Horse Flesh

Having grown up around the rodeo, another rodeo is just another evening of ridin’ and ropin’, although that changes somewhat when the event draws the competitors who have chosen to call themselves professionals. They have extra talent, and in the cases of those whose sport requires high-powered horse flesh, they apparently either have deep pockets or a supportive local banker.

Our experiences as kids and teenagers were of the extremely low-brow variety. The horses came from Dude Davis’s Mule Barn on Washington Avenue in Houston, Texas, and our rig was at first a small, open stock trailer and later a second-hand, covered two-horse trailer, both pulled by the pickup truck our family used in its meat company business for transporting animal carcasses from the slaughter house to the processing plant. Hand-forged tall railing could be put in place and removed by a couple of men of average strength.

A favorite time for me after we moved to the country where our parents started their meat processing business was going into Houston—a 25 mile drive—with Daddy on a Sunday morning, his only day off, to look at horses. Daddy did the looking and the talking with Dude, a crusty, old guy who wore suspenders on his pants and a well-loved rancher-style Stetson atop his balding gray head, which topped the face of someone who had had sandy red hair in his younger days and now bore the evidence of dangerously too much sun. His style of Stetson would later gain importance when companies began calling it the LBJ.

Anyone old enough to remember the Kennedy-Johnson years knows Lyndon Johnson’s small brimmed, good-looking Stetson. Dude’s hat had earned the look that wannabes of the 21^st century can mostly only play at. The authenticity that characterized Dude was not uncommon in the 50s of my childhood, even in the city, but that’s not to say that Dude’s M. O. was anything other than that of a horse trader. I don’t remember much conversation. Good-looking, South Texas ranch working horse, chestnut sorrel, nice rein, gentle, seven years old—those were the terms that would have been exchanged, and of course, the price. One hundred dollars was a good chunk. Our prizes from the Mule Barn were Sue Anna and a much less sterling find we named Ginger. About the most you can say about Ginger is that she was a nice-looking red sorrel with a flax mane and tail. Aside from being gentle, she was short in the talent department, and probably the product of mediocre genes.

Sue Anna, of South Texas provenance with no registration papers, was clearly from good stock, well trained, what is commonly called a grade horse. She became a champion barrel racing horse—she could turn on a dime—seeing my oldest sister, Joan, all the way through her senior year in college. My brief rodeo career came during a couple of years where I rode Sue Anna in the junior barrel race, after Joan had gotten a new mount, a registered quarter horse mare. I never lost an event over those two years. I stashed my winnings in a metal box under my bed. Over 50 years later I can see the box, resting on the hardwood floor, a chenille spread hanging low enough that I somehow thought my treasure out of sight—protected from whom I don’t know.

Being the youngest of three, I was the one still living at home, even though I had graduated from college, when in 1968 Daddy and I found Sue Anna back in the woods on a hot, August Sunday morning, dead from what must have been a respiratory illness. She had suffered for a good while by then, and she must have been at least 20 years old. Daddy used a tractor and blade to scrape away enough dirt from the summer-baked clay pasture surface to make a suitable burial place. Over the years—before and later—we always compared any barrel horse we saw to Sue Anna, and of course, no horse compared favorably in the reining department.

I don’t know why, but I was a little surprised last Saturday night to realize how much excitement is generated around the barrel racing event these days. Overall, the horses are a lot faster—many of them from racing stock—and their cost can range from that of a modestly-priced new vehicle to the cost of a 3-bedroom brick home in the suburbs, or an old, fixer-upper on valuable land in a city neighborhood working its way back to respectability. Add to that the cost of a fancy rig and the expense of traveling from, say, San Antonio, Texas to Santa Fe, New Mexico, and you’re looking at some serious money. Although almost half of the girl-women riding in the Saturday-night go-round knocked over a barrel—a five second penalty that used to result in a “no time”—the good-looking, pedigreed, well-bred horses made their way around the barrels in lightning-like speed. One competitor was mounted on a horse so high strung, so bred to run, that someone on the equivalent of a track “pony” escorted her to the starting point out of the arena chute. With each rider the anticipation was high, the grand stands cheering for a better time. And the stakes were high because money sufficient to make a big difference in the life of a less-fortunate family had been spent all around to get horse and rider to Rodeo de Santa Fe.

I’m glad I made it to the final performance of Santa Fe’s annual PRCA rodeo, even though I’ve seen way more than one person’s share of bull riding, bareback and saddle bronc bustin’, roping and heeling. I will never get over the amazement I feel when I see exceptional talent. I never had that talent, although I was blessed enough to ride well enough to accompany Sue Anna around the barrels. Joan owns a beautiful, collectible sterling silver and 10k gold trophy buckle, earned jointly with our family’s grade-quality gifted mare. As the credit card commercial claims, “the memories…priceless”. Although I own several saddles, mostly a collection of older Texas-made saddles, I own no horse. A few years ago, I sold the grade-quality gelding that I owned for a while. He was a gentle spirit, a well-trained young cow horse who deserved more attention and use than I gave him. He was my very own Sue Anna in the late years of this journey.

Horse Flesh—Santa Fe, New Mexico (July 1, 2008)

R. Harold Hollis