STRANGE COWBOYS

Southland Times, Issue 21331, 27 February 1931, Page 3

STRANGE COWBOYS

WHAT THE RODEO MEANS. MODERN METHODS. The American West has swapped its shooting irons for golf clubs; its faro, and stud poker for Bridge parties; and its “he man” tradition for correspondence courses in ranch accountancy and personnel training, writes Roy Buckingham in the New York Times.

The lank plainsman of the days when a long cattle drive would wind up in Dodge City, Tombstone or Abilene with a whoopee party, would be lonesome should he return to the grazing country. He would find that twentieth century civilization, with its motor cars, radio, miniature golf, and business efficiency, had sapped the terror and the thrill from the romantic cowboy. As likely as not the young fellow who greets you at the imposing ranch entrance with a sweep of a ten-gallon hat and the breezy carelessness of your story-book idea of a cowman, plays college football and can dropkick straighter than he can shoot. For, with the ranch business what it is, the smart cowman has sampled it as a remedy for his failing fortunes and found it more lucrative than cattle training. To do this he has had to call in the young, slickhaired “vaqueros,” who are able to ride the hurricane deck of a horse in the day and tap dance at night. This state of things in the grazing country has brought a technique that Dog Kelly, Prairie Dog Dave, Wyatt Earp, Billy the Kid, and other worthies of the old days, would have abhorred, for one cannot imagine these typical wranglers and guntoters giving in so easily to the blandishments of the gasoline era. Big business has seized the ranch business, cayuse, cinch, and stirrup. This transformation has obliterated the colourful figure in chaps, silk 'kerchief, ten-gallon hat, ivory-butted six-shooters. On some ranches even his horse is gone. Down on the 101 ranch near Bliss, Oklahoma, what a cowboy can do with a car or a motorcycle should please the Society of Gasoline Engineers. The ranch owner, of course, rebelled at this change; but it was either remove the story-book setting or go broke. Now the visitor will hear more typewriters and comptometers on the 101 ranch than he will six-shooters. The “hands” know more about Rudy Vallee and the “Maine Stein Song” than they do about Billy the Kid and Bat Masterson. On their day off they pile into cars and whisk away to Ponca City for golf, in plus fours, if you please. And after the golf game they play Contract Bridge. The Millers, who own the 101 ranch and run a circus and- rodeo as a sideline, have no objection to golf-playing cowboys. Neither has the Diamond G outfit in the Coronado section of New Mexico. This is not far from the former habitat of notorious outlaws and renegade cowmen, but history and tradition are not sufficient to repel Bridge and golf. The older rangers feebly protested when the first clubs appeared at the Diamond G outfit, but when it was demonstrated that it was a game of chance at 50 cents a hole the objection softened. The glamour of the past, however, is not leaving the scene without regrets. The ranch owners have relented to the extent of giving annual home-talent rodeos on the ranches. For these events the chaps are worn again, guns are strapped to belts, and as much of the Wild West as can be revived is staged again in a picturesque setting. The finer arts of cowmanship are called into play—bull-dogging, horse-breaking, fancy riding and stunting. More than one ranch owner has found this a good method to replenish a treasury hit hard by a drop in cattle prices, for there are many who will pay to see cowboys in action as of old. The Briggs brothers in Southern Kansas have developed this rodeo feature as a twoday adjunct of their big ranch. Yearly it attracts thousands and is the outstanding community event. At the Briggs’s show’, cow hands from the Texas Panhandle compete with riders from Nebraska and Montana. Every cowman within 200 miles attends, and some come by motor cars from 500 miles away. The rodeo is popular with town folk, perhaps because it gives outlet to the repressed desire for the old efficiency and good business. The glamour has not departed, although the spectacle they see is as synthetic as the gentlemanly ranches they patronize. Chaps Wanted. The taming of the South-west is held accountable, too, for the popularity of Wild West revels. Twenty-five thousand persons attended the Last Round-up in Dodge City last year. The Dodge City round-up committee had to advertise for chaps enough to serve the cowboy band. More advertising and telephone calls were required to locate a decrepit stage coach for the “OldTimers’ Parade.” Forty years earlier the South-west had stage coaches to burn. The blow which almost wrecked the round-up was the horse shortage. On the morning of the parade 37 horses were all that the committee could provide. Yet, though the training of the Southw’est by machinery has almost robbed the cowmen of their horses, the South-west refuses to forget. It must burn red fire once in a while. Tombstone is the place to get the whiff of the brimstone. Tombstone’s throwback to the days of 1849 in Helldorada week is livelier than its own broncos. Tombstone revels in its wicked history. Tombstone has plenty of colour and visitors see it. The Wyatt-Earp-Clanton gun battle at the O.K. corral, a necktie party for a cattle rustler, and a stage coach hold-up and looting of a Wells Fargo trea-sure-box are the headlines in Tombstone’s vaudeville of vice.

The Arizone celebration, like other Wild West revivals, is an occasion for all of the frontier finery to go on public view. Those who possess the garb of the six-shooting '7o’s are so dressed. In Tombstone and other Wild West revival towns, citizens wear guns, sombreros, and cowboy pants, while the old days are lived again. And how they appear' to relish it—especially if they come of the stock which helped to tame the South-west. The modern motor-minded and air-mind-ed cowboy who stands as symbol of the changes which have taken place in the South-west is none the worse for the transition. He, is more efficient than his pistolhandy grandfather. He is as full of devilment as the Dodge City pranksters who fitted a parson in a barrel and made him deliver a sermon. He is no namby-pamby because he pilots a plane when he has opportunity, studies accountancy, shoots 18 holes at golf under 100, or knows his finesses. In a pinch he rides 'ong and hard in the saddle, scientifically crosses fai crttle strains, knows which side of the ledger his business is on, and will pass anywhere for a business man.