Category: Articles

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.

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.”