Category: Rodeo LIFE Cover Feature

story by Lily Weinacht

Born on August 22, 1926, to Grady and Dolores Pierce in Clovis, N.M., B.J. Pierce was fated to wear dirt on his boots, but always with pride – first as a farmer, and forever as a cowboy.
The Pierce family raised cattle and farmed in the shadow of the Dust Bowl, sleeping with rags on their faces and perpetually cleaning the Kansas dirt from their window sills. B.J. worked the fields alongside his parents, but his dad always left him the last few minutes of daylight to rope in the backyard. Inspired by the tales told by his grandfather, a cowboy from Oklahoma, B.J. was more passionate about roping than anything else. With high school and college rodeo yet to be created, he taught himself to rope calves, winning his first rodeo in Tucumcari, N.M. in 1945. After graduating high school the same year, B.J. met Shorty Matlock, a steer wrestler and fellow tie-down roper from Grady, N.M.
The two cowboys became travelling partners, and a summer full of roping boxes, rodeos, sleeping in horse trailers, and bathing in creeks earned B.J. enough money to pay for a year of college. The fall of 1945, he attended Eastern New Mexico University in Portales, studying for a degree in industrial arts and playing basketball on a scholarship. There, he met his first wife, Patty Rawls, whom he married in 1947. The following summer, B.J. and Shorty set out again, and B.J. won enough money to finish paying for his college tuition, as well as Patty’s. By his junior year of college, B.J. quit playing basketball, knowing his future was in the arena, not the basketball court. He graduated in 1950 and immediately began rodeoing full time, frequently announced as one of only two full-time rodeo cowboys in the region that had college degrees.
Though B.J. also competed in wild cow milking, team roping, and steer roping, tie-down roping was his main event. He even served on the RCA Board of Directors as the Calf Roping Director. He competed in the RCA and won the tie-down roping – often more than once – in rodeos across the Pacific West, including Pendleton, Ore., Ellensburg, Wash., and Lewiston and Nampa, Idaho. His truck and trailer traversed the U.S. even further, taking him to Denver, Colo., which he won in the tie-down roping, Cheyenne, Wyo., where he earned buckles on two separate occasions, and even as far as New York City and Calgary.
One of the single largest paychecks he earned came from a one day tie-down roping in Los Angeles. B.J. returned home with $2,500 riding comfortably in his wallet. Another favorite of his was the tie-down roping invitational held in his hometown of Clovis in 1952, where 17 of the world’s best ropers came to compete. B.J. and every other roper put up $500, and he left with $5,200. The furthest B.J. and Patty travelled, however, was Cuba. In the mid 1950s, Colonel Jim Eskew held a rodeo on the island, the rodeo livestock and contestants alike arriving on boats from Florida. B.J.’s own horse, Iodine, stayed in the U.S., and B.J. borrowed a horse to avoid putting Iodine in quarantine.
B.J. remembers Iodine as his best roping horse, winning his three world tie-down championships with the IRA on the gelding in 1952, ’53, and ’55. “He was very good to me,” B.J. recalls. “He went with me a long time, all over the U.S. He was featured on the cover of the Quarter Horse Journal in the early 1950s. Iodine’s daddy was Billy Clegg, and his foals were noted for becoming good cow horses.”
The thousands of miles B.J. racked up on his speedometer also left a trail of friends in many states, including world champion tie-down roper Dean Oliver from Idaho, who became one of B.J.’s close friends. Connections like these propelled B.J. into selling ads for Western Horseman. Patty wrote articles for the magazine while B.J. rodeoed in California, where they lived for five years. When the advertising position came open, B.J. filled it.  “Since I’d been so many places rodeoing, people knew who I was. I got to go to big horse shows and meet people you’d never meet rodeoing, like Gene Autry, James Arness, and Miss Kitty (Amanda Blake). A lot of those people were in the horse business. The only negative thing was selling ads and people not paying for them,” B.J. remembers. “You just didn’t go back to them again!”
By the early 1960s, B.J. was ready to hang up his rope. “I guess I got tired!” he says. “All I did for 13 years was rodeo. So I retired from the rodeo business and started teaching school. I had a degree in secondary education, and I was going to teach one year in sixth grade. I ended up staying 31 years in the school system.” B.J. was a teacher for 16 of those 31 years before moving to administration and becoming a principal. He worked at several schools in Clovis, including Highland Elementary and James Bickley Elementary School. Having lived all but five years of his life in Clovis, B.J. still sees many of his former students. Ever the cowboy, B.J. brought the lessons he’d learned in the arena to the classroom, teaching discipline and organization.
In 1979, B.J., who was divorced, married his second wife, Sue. He had two children, Rena and Ben, and Sue had a son, John, while B.J. and Sue became the delighted grandparents of four grandchildren. They were married for 31 years until Sue passed away in 2008, and during much of that time, B.J. continued to teach, while training calf horses for ropers all over the region. He has also been a member of the Curry County Mounted Patrol for many years, serving as the organization’s captain, vice-president, secretary, and treasurer. The patrol was created in 1939 to promote horses, horsemanship, and sponsor western entertainment like rodeos and ropings. A lifetime member, B.J. continues to help put on the annual Pioneer Days PRCA rodeo in Clovis. At 89, riding has lost none of its charm, and B.J. still takes his horses up to the mountains to ride. “It’s fun if you don’t fall off!” he adds wryly.
Recently inducted into the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum’s  Rodeo Hall of Fame, B.J. also attended the 100th anniversary of the Pendleton Round-Up as a guest of honor in 2010. Visiting today’s rodeos brings back many recollections of his own rodeo years. “The cattle have changed a lot, and so have the arena conditions, and there weren’t many standards,” he says. “The longest score I ever roped was at 75 feet, and of course getting off on the right in roping has made it a second to a second and a half faster. I was fortunate to rodeo when I did, but I would like to rodeo nowadays for the money. To make $250,000 – that would be pretty neat!”

