Ranger Pate and Ansel @ The Saddle Shop
Ranger Pate stopped by for a visit Thursday. Pate works as a DJ at the Mountain radio station here in Bend. He's cowboy at heart... but broadcasting just happens to be his day job now... Pate puts together a pretty neat weekly radio show he calls "Ridin the Rough String". It's a mix of classic western music and a little bit of cowboy poetry.
Pate has helped Ansel start some of their horses over the years and stops by often to share some stories and well as listen to them. And as you can imagine, Ansel enjoys the visits.
In the pic below Ansel is showing off his "Left Lead"... when we were at the National Cowboy Hall of Fame in Oklahoma City Ansel picked out these slippers and showed them to me, and said thought them might be a good replacement for his others. I scooped them up and paid for them, without letting him see how much they cost... he'd have died if he knew. But he soooooo rarely asks for anything, and when I buy him a new shirt or jeans, he says he has a whole closet full and why would he need more??? ( mmm, maybe because they don't fit, he's gained a few pounds)
I tried to buy him some polyester dress slacks when we went to Salt Lake last summer, and he got upset with me and said he had plenty, I told him I didn't think he could fit into any of the ones he had... he told me I was very mistaken... so when we were packing for the Oklahoma trip, I asked him to try the slacks on and find a pair that fit... After trying on the 6 or 7 pair that he had... he conceded that they needed to go to the Goodwill.
So back to the slippers. He is very proud of them... they're very warm and comfy and they have an imprint of a horse shoe on the bottom of each, and one says Left Lead and the other Right Lead. Very cute.
Ansel's Kowboy Kickers
Ansel gives Pate a left lead
Story for the day: The Osage Indian that didn't go to jail that day
In the Oklahoma days... there was a time when his Dad was training race horses for a wealthy Osage Indian named John Kenworthy outside Fairfax, Oklahoma. Ansel remembers that he was quite wealthy, at least in a relative sense for the times. As a 5 or 6 year old boy, he enjoyed driving to town with John Kenworthy who's Osage Indian name was Hlu-ah-tsa-he. He was a really big/tall man with dark features and a long black braid down his back, for clothes he covered himself with a colorful indian blanket. He drove an auto car. One day he went into town for supplies and took Ansel with him. Ansel remembers coming out of a store and heading to the parked car. I envision it was dusty dirt streets with board walks. They were walking to the car and as Ansel started for the door, the indian gathered him around the shoulders and kept him walking right past the car without stopping... very confused, but assuming that they were going to another store Ansel walked with him... when they got aways from the car, John Kenworthy said to Ansel. Sheriff watch car, bottle of whiskey on floorboard, John Kenworthy no go jail today, tomorrow buy new car.
Ansel can't remember how they got home that day, but he remembers John having a shiny new car the next day. Ansel was thinking it was against the law for Indians to have alcohol, but prohibition started in 1920, and if he was 6 years old, then that might have been part of the story.
Ansel believed that he had gotten his money from oil. He had a big farm, and we lived in an apartment over his garage. He remembered another time they were going to have some kind of big show, and there was a big ornery bull outback. There was a power pole or something big and stout like that with huge horns, they put ropes on his horns and drug him up to the pole and snubbed him to the pole to put a ring in his nose. Pate asked if they roped him horseback... and Ansel said no, that was why he remembered it, cause of the fight the two guys had getting him up to the pole. Once they got him snubbed to the pole, then they stabbed his nose with an ice pick until they had a hole big enough to put the ring through.
Charlie the paint horse:
The Warm Springs Indians were gathering horses on the reservation... when Ansel got there, there was this good looking paint horse tied up, when he figured out who owned him, he asked him if he'd ride him, and said he would. So he put this hackamore rope around his neck, and then saddled him from the offside, circled him around and got on him rode out about a couple of hundred feet, brought him back and Ansel bought the paint for $40.00 dollars. He used him as a pony horse at the tracks and and the horse never offered to buck. Ansel had bought him, cause he had an order from San Luis Rey Stock Farm, at Bonsil, CA to find them a good pony horse that was a good looking paint horse, so he'd stand out from the other pony horses. They'd give up to $500.00 for a good one. So Ansel bought Charlie horse thinking he'd be able to fill his order. But he found out real quick that he was real bad about his feet. So he couldn't sell him to the San Luis Farm. He got along real well with Charlie as long as he didn't mess with his feet.
One time he was ponying a horse off of Charlie at Caliente and came he around the corner of the jocks room, they were making a movie or something and there was this big shiny thing made out of tin foil, a reflector he guessed, it would reflect the light or something, anyway that spooked them both and they whirled and run the other way on the track... the horse he was ponying got away from him. A horse running loose, seldom runs the wrong way of the race track very fast, then the loose horse turned around and was running the right way, he was on the outside rail, and Ansel got on the inside and started running the right way... Ansel cut across the track and got him run down and caught him within a quarter of a mile. He was that really fast, to catch the other horse in that short of distance was really fast.
He ended up selling him to Emery Fisk for $75.00. Emery was a good cowboy, [he was the one with a bull whip in an earlier story] and Emery knew all bout the horse's feet problems. Emery used him for a time and ended up selling him to a cowboy who was a real good calf roper. whose Dad was the Governor of Nevada at the time, an he had a big ranch right out of Las Vegas. The Las Vegas rodeo was coming up, it was a big one, not the finals like they have today, but it was one of the biggest in the west. He decided he'd rope on him at it an so he told his crew to put shoes on him. They got shoes on him but he didn't know how, cause Charlie broke two arms an a leg. But he roped on him and won the roping. But he never roped on him again, cause the next morning, he loaded him up in the trailer and drove him out to a waterhole on the ranch and turned him loose. He told him "Charlie no one is ever going to bother you again" and watched him trot off.
Ansel said he found out later from Louie LaClaire (a warm springs indian that was a stunt man) that Charlie had bucked an indian boy off on the reservation, the boy had gotten hung up, dragged and it killed him... Ansel said he heard that the indians would tie a horse down and beat the bottom of their hooves with rocks to make them so sore that they wouldn't buck. That's probably what had happened to old Charlie to make him so bad to shoe. Ansel said he had trimmed him a time or two while he had him, but it was probably pounding the nails that had upset him when they tried to shoe him. He said he was real broke everybody rode him, his sister rode him and Martina rode him.
Course Charlie had never been in a barn before I took down to Caliente... when winter came he got long hair cause that's what he was used to needing in Oregon. So Ansel decided he would clip him, cause he got so over heated when he ponied horses on him. Every one chided him that they wanted to see him clip him... he was so bad about his feet, they couldn't imagine he'd stand for being clipped. So said you just watch... an Ansel saddled him, an climbed on him, and then used the electric clippers and clipped him every where he could reach. Charlie never moved a muscle and let him do it cause he trusted me and I'd never tried to tie him down or take his feet away.
He said he heard that if the indians couldn't get a horse to stay in the herd. They'd run him in and whip him with a rope and chase him around until he wanted to stay in the herd.
