Imagine trying to escape oppression in Russia during the late 1880’s! After long miserable months on slow, overcrowded vessels your feet touch solid ground only to be herded through Ellis Island, where you discover the only word you can speak that anyone understands is “Oberdauer”. . . something someone in the Old Country told you to remember from a land promoter’s letter.  You’d have no way to know speaking that name would get you shuttled to a place named Fredonia, in an Indian reservation along the rocky unforgiving North /South Dakota borderlands.  Neither would you know that if you’d said “Schwartzkopff” you’d have been trundled off to Nebraska’s Sandhills country!
Difficult to imagine – yet that’s the history of Harlan Schott’s paternal ancestors.  When the Northbound rails disappeared into the prairie grass the Schott family continued their great adventure by loading wagons with provisions and whatever meager belongings survived the voyage.  The ferry at Kennell got them across the Missouri River, but they could not ascend the wet gumbo bluffs along the river bottom.  For three days and nights the rain continued, swamping the chilled family who waited, huddled together beneath their wagons.
At last they reached Fredonia, where they persevered.  Eventually, another generation sprang up.  By the time Harlan was big enough to ride, his father owned several hundred horses and was becoming a master horse trader. Only broke horses commanded premium prices, so Harlan had ample opportunity to study for a Ph. D – even go on for his Master’s – in “wild broncmanship.”
It started with riding or driving three and a half miles to school and home again each day. The Maple Leaf School provided a barn for student’s horses.  For the cold winter days the elder Schott built what he called a “Whippet” for the girls.  Made from the wheels and axle of a Whippet automobile, the cart sported shaves so a single horse could draw it.  The girls may even have enjoyed the luxury of a lap robe when weather turned really bitter.
As for the boys, “One of us would ride a gentle horse, one a bronc, and Dad would ride alongside for a quarter mile or so to get us started,” Harlan recalls.  He remembers a pretty Palomino mare that took the snaffle in her teeth and flat ran off with his brother . . . but he eventually got her under control without anybody getting hurt, except they overshot the schoolhouse by a mile and a half and were tardy by the time they got back.
He also vividly remembers the blizzard that trapped him (at eight years old) and his horse overnight at an abandoned house about a mile from the school.  “The teacher was reluctant to let us go because we could see the storm coming.  By the time I made it across the wooden bridge on Oak Creek the storm was a lot worse.  I saw the turn to that house, so I headed for it.  The doors and windows were gone, but my horse and I found a corner mostly out of the wind. I stood up by his side all night long, moving around and stamping my feet and pounding my hands.  He kind’a kept me warm. Dad had told us to never lie down or sit still in a case like that or you might go to sleep and freeze to death. Finally daylight came, and we were still alive.  Pretty soon here came old Dash, our English Shepherd.  I was sure glad to see him!  Then he left, and pretty soon here came Dad, through the storm to get us.”
Along with riding and farming with their many horses, the Schott’s roped off them, to get the branding done and doctor whatever had to be doctored.   Harlan admired and wanted to emulate his brothers-in-law Marvin Dietrich and Johnnie Keller, who rodeoed when they came back from the war.

Full story available in our August 15, 2015 issue!