High in the Rocky Mountains as the 1940’s were just cracking out, a desire to ride bulls and follow rodeo was brewing in young Lynn Smith’s heart. Lynn grew up on the Kremmling, Colo., ranch his granddad put together homestead by homestead beginning in 1881. His granddad raised many horses during those years even having a remount stud on the place to supply horses for the government. As natural progression goes, Lynn’s father took over the ranch and built a cow herd, kept some horses, and raised a family of three girls and Lynn, the youngest.
The young mountain man’s interest in rodeo peaked one year at the National Western Stock Show and Rodeo. “Dad sold a big roan bucking horse to Verne Elliott at Denver when I was about four years old,” recalls Lynn. While in Denver the rodeo clown, Homer Holcomb, packed him all around on his shoulders, “and that’s when I decided I wanted to be a bull rider.”
Lynn grew up without the luxury of electricity. He attended a one room multi-grade school of which he was the only student his 6th and 7th grade year. He would pack his .22 to school and shoot magpies in the school yard. Around the ranch he would ride calves and when he was 15 he started entering rodeos. He was a three event teenager taking part in the bull riding, cow riding and bareback riding. Although they didn’t buck him off many bareback horses, he confesses he didn’t like it very much. He laughs as he also confesses, “I rode barebacks like I rode bulls, and they didn’t pay much for riding like that.”
His bull riding career spanned the two decades from 1953 to 1973, during which he made memories alongside the era’s best hands and on top of some of the best buckers in the business. Lynn met his late wife, Wilma (Willie), in the fall of 1956 during his short stint at college in Fort Collins, Colo. Before their marriage, he traveled with a few different cowboys including Gene Jordan of Durango, Colo. They were what rodeo folks call “splittin’” partners. When a partner placed he would split his winnings with the other.
“This way you could live rodeo to rodeo,” chuckled Lynn. He went on to explain, “If it was a little rodeo that paid four places we’d split 10% and if it were a bigger rodeo, like Denver, we’d split 5%.”
After his marriage, Lynn had a new traveling partner in Willie. “Naturally we didn’t have any extra money except what I won, and she got to working at rodeos then finally bought a timer’s card,” tells Lynn. This eventually worked into her becoming a rodeo secretary.
Wheels to the rodeos were used Cadillacs. “I had a ’59 Cadillac I drove over 200,000 miles. Everybody gave me a bad time for driving it forever.”
He used to tell people it was only an hour from Flagstaff to Phoenix-and it was back in those days because he drove 110 miles per hour! If Lynn won a check at a rodeo he and Willie would get a motel and if not, they would sleep in what they referred to as their “Cadillac Hotel.” Between the two, if they made $50 a rodeo they were making money. Wick Peth, the notable clown and bullfighter from that day, tried to convince Lynn to fight bulls. His response to that, “I train my feet to run from ‘em not to ‘em.” Even Willie thought a steady check at every rodeo might be a good idea. He told her, “Those bull riders aren’t going to like how I fight bulls.”
He stuck with the riding and sure enough needed to win something in Gunnison, Colo., one year.
“We pulled into town, filled up with gas, paid my fees and we had $1.43 left in our pockets. That’s it,” tells Lynn. He had drawn Little 8 of Walt Alsbaugh’s. “They just didn’t ride him anywhere,” he explains. According to Lynn, he was really a bucker and a fighter, too.

