tracked by his family, the police, and the redneck out for revenge, his real head trip begins when he approaches the border, where everything he thought he knew starts to come unglued.