“Cowboys are the hardest group in the world to get together,” said Mattie. "They are very smart, they are talented, they're great horsemen, great stockmen, but man, getting them all in one area is very tough.”
Before this past weekend, the first and only time I’d been to a rodeo was in San Pedro, California. Men dressed up in period cowboy garb rode around a dusty arena doing elaborate tricks – roping calves with their backs turned, and riding while doing handstands on the hilt of the saddle. Then, the director yelled Cut. The riders dismounted and shook themselves off. Assistants shuttled them bottles of blue gatorade, while other men in baseball caps and headsets wrangled the horses to the side of the arena. I was on a film set and the rodeo was fake– staged for the movie Hidalgo.
That rodeo, my first (if you can count it) was at a kind of double remove, a performance of a performance of the Wild West. It served to reinforce the Hollywood Western mythology I was obsessed with: my favorite movie was Annie Get Your Gun, the story of a glamorous sharpshooter with a scrappy past, who shot at targets while contorted into acrobatic shapes on horseback.
Growing up in Los Angeles, my understanding of a rodeo has always been filtered through a cinematic lens. Walking into the 24th Big Bend Ranch Rodeo in Alpine, I was thinking about my ranch experiences. While I understand on paper what cowboys do, that world is still shrouded in a kind of mystery - my mind goes to what I’ve seen in the movies: rope tricks, sharpshooting, and fringed chaps.
“Pet peeve,” said Mattie Sargent, stopping me mid-imagined rodeo scene. “It is pronounced ‘SHAP’ not ‘CHAP’.” I nodded vigorously. Noted.
“You’ll learn, you’ll learn,” she said, laughing.
Mattie heads up the Big Bend Ranch Rodeo planning committee. Her father, Gary Dunshee, owns Big Bend Saddlery in Alpine and founded the ranch rodeo out here. Mattie seems to know everything about cowboy gear, namely when someone’s wearing (or saying) it wrong. “It kind of makes you sad when you see people trying on hats and you have to figure out a nice way to tell them, ‘that's backwards,’" she said.
Hat position isn’t the only thing people are clueless about; it turns out a lot of people are in my boat when it comes to understanding just what cowboys do.
“It always amazes me how many people have never seen a cow in person,” said Mattie. “We have a ranching heritage in this area, it's what this area grew on. The rodeo is a great way for us to let [the community] experience something they don't get to see every day. They get closer to these cowboys than they've probably ever been in their life.”
A ranch rodeo is special - it celebrates that life and all of the skills we don’t see. A "Pro Rodeo," what I thought all of “rodeo” was, is for rodeo performers who compete in theatrical events, doing tricks that wouldn’t really happen in real life - for example, no one rides a wild bull on a ranch.
A ranch rodeo, on the other hand, features events that would actually happen on a ranch: Ranch Bronc Riding (while you wouldn’t ride a bull on a ranch, you would likely have to break a wild horse), Team Sorting, Team Branding, and Team Doctoring. These competitors aren’t career rodeo performers, which makes the whole event something very different than the “show” of a professional rodeo, and comes with a whole different set of challenges.
The Rules
“Cowboys are the hardest group in the world to get together,” said Mattie. "They are very smart, they are talented, they're great horsemen, great stockmen, but man, getting them all in one area is very tough.”
The area she was talking about wasn’t the rodeo arena - it was room 130 in the Sul Ross Range Animal Sciences Building, where all of the cowboys had to gather for the mandatory annual reading of the rules. According to Mattie, cowboys are notorious rule-breakers, or rather, loophole-finders:
“Usually, if they break the rules, it wasn't breaking the rules when they did it,” she says. “It's just that afterwards, we have to make new rules.”
The hallway leading into room 130 was a conveyor belt of cowboy hats and belt buckles all winding into the classroom, which looked like one you’d see at any college, but with an agricultural touch - taxidermied steer, deer, moose, and goat heads hung on the walls. Walking in, I felt like I was in school again. There were the obvious cool kids in the room: cowboys leaning back with their hat brims low. Then there were the folks sitting rod-straight, eyes trained towards the front of the lecture hall as the judges read through the rules.
First up, the rules for wild bronc riding, in which competitors must ride for eight seconds with one hand on the rein and must not touch any part of the horse or themselves with their free hand. Two hands on anything will mean you’re out.
“I don't care if it's Seabiscuit and it's running plumb to the end,” said the judge. “If you fear for your life, get a helmet.”
Then, onto the Wild Cow Milking rules:
“The muggers hold the cow with help from the roper, while the milker milks her into a standard 12 ounce bottle," said another judge. The cow must be standing to be milked. Any one of the contestants may milk the cow. The milker may pass the bottle to another man to run to the judge. Runner must hand the bottle to the judge.”
As the rule reading continued, I felt like an exchange student who’d joined the class mid-semester - utterly lost.
“We're good if you're good,” said one judge. The cowboys murmured in acceptance and got up to get ready. Most of them left the rule books behind, pages fluttering in the lecture hall AC.
