Cowboy Stuntman: From Olympic Gold to the Silver Screen

Chapter 3. Riding, Roping, and Running

Chapter 3 Riding, Roping, and Running A s much as I loved going to the picture show on Saturdays to see those black-and-white Westerns, sitting in the stands watching the dirt fly and the snot sling at a rodeo suited me even better. And growing up in northwest Texas, I had plenty of opportunity to see men and women show how well they could handle a horse, throw a loop, or stay on the back of a bull. Some say rodeo was invented in Pecos, Texas, in the 1880s as an informal competition among cowboys. Others claim it happened in Canadian , up in the Panhandle. However the sport came about, by the time I was a kid, competitive rodeoing had become a big form of entertainment in Texas and across much of the rest of the country. I don’t remember when I saw my first rodeo, but I must have been pretty young. Not only did I enjoy taking in all the action, but I had kinfolk who rodeoed. My father and several of my uncles and cousins were all cowboys. Big John Hill, G. W.’s oldest son, had traveled for a while as a performer with one of the Wild West shows. Tom Hill, one of my great-uncles (he was my grandmother’s brother), was a big guy who roped competitively. His son, my cousin C. T. Hill, became a real rodeo competitor in roping. Silas Hill, one of Sam Hill’s sons, was also a great roper and a real showman. He had snow-white hair, even as a young man. One year he entered old man’s roping and young man’s roping and won both of them. Despite all the roping he had done, when he got up in his years he had a roping accident while working cattle on the ranch. That left him with a clubbed right hand except for one finger and pretty much put an end to his roping. That Hill bunch could do just about anything and didn’t let anybody run over them. I had a lot of strong role models. To me these men stood twenty feet tall. But God didn’t make the Hills or the Smiths all perfect, that’s for sure. 28 Cowboy Stuntman In 1938 and ’39, Dad took me to Stamford to see C. T. and Silas perform in the famous Cowboy Reunion rodeo put on every summer by the Swenson family and their SMS Ranch. I was too young yet, but it wasn’t long before I started dreaming about being more than a rodeo spectator. The more rodeos I went to, the more I wanted to ride and rope for money like others in my family. Dad also carried me to Fort Worth for the Fat Stock Show and Rodeo, the biggest in Texas. He went on a big drunk while we were there, but that didn’t keep me from enjoying the show. They had the rodeo in the old North Side Coliseum, a real wonder when it was built in 1907–08. Dean, age ten, at the Fort Worth Fat Stock Show, c. 1942. Riding, Roping, and Running 29 They called Fort Worth “Cowtown” for a reason. It was the livestock center of the Southwest. Mama would pick up her cattle sale checks from the livestock commission places there and then go buy me school clothes at Montgomery Ward. Of course, back then most Texans called it “Monkey Wards.” After Grandpa Pink had a stroke in 1942, Mama decided we should move to Graham so he’d be closer to Dr. Virgil Rosser. After giving the house on Hill Street in Eliasville to Uncle King, who had it relocated to his acreage at Ivan, Mama bought a place on Kentucky Street in Graham only about a block from the doctor’s house. I was right around ten. About the same time, Dr. Rosser told Mama I needed to have my tonsils removed. As he tried to give me ether I hit him and knocked his glasses off. Two or three nurses had to hold me down. Before I passed out I could hear someone saying over and over, “See what you get, see what you get.” The good doctor and I never forgot my tonsillectomy. Tonsils or no tonsils, not many men can say they have two good friends with the same name...