Category: Rodeo LIFE Cover Feature

Jim Aplan grew up in Casey Tibbs’ shadow.
The Rapid City, S.D. cowboy was born in Casey’s hometown of Ft. Pierre, S.D., and Jim followed Casey and his rodeo buddies down the rodeo road. But since Tibbs was two years older, Jim’s mother wouldn’t allow him to travel with the soon-to-be-famous cowboy, and Casey went on to national fame and recognition while Jim stayed closer to home.
Jim was born in 1931, the youngest child of Frank and Helen Fischer Aplan. His family owned Fischer Bros. General Store in town, and anything that happened in the county was “duly reported in the general store,” Jim said. “I was always kind of thrilled with the cowboys who came into the store,” he remembered, “much to my family’s dismay. They were dead set against anything rodeo.”
Jim’s mother’s family, the Fischers, also owned two large ranches, and even though they were in the cattle business, there was no tolerance of rodeo. “Of course, wherever the cowboys were, you could find me.”
The rodeo bug had bitten Jim, and he loved to follow Tibbs and another South Dakota cowboy, Billy Myers, as they went to rodeos. Tibbs and Meyers won money at the Ft. Pierre rodeo, and went on to Huron, and Jim followed. He was only sixteen, and hadn’t gotten permission from his mother, so she sent after him to come home. Tibbs and Meyers went on to compete across the country while Jim stayed home.
His mother sent him to a boarding school in Canon City, Colo. The school had its own herd of horses, with students caring for them, and it had its own rodeo. The first rodeo paycheck Jim won was in the wild cow milking at that school. He graduated from boarding school and went on to junior college in Trinidad, Colo.
That’s where his pro rodeo began in earnest. He was befriended by stock contractor L.D. Ward, and traveled with Ward and rodeoed. It got him away from his family, which was an advantage. “I couldn’t rodeo in South Dakota. Too much pressure. A lot of families encourage their kids in rodeo. Nobody encouraged me, they discouraged me.”
He worked all the events as he traveled with Ward, but the saddle bronc riding and bull riding were his strength. He was best at the bucking horse riding, mostly because he’d grown up breaking horses. “I could ride a tough horse, but nobody ever showed me how,” he said. “I never looked very good doing it. I could usually place because I didn’t buck off. That’s how I got by.”
Jim’s rodeo life might have looked a lot different if he’d have gone to North Dakota in 1955. All-around hands Jim and Tom Tescher, excellent bareback, saddle bronc and bull riders and bulldoggers as well, asked him to come north with them for the summer. “Had I done that, it would have helped me,” Jim said. Instead, he went to work for East Coast rodeo producer Jim Eskew, who was well-known for the western entertainment at his rodeos. Aplan fought bulls and clowned for him, and competed as well.
In those days, nearly anyone would work as a bullfighter, and at some rodeos, the cowboys would stand in the arena, in front of the chutes, and randomly step out in front of a bull during a ride. “It sure made me mad when they did it to me,” while he was riding, Jim said, as it could ruin a ride and the score.
There wasn’t much training for bullfighting in those days. “It wasn’t like today, where they go to school for it and learn moves. Then we just got out there and did it and hoped we didn’t get killed or get some rider hurt. That’s the nightmare of all bullfighters.”

Full story available in our June 15, 2015 issue.

Howard Barker lived out his dreams.
Ever since he was a little boy, he wanted to be a cowboy, and he wanted to fly, and he did both.
The Houma, La. man spent his time flying through the air on bareback and saddle broncs and bulls, and when his rodeo days were over, he spent the rest of his life flying through the air in sprayer aircraft.
He spent seven years full time rodeoing, and when he was done, came home to begin an aerial application business.
He was born in Yumatilla, Fl. in 1937, the oldest child of Howard, Sr. and Adelade Barker. Soon after he was born, the family moved to Groveland, Fl., where he spent most of his growing-up years.