story by Siri Stevens

Arlene Kensinger came to Cheyenne, Wyo., in the early 1950s to go to beauty school. “I wanted to be in the circus, but my dad said I needed to go to school,” she said. She made the trip to Cheyenne from her home in Hawk Springs, where she grew up. Her father, S Paul Brown, was a school superintendent in Hawk Springs for 11 years. She learned to trick ride and rodeo through babysitting. “She was a trick rider and he was a roper,” she said of the parents.
She met her husband, Don, who owned the only trailer park in Cheyenne, where Arlene lived when she came to town. “He found out I was a trick rider and liked to do rodeo, and he had started the Cheyenne Riding Club. He talked me into joining the PRCA and getting a secretary card and so I was the secretary out there at the riding club.” She obtained her cosmetology license and worked in the industry 30 years. She started buying and selling wigs in the 1950s and still does. “I started wearing them when I was in my 30s –it’s so much easier,” she said, of her collection of more than 30. “I like change, and with wigs I can have different colors and different length.”
She split her time between working at the Plains Beauty Shop and secretarying rodeos for Don. “I wore a uniform and the Greyhound bus depot was there so I’d change and go work a rodeo – either secretary or carry a flag.” She and Don married in 1960. “I told him, ‘you’ve been my boss for ten years and it’s time I changed that.’”
Arlene is credited for starting the Cheyenne Frontier Day Dandies in 1970. “I started the first barrel racing club in Wyoming,” said Arlene. “Don was working for Vern Elliot at the Wild West Show in Brussels, Belgian and he hired me to work that and that’s where I learned how to quadrille. I started the Quadrillette with my barrel racing club.” Arlene taught her barrel racing club how to do it. “The Frontier committee asked us if we would set the pivots for the Serpentine and we did that for ten years. That’s when it would rain and snow and the arena would be so deep. My station was down by the roping chutes and the cowboys loved to splash me with the water.” Don came up with the idea to put sand in the arena, something they did in Brussels.
After ten years, the Frontier committee wanted to do something different and asked if Arlene could come up with something. “That’s when I started the Dandies.”  The Dandies of the Daddy of “em  All began in 1970, and Arlene was the director until 1998.  “We had a competition and I picked 12.” She came up with the idea of carrying all the American flags that had ever flown over Frontier Days, along with the Canadian flag. “After that first year, we got invited a lot of places and had an auction to raise money to buy different flags.” Her position as director of the Dandies was a perfect blend with her husband’s role with Cheyenne Frontier Days. Don was the livestock superintendent and chute boss at Cheyenne for 65 years. “He was here longer than anybody,” she said. Don had come to Cheyenne as a jockey from Nebraska, where his dad raised race horses. He rode horses for CB Irwin when he came to town. “He still thought he was a jockey,” Arlene laughed. “Vern convinced him he was a cowboy.”
Arlene and Don provided trailers, food, and drinks to all of the bands and performers that crossed the stage of Cheyenne for at least 30 years. “Don would pull trailers in to be their dressing room,” she said. Arlene also added coordinating Miss Frontier for 14 years. “Queens didn’t used to travel much and I was their coordinator for 14 years, so I traveled with them,” she said.  That connection led her to be involved in Miss Rodeo America. She often hosted the various state queens at her home, something she has done every year since 1984. She was the first woman elected on the board for Miss Rodeo America and implemented the scholarship program into the contest. “I convinced the PRCA to use the Miss Rodeo America as the spokesperson.” She was the schedule coordinator and chaperon for Miss Rodeo America at the pageant for 25 years. She was also the president of Miss Rodeo Wyoming for ten years.

Arlene and Don spent their winters in Acapulco where they performed as trick water skiers. An accident in 1994 altered that, but not for long. They had bought a place in Lake Havasu, and were heading out to do a little trick ski practicing and as the boat circled around to pick her up, the rope became tangled in the propeller. The result was a mangled arm, and as she was getting ready to maneuver her way into the boat, she looked down and her leg was gone. “I said one prayer, keep me calm – I’m in Your arms. It was 110 that day and my leg was gone from the knee down is all I thought.” Due to the rope tangled in the propeller, the boat had to be towed back to shore, which took more than an hour. “I remember feeling like there was a scratchy blanket on my leg, so I found enough strength to rare up and take it off. My leg filleted open – what I thought was the blanket was actually little bone chips. I never looked again.”
Arlene remained calm and awake during the entire trip from the accident to the hospital. “When they loaded me up on the ramp, I heard somebody say ‘Sis keep your eyes shut.’ I heard someone say, ‘Your skin stretches a mile.’ My foot was in the boat, and they got it out and laid it on my stomach. I almost fainted then. But I remember when we got to the hospital the doctor asking me my mother’s maiden name.” That was the last she remembers until eight days later. “They kept me unconscious for eight days as I fought for my life. I was given 24 pints of blood in the first 24 hours.” Two months to the day after her accident, Arlene got on an airplane, rented a car, and resumed her duties chauffeuring Miss Rodeo America around. “I wear prosthesis and still dance,” she said.
Last year, Arlene stepped down from her duties as the chauffeur for Miss Rodeo America. She still invites people into her home in Cheyenne, a museum of photos, cowboy hats, and mementos from a lifetime of service to Cheyenne Frontier Days and the western industry.
“My dad’s motto was discipline, love what you’re doing, and have fun,” she said, adding the most important part. “In that order or none of that works.”

