Some Babies Grow Up to be Cowboys: A Collection of Articles and Essays PDF
Preview Some Babies Grow Up to be Cowboys: A Collection of Articles and Essays
Page i Some Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys Page ii Other books in the Western Life Series: Number One: Catch Rope—The Long Arm of the Cowboy by John Erickson Number Two: Through Time and the Valley by John Erickson Number Three: LZ Cowboy: A Cowboy's Journal 1979–1981 by John Erickson Number Four: Panhandle Cowboy by John Erickson Page iii Some Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys A Collection of Articles and Essays By John R. Erickson Volume 5 Western Life Series Page iv Copyright ©1999 John R. Erickson All rights Reserved First Edition Manufactured in the United States of America 5 4 3 2 1 The paper in this book meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, Z39.48.1984. Permissions University of North Texas Press P. O. Box 311336 Denton TX 762031336 9405652142 Number Five: Western Life Series Library of Congress CataloginginPublication Data Erickson, John R. 1943 Some babies grow up to be cowboys : a collection of articles and essays / by John R. Erickson.—1st ed. p. cm. — (Western life series ; 5) Includes index. ISBN 1574411209 1. Cowboys—Texas—Texas Panhandle—Social life and customs. 2. Ranch life— Texas—Texas Panhandle. 3. Texas Panhandle (Tex.)—Social life and customs. 4. Ranching—Texas—Texas Panhandle—History. I. Title. II. Series. F392.P168 E77 1999 976.4'063'088636—dc21 00008287 Design by Angela Schmitt Front cover photograph by Kris Erickson Page v To Frances B. Vick, Director of the University of North Texas Press Much deserved Page vii CONTENTS Part I: A Place The Quakers of Estacado and Their Precious Books (1994) 3 The Texas Panhandle (1984) 8 Panhandle Weather (1984) 14 The Canadian River (1993) 18 Part II: From Buffalo to Cattle The Texas Cattle Industry (1983) 27 Windmills (1980) 35 Mr. Barby and His Buffalo (1976) 39 Part III: The Cowboy Some Babies Still Grow Up To Be Cowboys (1983) 45 The Cowboy's Life: Changed But Unchanged (1979) 52 Cowboy Thoughts (1981) 57 The American Cowboy: Traditional and Modern (1983) 64 Part IV: Cowboy Tools Saddles: Evolution of a Tool (1982) 77 The Cowboy's Boot (1982) 83 Part V: Ranch and Rodeo The Pecos Rodeo: 100 Years Old (1982) 91 Texas Ranch Roundup (1982) 97 Part VI: Animals People and Animals (1983–93) 105 The Mysterious Lesser Prairie Chicken (1979) 112 Dogs and Coyotes: An Ancient Bond (1998) 116 Page viii Part VII: This and That Black Mesa (1983) 121 Thoughts On A Snowy Day (1985) 125 A Fateful Trip (1998) 129 Easter In Cow Country (1990) 132 Odd Things I've Seen As A Cowboy (1994) 135 Index 147 Page ix PREFACE My interest in ranch life is probably genetic. My mother's people were Texas frontiersmen, ranchers, and cowboys back to 1858. I had a greatgreat grandmother who was killed by Comanche Indians in 1860, and is now resting in Willow Springs Cemetery near Weatherford. My greatgrandfather, a rancher in Gaines County, was shot and killed by his neighbor in 1917, in a dispute over a waterhole. One of his sons, Uncle Bert Sherman, stayed a bachelor and spent his life working as a cowboy on ranches near Lubbock, while another son, Uncle Roy, lived out his days raising cattle on the Sherman ranch in Gaines County. My mother's father, Buck Curry, managed a 64,000 acre ranch for many years, and eventually put together an 8,500 acre ranch of his own in Gaines County. He died when I was very young and I have only a few memories of him. I wish I had known him better, for there have been times when I've felt a great kinship with him. He loved guns, spurs, horses, and ranching, and also assembled a huge library on a wide range of subjects. During the 1920s, when cattle rustlers were a scourge to ranchers, he slept with a .41 Colt pistol under his pillow. He was once bitten by a horse suspected of having rabies, and had to endure the treatment of the time—a series of twenty painful injections in the belly, said to be only slightly better than the disease. He was respected in his community, yet he seemed to revel in being unconventional. He kept a stuffed rattlesnake in his office, and went out in public wearing a coyoteskin coat, probably made of skins he had tanned himself. He had friends among the local ranching aristocracy, but according to my mother, his best friend was a disreputable old scarecrow who trapped skunks for a living—a man my grandmother wouldn't allow in her house because of his smell. My mother, Anna Beth Curry Erickson, was a wonderful storyteller, and I was raised on her tales of Grampy Buck, Joe Sherman, and Uncles Roy Page x and Bert. At a young age I wanted to be a rancher and a cowboy, and that proved to be such a powerful fantasy that even six years of university education didn't erase it. Between 1974 and 1981 I made my living as a cowboy on ranches in the Texas and Oklahoma Panhandles, and in 1990 Kris and I began putting together our own MCross Ranch, named after the brand Greatgrandfather Sherman used on his ranches on the South Plains. It is a commercial cowcalf operation in Roberts and Ochiltree Counties, and has grown to 8,500 acres—oddly, the same size as Buck Curry's outfit. I operate it myself, with help from family, neighbors, and part time cowboy labor. So, yes, this passion I have for ranch life and cowboying is probably genetic. It is a subject I care deeply about, the lens through which I view the universe and the modern world. And it is, to one degree or another, the subject of all the articles in this collection, which made their first appearances in Texas Highways, Oklahoma Today, Livestock Weekly, The Dallas Morning News, The Dallas TimesHerald, and American Cowboy. Many of these pieces are anecdotal, based on my experiences and observations on ranches. Others required a fair amount of research and would have to be described as historical. And others fall into the category of "thought pieces," or essays, in which I view contemporary life through the lens of cowboying. A glance at the table of contents will reveal that I have tried to arrange the articles in a kind of order, starting with several pieces about my place in this world—the Texas Panhandle—and moving into a historical view of the ranching business. This is followed by a section on the cowboy, four articles which probe the same topic from slightly different perspectives. Next we have Cowboy Tools, Ranch and Rodeo, and a section on animals. Several pieces didn't fit any of these categories, so I placed them in the final section, a catchall grouping called This and That. After Kris and I were married in 1967, we loaded our belongings into a Volkswagen and drove from Dallas to Boston, where I was a secondyear student at Harvard Divinity School. Neither of us could have predicted the twists and turns our trail would follow in years to come, or that it would lead us back to Texas and to the log house we now occupy in Picket Can
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