Full story available in our September 15, 2015 issue.

story by Siri Stevens

Earl Batteate (Bud) was born Nov. 20, 1918. He grew up in Hayward, Calif. “I didn’t get to hear the news every night, nor were there the number of people and bad company around. It’s a lot different world. You could trust everybody then.”
He started riding calves at the age of 7. “They had them in the chutes, with guys holding them, there was an old saddle bronc rider that took me with him. All the kids rode with two hands, but I had to ride with one, and I got bucked off a lot, but I rode better.” Bud’s dad was a rancher and in the slaughter house business. He had two cattle ranches and hauled a lot of cattle. “He had 33 trucks back in the 1940s. I came from a working family that wasn’t afraid to work.” He had one brother, Al, who has passed away, and a sister, Wilma, who is still alive.
Bud left home in his late teens to rodeo. He had been going on the weekends with the cowboys at the ranch. He competed in bull riding, and bareback riding, and every bronc riding or any amateur bronc riding he could get in. He quit high school in his senior year and drove truck for his dad and got married when he was 18 to Patricia, who he met in school. She was six months older.
“I drove truck and got into the cattle business, my mother set me up with the bank so I could get some money and I bought cattle and got into the cattle business before I was 20. My dad had a ranch at Oakdale, so I bought the cows and calves and put them on the ranch.” He has three boys, Mike is the oldest now – close to 70. The oldest boy, Dan, passed away, Nick is close to 60. “All the kids were nine years apart, I guess I was gone a lot. In the fall of the year, I would get on the road and end up in Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Montana, and Canada and would be gone for two months that was the only time I was gone that long.” He remembers one of his big wins at Salinas and the belt buckle he won. “Someone offered me $400 and I didn’t even read what was on the buckle … I sold it to him. My dad got into town and wanted it, I’ll never forget the look on his face. His eyes got watery – I had sold the buckle to have more money to go up north – I already had enough money to go up north.”

Full story available in our September 1, 2015 issue.