A Family Affair
The Big Bend Ranch Rodeo is very obviously a family affair - there’s an ease the team members have with one another because so many of them are siblings, parents, children, or cousins. This is one of the things that most delights Chachi Hawkins, who I met outside of the Sul Ross S.A.L.E. arena. She was volunteering at the ticket booth (really, commanding it). With close cropped silver hair and a giant grin, she greeted most folks by name. She used to head up the rodeo committee with Gary Dunshee before Mattie took over.
For over a century, Chachi’s family has had a ranch outside of Alpine. After growing up in Odessa, Chachi moved out to Chicago for work, but always knew she wanted to return to the ranch. When she did, she found that there were different challenges to face. There’s less rain these days, which makes it harder to raise cattle - as far back as Chachi remembers, Calamity Creek, a stream near her family’s property, always had something in it, but now, it’s empty through most of the year.
“Then there’s the whole ‘beef isn’t good for you nonsense,’” Chachi said, waving her hand through the air.
But, there’s something else: “The family owned situation may be dying,” said Chachi. It’s hard to work a ranch, but the land is valuable. While Chachi thinks this generation of owners isn’t going to sell just yet, she can’t say what the next one will do. “You can't tie their hands,” she said. “They have to deal with it the way they think is right.”
We stood in the shadow of the ticket booth as kids practiced roping a few yards away, lassoing a plastic steer as the sun set. It was golden hour and the train passed behind the arena. Dust kicked up and caught in the light, the mountains a hushed purple out in the distance.
The events were fast-moving, and a play-by-play would be a futile exercise, but what I will say is that there’s a kind of symphonic feeling to it all. As the wild bronco bucks, the rider must stay in tune with it, their body moving in mirrored time with the animal. Up down, up down. If you’re not in time, you’re on the ground. There’s a certain poetry, even, to the Wild Cow Milking, a team becoming one body, then separating into roper, mugger, milker and runner, the cry from the crowd as milk drips into an empty Dos Equis bottle. It happens incredibly quickly, in a flurry of rope, shirts and hats.
Hollywood depicts the cowboy as a lone ranger - quiet on horseback, riding into the sunset. There’s glory in going it alone. But the ranch rodeo painted a slightly different picture of the West - folks are independent, to be sure, you can’t sign up for the event as an individual. You can only participate if you show up with a team, which seems true to ranch life, too. To run a ranch, you need hands.
Caló
Maestro - a title of recognition of an individual’s mastery of a certain subject matter. It’s conferred informally but universally by the community. It evolved in a setting where, in the absence of degrees or journeyman certificates of any kind, and people earned their bona fides through demonstrated skill and acumen. There were maestros in every field, music, teaching and coaching, auto mechanics, carpentry, and of course, matanzas.
Caló is a borderland dialect. You can find more episodes here.
Other recent programming:
For the first time in years, visitors to Balmorhea State Park in West Texas can now stay overnight in the park’s historic motor court cabins after the completion of a sweeping renovation project. The San Solomon Motor Courts, named after the natural spring system that feeds the park’s pool, were built by the Civilian Conservation Corps in the 1930s along with the rest of the park facilities. Travis Bubenik has the details here.
After being in place for 6 years, a boil water notice for the small West Texas town of Toyah has been lifted. However, some residents still have concerns about its safety. Mitch Borden has that story here. For more context, check out his 3-part investigation into Toyah’s water system here.
After leading Ector County Independent School District for the last five years, superintendent Scott Muri is set to leave the district. Muri is set to serve in an advisory role with the district until the end of January 2025, in which he’ll help find his successor and shepherd a number of district initiatives forward. Carlos Morales has that story here.
High Five
This week's high five is a high six from David Branch of Honky Tonk Happy Hour. However, you won't find straight up country on this playlist, because that's not the mood he's been in this week (for the record, he offered to make a country mix to go along with the rodeo, but we'd rather know what our resident Honky Tonk DJ listens to when he's out of the studio).
1) The Love You Save May Be Your Own - Joe Tex
2) How Could I Help But Love You? - Aaron Neville
3) Blue Moon (original version) - Elvis Presley
4) Unchained Melody (a capella version) - The Fleetwoods
5) On God’s Word - The Consolers
6) No More Ghettos in America - Stanley Winston
You can listen to Honky Tonk Happy Hour every Thursday from 8 p.m. to 10 p.m. and find archived episodes of the show (along with all of our music programming) on our Mixcloud.
PSAs
The Marfa Chamber Of Commerce is inviting the public to get involved in the upcoming 37th annual Marfa Lights Festival taking place August 30 through September 1.
Sign ups for competition in the pie baking contest, parade float decorating contest, as well as on-line voting for the next Grand Marshall, is all available by visiting marfachamberofcommerce.org/marfa-lights-festival.
If you have PSAs you want on the air or in this newsletter, head to www.marfapublicradio.org/psa.