His interest in rodeo stemmed from being around cattle, and even though no one in his family competed, he wanted to. “It interested the heck out of me,” he said. His dad didn’t approve. “My father always told me I needed to quit that foolishness and get a job.”
At the age of fifteen, he entered his first rodeo. He didn’t have the entry fees, so he went to the bank to get a loan. “I just went in and talked to the president of the bank,” Howard recalled. “He took the money out of his pocket and loaned it to me.”
He also entered high school rodeos, of which there was one a year, hosted by the FFA chapter in Inverness, Florida.
At first, Howard rode bareback broncs and bulls. There wasn’t a lot of saddle bronc riding in Florida, but when he could find it, he entered it, choosing to quit riding barebacks.
By the time he graduated from high school in 1956, he was competing in amateur rodeos across the state. He worked on large ranches in Florida, some with spreads as big as 500,000 acres. He loved the work. “I was happy in the woods, working cows, just about as happy doing that as being at a rodeo.”
When he was nineteen, he left Florida to rodeo. He didn’t make a big splash, but made enough to pay entry fees and living expenses. “You’d be broke one day, then have a pocketful of money the next, then broke again.”
In 1958, he joined the Rodeo Cowboys Association, forerunner to today’s Pro Rodeo Cowboys Association, and competed full time. Most of Howard’s rodeos were in the Northwest and Canada. By then, he had quit the broncs and was riding bulls only. In the winter, he’d come home, get a ranch job, and save up money to leave again in the spring.
He traveled with good friends Ronny Welch, Tex Martin, Winston Bruce and his brother Duane, and bull rider Leo Brown, “one of the best hands to ever come out of Canada, maybe the best,” Howard said.
Then, after being on the road for most of seven years, he decided to retire.
In 1966, he got his pilot’s license and begin a crop dusting business two years later. He lived in Belleglade, Fl., at the time, and sprayed not only crops but for mosquitoes. He sprayed over a million acres a year, with contracts with county, state and federal governments. In the summer, his business went west and he sprayed for grasshoppers in the western states.
In 1991, he moved to Houma and his business changed. He sprayed oil spills with dispersants, chemicals that break oil into tiny droplets that suspend in water so naturally occurring bacteria eat the droplets. His company, Airborne Support, was instrumental in the BP Oil spill in 2010. A picture of one of his planes spraying was on the front page of the New York Times and a South African friend even saw the picture in a newspaper in that country.
Howard never suffered any major injuries in his rodeo days. Sprains and a broken cheekbones and a couple of concussions were it. He had temporary amnesia twice, due to the concussions.
The Calgary Stampede was his favorite rodeo because of all the activities. “It was  like a three ring circus,” Howard said, with bucking stock in the arena, “some movie star singing a song, and a horse race going on all at the same time.” And his favorite bull was HB, owned by Howard Harris. Howard drew him three times: once in Cowtown, N.J., and in the West, after he was sold to someone else. Very few people covered HB, but Howard did it three times, as did a friend, Joe Chase, who Howard gave advice as to what to do when riding HB.
In 1968, he married Evelyn, and they had four children, two boys and two girls: Vance, who lives in Minnesota, Laura Beth, who lives in Boston, and Brad and Nancy, who both live in Houma. He and Evelyn have seven grandkids, with a grandson, Reese Barker, who rides bulls and is a three-time state champion junior bull rider in the Louisiana Little Britches Rodeo Association.
It was tough quitting rodeo when he did it in 1966. “I had to stay away from it completely,” he remembered. But he had a business to run. “I couldn’t afford to get hurt and not be able to fly.”
Three years ago, his health forced him to retire from the aerial application business, and now son Brad runs it.
Rodeo was a passion he loved. “When I’d make a good bull ride, I don’t know of a better feeling in the world.”
But he loved flying too. “A lot of people go through life with a job they don’t like,” he said. “But I’m the luckiest man in the world. I got to do two jobs I really liked. I’m glad I rodeoed. I wasn’t a champion but I got to ride with those that were.”

Story is also available in our June 1, 2015 issue.