For seven of his eight decades, J.W. Stoker has entertained rodeo and western fans.
The Weatherford, Texas cowboy has criss-crossed the nation and the globe, trick riding and trick roping for hundreds of thousands of people.
Born in 1927, it began for J.W. when his parents moved from Colorado Springs to Kansas City when he was eight. J.W. attended the Santa Fe Trail Riding Club in Kansas City, and one week, a cowboy by the name of Pinky Barnes came to town. Barnes, a trick rider and trick roper, gave lessons to the club kids. “I liked it real well, and he was a good teacher, too,” J.W. remembers. Even though he didn’t know it yet, his career path was born.
J.W. took to the roping, spending his lunch times and recess at home practicing.
The next spring, Pinky brought a guest to town. Clyde Miller, who put on rodeos and Wild West shows, had heard how good J.W. was. “I was practicing, and they asked me if I’d take them down to the house. They’d like to see my parents.” Clyde wanted to hire J.W., who was the tender age of ten years old. “Of course my folks weren’t going to send me down the road at ten.” So Clyde had a different proposal for them. It was the Depression days, and money was scarce. He offered the whole family a job: J.W.’s dad could haul the bucking chutes, his mother would care for kids, and J.W. and his sisters Frankie and Bessie would trick rope.  His parents decided to do it. It brought him notoriety and fame. In 1939, he was billed as the “Juvenile World Champion Trick Rider,” with his picture featured on a box of Wheaties. To his knowledge, he is the only western lifestyle person to be put on the iconic cereal box.
J.W.’s work with Miller continued till Miller suspended his rodeos during World War II due to gasoline and tire rations. Stoker had begun booking his own shows as a brother/sister act with his sisters. One of his first rodeos was Burwell, Neb., in 1940, which he worked for 25 years.
He continued to trick rope and ride till he was drafted for the Korean Conflict. Basic training was at Ft. Benning, Georgia then he was sent overseas, where he was put in the Special Services, the entertainment division of the Army. “I was wanting to trick rope, the same thing I’d been doing in the States,” he remembers. “They auditioned me, and said we’ve never had a trick roper before, but we’ll try it and see what happens. I trick roped and got along real good.” Stoker spent his entire time overseas entertaining the troops, with artillery fire occasionally going on overhead during shows.
He was discharged in 1952, when he came home and his career continued.
In addition to rodeos, Stoker worked Wild West Shows and served as a stuntman in movies. He went to Europe with Rodeo Far West in 1970 for Buster Ivory, and in 1973, worked with Casey Tibbs at a Wild West show in Japan. When the show didn’t go well, Casey got him a job promoting Las Vegas and Nevada outside a log cabin, similar to the one from the Bonanza TV show.
He worked in the movie “Bus Stop” with Marilyn Monroe  in 1956 (“she was late every day,” he says, and much shorter than he expected), in “The Kansan” in the late 1940s, where he trick rode and roped, and in “Bronco Billy,” where he doubled for Sam Bottoms, who played Lariat Leonard James in the movie. Stoker taught Bottoms basic spins and for the more difficult spins, trick roped and was filmed from behind him.
Stoker trick roped in Harry Truman’s inaugural parade in 1948. That was back when news reels were shown prior to movies, and Stoker’s trick roping showed up in those reels. He entertained President Ronald Regan and future president George H.W. Bush at the 1984 Republican convention in Dallas. He’s also entertained in nine countries: Venezuela, Germany, England, France, Switzerland, the Dominican Republic, Finland, Japan, and Cuba. He served as entertainer at the Calgary Winter Olympics in 1988, and worked on Michael Martin Murphy’s West Fest for a decade.
Stoker served as a stunt double for Roy Rogers, and Roy even rode one of J.W’s horses. It was while Stoker was working the Houston Rodeo in 1969. Rogers was there, and he’d been told by his doctor he shouldn’t ride because of heart problems. On the second performance, he said to J.W., “I don’t feel right walking out (in the arena to do the Sons of the Pioneers). Can I use your horse to enter and leave on?” J.W. was honored to share his horse.
He made his own trick riding horses, and two of them stick out as favorites. One of them was Pumpkin, the same horse that Roy Rogers rode. He was a palomino with stocking legs and a wide blaze, and “he really ran,” Stoker says. Pumpkin was purchased from the famous woman trick rider and bronc rider Tad Lucas.
Another favorite horse was Hot Diggity. Hot Diggity was purchased from Rex Rossi, another famous trick rider who worked a lot of shows with Stoker. Stoker’s trademark was white horses and Hot Diggity fit the bill. His current horse, Romeo, a paint stallion, is exceptionally intelligent and has a big personality. “I wish I’d had that horse decades ago,” Stoker says.
Living 50 miles from Dallas, he had the opportunity to work conventions as well.
About six years ago, he was forced to slow down and eventually retire. He was diagnosed with spinal stenosis, which pinches nerves and causes leg pain. He can walk to the barn, but once he’s there, he has to sit down for a bit before he can continue. “You can’t trick rope sitting down,” he says.
But Stoker hasn’t quit for good. He has been willing to help anybody who asks. “People would call up and say, ‘I need help with the roping.’ I’d say, come over. I didn’t charge them. I figure it’s been good to me.” He currently works with the Cowgirl Chicks, an entertainment and trick riding group. He and the Cowgirl Chicks are on RFD-TV weekly.
The 87-year old cowboy has had numerous honors and awards. He’s been a two-time Pro Rodeo Cowboys Association Entertainer of the Year. He’s inducted into the National Cowboy Hall of Fame in Oklahoma City, the Texas Cowboy Hall of Fame, the Texas Rodeo Cowboy Hall of Fame, and the ProRodeo Hall of Fame.
And life’s been good for the entertainer. “I’ve done so many things, there’s no end to it,” he recalls. “I just lived life, and lived it good.”

Story also available in the July 1, 2015 issue.