story by Lindsay Welchel

It was around 1940 that a young Bobby Rowe went to his first rodeo. It became the doorway to a lifetime filled with the sport. Rowe, now 81, has been a multi-event competitor, as well as a stock contractor and rodeo producer. He became the 1965 IPRA World Champion Saddle Bronc rider and has a treasure trove of stories and experiences from his life spent on the rodeo road.
At around 6 years old, Bobby’s father bought his older brother a horse from the sale. “They got him home, got on him, and of course he threw my brother off and tore up the saddle, and that kind of hooked me right there. I thought ‘well shoot, that’s what I want to do, but I don’t want to get thrown off,” Bobby laughs.
It wasn’t long before Bobby and his brother were entering rodeos. At first they stayed near home in New York.
“I always thought, ‘we never will amount to anything coming from here,’ but when we found out it didn’t matter where you were from, it was however bad you wanted it, why that helped us a bunch, because when we nodded our head we figured we could beat anybody.”
Bobby also found out something else about rodeo. It was everywhere, and you could make a living at it.
The opportunity was his for the taking. He left the family farm at an early age and hit the road.
“When we found out there’s rodeos down in Florida all winter, there’s rodeos in Georgia, we headed south and to heck with milking cows,” Bobby says and adds, “Back then there weren’t any schools like there are now, so if you learned something, you learned it on your own, and I finally learned to keep my mouth shut and just listen and watch.”
Bobby started competing in four events; saddle bronc, bareback, bull riding and steer wrestling.  He also did Wild West-type shows where cowboys got paid by the head, so he’d get on as much stock as he could in a performance. When thrill shows got blended into rodeos, where daredevils would do car stunts, Bobby did that too. “I might go out there and crash a car and run back, get my chaps back on, spurs back on, go to the bucking chutes and get on a horse or bull or something,” Bobby laughs.
When he broke his leg, he was in the concession stand frying burgers and taking tickets. “You didn’t lay around and expect to make any money, you had to get out there, whether it was on crutches or whatever.”
When he wasn’t competing, Bobby ended up in Georgia working for a stock contractor. He was in charge of hauling all of the stock to various rodeos. Through this, he found a career in stock contracting and producing rodeos. He also found love.
Bobby’s work led him to meeting his wife Lenore, a barrel racer. They married in 1957.
“Lenore and I got married. I was putting on a rodeo in Florida, we had an afternoon performance and then a night performance, so as soon as the afternoon performance was over with we hauled boogey to Georgia to the courthouse to get married and got there, and the courthouse was locked up,” Bobby recalls. It was a holiday, and so Bobby called in a favor to his influential boss who persuaded the disgruntled judge to come open the courthouse and marry the young couple.
“I told [the judge] I sure thank you, and she said ‘just get the heck out of here,’ Bobby laughs. He and Lenore hurried back to the rodeo, and that night she won the barrel racing, and he won the bull riding. “We did good, and we thought ‘man oh man we should’ve got married when we were 10 years old. We’d have been rich by now.”
Lenore and Bobby moved into the bunkhouse on the ranch he was working, and he remembers with humor how he’d gone back to focusing on his stock after a few days, and his young bride was trying to help him, but at one point he had snapped at her.
“Finally she said ‘to heck with this mess,’ and she went to the house. The boss’ wife told her ‘There’s two ways you can do it, you can go out there and pack your stuff, I’ll put you on a bus, and you can go on home, or you can go out there and get a stick and tell him ‘now it’s you and I,’ so first thing I knew she was coming across the fence with a stick in her hand,” Bobby laughs.
Their marriage stayed strong for decades after that. Rodeo only made their love story richer. Lenore went on to greatness as a trick rider and specialty act known for the ability to train her performance horses. She performed around the world. “You talk about a showman, now she was,” Bobby says.
Bobby and Lenore raised two sons, Bill, who competed some in rodeo and Justin, who went on to be a world champion in saddle bronc just like his dad.
Sadly, Lenore passed away of breast cancer in 2005.
Early on, Bobby worked for Loretta Lynn and husband Mooney’s Longhorn Rodeo and competed in his four events. He won the world in saddle bronc in 1965. Then, Bobby’s rodeo company, Imperial Rodeo Productions, put on many events, including the Salem Stampede Rodeo, beginning in 1968 in Virginia, and the Dickson Stampede Days Rodeo, founded in 1988 by Bobby and Lenore, in their hometown in Tennessee.
Bobby admits he had to slow down on his competition when producing rodeos and focus on the finer details of the show.
“I always had in mind those people sitting over there in the seats. I wanted to make sure they were having a good time. I couldn’t be thinking about stock I drew and still paying attention 100 percent on putting on a good rodeo, so that was my main concern. That was one of the first things I learned, if you don’t do it quality then don’t be doing it.”
But Bobby was 72 by the time he fully quit competing in the steer wrestling.
“I was trying to set a record; the oldest man to run a steer. I had good intentions but the old steer he had intentions also, so it didn’t work out the way I wanted it to,” Bobby jokes.
These days, Bobby is living in Oklahoma to be near some family for a while before heading back to Tennessee. He’s still producing some, namely the Salem Stampede, but he’s cut down on his schedule.
Rodeo has had a life-long impact. “In rodeo, you’ve got to believe in yourself. When you crawl up that chute, if you don’t have it in your mind that you can ride this son of a buck until the sun goes down, you better take off your stuff and go on home. That’s something I learned early on, believing in myself and honing on my abilities all the time. You never can get as good as you can get, you can always get better.”
And that’s still his motto with every rodeo he produces.

Story also available in our August 15, 2015 issue.