Dixie Mosley of Amarillo, Texas, had a most unusual childhood. The third and youngest child of Monte and Opal Reger, Dixie was born in Buffalo, Okla., on October 3, 1930. Before her sixth birthday, she had travelled more of the U.S. with her family than most people of that era saw in a lifetime. The Reger family were rodeo entertainers, fulfilling rodeo contracts in the eastern half of the country, and travelling with an 18 foot Schult house trailer, several trick horses, and a longhorn steer in tow.
It was Bobby the Longhorn Steer that propelled the Regers into their lifestyle of greasepaint faces and trick riding Death Drags. The Longhorn/Brahman cross had curvy horns measuring 8′ 6″, and at the time he was discovered by Monte Reger, the steer was known for his rank personality. But Reger saw potential in the tremendous bovine, and with dreams of leaving the farming life behind, he tamed Bobby. Soon, Reger was riding the steer like he was a trusty cowhorse, as were Dixie and her brother, Buddy, and sister, Virginia. Bobby and Reger even appeared in a movie, Wheels of Destiny, in Hollywood, and advertised for a barbecue chain in Burbank, Calif. But Bobby was best known for his iconic jumps, clearing a convertible with ease while directed on a lunge line by Reger.
Though Reger had helped start the rodeo in Doby Springs, Okla., he had bigger dreams. Eventually, he was announcing for the Beutler Brothers and performing with Bobby in Colonel Jim Eskew’s Wild West Show. Eskew’s son, Jim Eskew, Jr., taught Dixie to trick ride and rope by the time she was five. She began performing alongside her brother and sister, riding a Shetland pony named Tom Thumb. Her brother, Buddy, was a rodeo clown, while Dixie and her sister represented the family in trick riding and roping. Their mother, Opal, occasionally took off her apron to perform the Quadrille – square dancing with horses – but she preferred to live outside of the spotlight. “She had more than a full time job looking after Dad and us three kids, feeding us and sewing all our clothes,” Dixie recalls. “She kept us together.”
Dixie’s rodeo debut came in 1935 in Pittsburg. At five years old, she was a fearless performer. “I was never afraid of anything at a young age, and when you’re a teenager, you’re really not afraid!” says Dixie. She showed horses in western pleasure, and although she found nothing remarkable in her trick riding talents, rodeo spectators thought otherwise. As she grew, Dixie rode her family’s palomino American Quarter Horses that they bred, their fair coats reflected in the shining cars that Dixie jumped them over. Though the Regers stayed in their trailer or motels, they returned often to their home in Woodward, Okla., to “get cleaned up and go again,” according to Dixie. It was there that the family trained their show horses. They laid three 55 gallon drums down, placed two more on top, and finished with a heavy wooden door at the top to re-create the size of car Dixie jumped over, before practicing on the real thing.
For all the excitement of living on the road, Dixie at times longed for what she calls a normal life. “I wouldn’t take anything for the life I’ve had, but sometimes I wonder what it would’ve been like to have a different type of life,” Dixie says reflectively. “We had to be careful in the summertime to go swimming in the late afternoon. We didn’t want to take the chance of getting sunburned and not being able to ride the trick horse. Even rollerskating you had to be careful to not twist an ankle. We were being paid to be at the rodeo, and we couldn’t get hurt having fun!” Missing out on regular schooling was what Dixie regretted the most. Up until high school, she and her siblings were homeschooled by their mother, a box of curriculum from Calvert Correspondence School arriving once a year with schoolbooks. When she entered high school, she came to school several weeks late and left in May to accommodate rodeo season. Yet homeschooling had agreed with Dixie, and she was several grades ahead of children her age, entering high school when she was 12 and graduating  in 1946, when she was 16.
In 1947, Dixie was clowning and performing in an all-girl rodeo in Amarillo, Texas, and the following year, the all-girl rodeo in San Angelo, Texas, was the birthplace of the Girls Rodeo Association (GRA). Dixie was a charter member, and later served as a contract representative and vice president for the association. In addition to trick riding and roping, she rodeo clowned for the GRA, the only woman in the area to do so. Dixie even rode several bulls and bareback horses, but the roping events like ribbon roping, breakaway, and calf roping, were what brought out her competitive side. “I’ve been bucked off and had horses fall with me, and I’ve never broken a bone,” says Dixie. “I’m real proud to be a charter member of what is now the WPRA. I met some wonderful cowgirls!” One of these cowgirls was the rodeo-renowned Tad Lucas, a bareback bronc rider and trick rider that Dixie created and performed several rodeo skits with. “She was a very nice lady, and she would do anything to help make the rodeo a better performance.”
By 1953, Dixie was 23 years old and ready to make a bold move. She retired from rodeo. Her final performance in the public eye was the inaugural all-girl rodeo in Colorado Springs, Colo. Following that, she married William Mosley in August of 1953. Bill was a cattleman, who served in both WWII and the Korean War, and was a friend of Dixie’s brother-in-law. “Growing up, I pretty much knew I didn’t want to marry a rodeo man,” says Dixie. “I think they are the most wonderful people in the world, but they’re always on the go! I wanted to stay home. Bill went back to college after he got out of the military, and I became a college wife. I got my PHT – Putting Husband Through,” she says with an infectious laugh.
After finishing college, Bill and Dixie settled in Amarillo, Texas, where they still make their home today. With partners, they built a meat packing house, and Dixie lived the life she’d dreamt of as a child, becoming a full-time wife and mother and living in a house that wasn’t on wheels. Their children, Judy, Clay, and Paul, all grew up riding horses, but didn’t pursue rodeo. Once their children were grown, Bill sold the packing house and became a cattle inspector. He and Dixie travelled the U.S. extensively, some of Dixie’s favorite travels taking her to the annual induction ceremony for the National Cowgirl Hall of Fame. She also attended Rodeo Clown Reunions held by Gail Woerner, where Dixie was the only female rodeo clown. Dixie herself was inducted into the Cowgirl Hall of Fame in 1982 and the National Cowboy Hall of Fame in Oklahoma City in 2003. She was named the Pioneer Woman of the Year in 2004 at the National Cowboy Symposium in Lubbock, Texas. Bobby the Longhorn Steer, who started it all, also holds a place of honor, his head mounted in the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum.
Memories abound, and Dixie has no regrets. She concludes happily, “I’m glad it’s all worked out the way it’s worked out.”

Story also available in our May 1, 2015 issue.

Wayne Cornish followed in his dad’s footsteps, and the rodeo world was a better place because of it.
Born February 2, 1935 in Waukomis, Okla.,, the son of Cecil and Juanita Cornish, Wayne grew up doing the same thing his dad did. His dad had a variety of famous specialty acts, and after high school, Wayne joined him, criss-crossing the country with the Cornish animal acts, and working as a barrelman as well.
He was part of his dad’s acts, but made his first rodeo money when he was five. At Ponca City, Okla., barrel men and bullfighters Hoyt Heifner and John Lindsay put him on a Brahma bull calf. Wayne rode him all the way across the arena, lost his boots, but didn’t fall off the calf. And he won his first rodeo check with that ride, after Heifner and Lindsay gathered money to pay him for his effort.
At age thirteen, Wayne began clowning. He put on a “dude” suit and rode into the arena on a donkey, carrying a suitcase. Someone behind the scenes would shoot a gun, the suitcase would open, and live chickens would fall out.
Wayne graduated from high school in 1954, but barely. He had missed several days of school while on the rodeo circuit, and the school board threatened to dismiss him. Wayne’s dad told the principal his son had learned more in those few days he was gone than he did in school.
After high school, Wayne hit the road with his dad. Together, they had a variety of acts, mostly involving animals. Cecil had started in 1935 or ’36 with his trick horse Smoky, which would become his most famous act. But the family had a lot more up their sleeves. There was Danger, the Brahma bull who jumped over a car, and six golden liberty horses. They had a bull that pulled a cart, and a roman team that Wayne rode called the Golden Eagles. Wayne had a pig he put in a suitcase and called the “Handy Dandy Garbage Disposal,” and a skunk whose act was called Mr. Stinkbottom. He had a roman team named Susie and Sally, sisters, who he called the Flying White Clouds. They did figure eights, jumped through hoops of fire, and re-enacted the Days of Ben Hur. Wayne, like his dad, had an affinity for training animals, and Juanita made their flashy costumes.
He kept up his specialty acts, mostly his roman riding, but because of his early friendship with Heifner and Lindsay, he preferred to be a barrel man and clown.
Together, Wayne and his dad traveled across the nation and Canada, working big rodeos and small ones alike. One of his favorite stories is that he drove a load of bucking horses and his barrelman equipment to a rodeo in northern Canada. He was supposed to leave the truck and horses and meet his dad at the North Platte, Neb. rodeo, but he had no way to get there. He called his dad and asked him to pick him up in Calgary. He told his dad, laughing, “did you ever try hitchhiking with a barrel?”
Being a barrelman came with the usual broken bones, and Wayne had his share. He broke his neck in Carlsbad, N.M., in 1962, when a bull stuck his horn in the barrel. The bull threw him into the air, and even though his neck hurt, he went on and rode his roman team that same night. After the injury continued to ache, he decided to have it checked out.
Another time, he broke a shoulder in Crockett, Texas, when a bull did the same thing. And he suffered so many broken ribs, he learned to bandage them himself.
Wayne would work as a barrelman at the same rodeos where his dad and he entertained. He got his Rodeo Cowboys Association card in 1953. About twenty years later, after the Evanston, Wyo. rodeo, Cecil had had enough. He came home and decided to retire. Wayne quit then, too. His roman team was old, and having to train a new team would be time consuming.
That was in 1971, and he began driving. He hauled horses for Hull and Smith out of Ashland, Neb., one of the nation’s largest horse haulers. He hauled livestock for A.J. Foyt, Dale Robertson, and race horse breeder Walter Merrick. He hauled horses for Dee Raper, and hauled cattle. Driving was something he enjoyed, and even though he can’t drive now, he can still tell his wife Jackie what roads to take, and when to turn.
And, in typical rodeo style, Wayne has lots of stories to tell. He traveled with Slim Pickens, who told him he was glad God gave him such an ugly face so he didn’t have to paint it up like Wayne did. And once, at a rodeo in Independence, Mo., the hometown of Harry Truman, he came home and told his wife he’d have to shoot his dog, because Margaret Truman, who was in the stands watching the rodeo, had stepped on its tail and the dog had yelped, “Ike, Ike, Ike” (the nickname for Dwight Eisenhower.)
He and Jackie, who were high school sweethearts, went their separate ways after school but were reunited and married in 1995. They each brought three daughters to the marriage: Donna Kay, Shawna and Jacquetta from Wayne, and Jackie’s Kelly Ann, Kimberly and Karen. Two of the six girls have passed: Donna Kay and Kelly Ann.
Two years ago, Wayne suffered an aneurysm that nearly killed him. It has affected his eyesight and speech, but he is able to get around. Jackie serves as his eyes and voice, and is happy to do it, because she’s glad he’s still alive.
Wayne is proud to have worked for some of the best rodeo producers in the business: Beutler Bros., Harry Knight, Todd Rodeo, Jim Shoulders, Gerald Roberts, Casey Tibbs and Associates, Beutler & Son, Ralph Collier, Neal Gay, Lawrence Winfrey, Harry Nelson, Reg Kesler, Tommy Steiner, and Summit Rodeo, among others.
And he’s glad to have worked with some big names: Slim Pickens, Gene Autry, Marty Robbins, Rex Allen, Roy Rogers, Michael Landon, Jack Lord, and Edgar Buchanan.
If he could, Wayne would still be on the rodeo trail. “He’d still be rodeoing if he possibly could,” Jackie said. “That was his life. He just loved it.”
And he’s still living the memories.

Story also available in our March 2015 issue.