Oral History Program Francisco Zamora Interviewed by Brian Whitney & Lorrie Rands 18 June 2015 Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Francisco Zamora Interviewed by Brian Whitney & Lorrie Rands 18 June 2015 Copyright © 2015 by Weber State University, Stewart Library iii Mission Statement The Oral History Program of the Stewart Library was created to preserve the institutional history of Weber State University and the Davis, Ogden and Weber County communities. By conducting carefully researched, recorded, and transcribed interviews, the Oral History Program creates archival oral histories intended for the widest possible use. Interviews are conducted with the goal of eliciting from each participant a full and accurate account of events. The interviews are transcribed, edited for accuracy and clarity, and reviewed by the interviewees (as available), who are encouraged to augment or correct their spoken words. The reviewed and corrected transcripts are indexed, printed, and bound with photographs and illustrative materials as available. The working files, original recording, and archival copies are housed in the University Archives. Project Description The Utah Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum honors men and women whose lives exemplify the independence and resilience of the people who settled Utah, and includes artists, champions, entertainers, musicians, ranchers, writers, and those persons, past and present, who have promoted the Western way of life. Each year, the inductees are interviewed about their lives and experiences living the Western way of life. ____________________________________ Oral history is a method of collecting historical information through recorded interviews between a narrator with firsthand knowledge of historically significant events and a well-informed interviewer, with the goal of preserving substantive additions to the historical record. Because it is primary material, oral history is not intended to present the final, verified, or complete narrative of events. It is a spoken account. It reflects personal opinion offered by the interviewee in response to questioning, and as such it is partisan, deeply involved, and irreplaceable. ____________________________________ Rights Management This work is the property of the Weber State University, Stewart Library Oral History Program. It may be used freely by individuals for research, teaching and personal use as long as this statement of availability is included in the text. It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows: Zamora, Francsico, an oral history by Brian Whitney & Lorrie Rands, 18 June 2015, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. Francisco Zamora June 18, 2015 1 Abstract: The following is an oral history interview with Francisco Zamora, conducted June 18, 2015 by Brian Whitney and Lorrie Rands. Zamora discusses his experiences growing up in Mexico, learning to ride and rope animals, and participating in rodeos. BW: Today is June 18th, 2015. We are in the home of Francisco Zamora interviewing for the Cowboy Heritage Museum. The time is approximately 10:20 AM and interviewing today is Brian Whitney and Lorrie Rands. Thanks for inviting us into your home. FZ: My pleasure. LR: We’re just thrilled to be here. Let’s just start out really simple with when and where were you born? FZ: I was born in a very small the state of Michoacána, which is a very small area. There were no electric lights or anything, so it was a very remote area. BW: What did you say the name of the place was? FZ: Michoacána, it is a big state in the Gulf of Mexico. It’s right here [points to it on a map]. All of this is Michoacána, which is way out in the boonies. It’s the biggest state in Mexico, I think. It reaches from far inland, all the way over to the Pacific. That’s why there are drug dealers there, because of how remote it is. The terrain is ocean and mountains. The mountains reach almost to Mexico City. It’s a big state. 2 LR: So, when you said you hadn’t seen anything: any electric lights or cars until you were twelve. Where did you go when you were twelve? FZ: We farmed on the ranch where I am from. We always roped. You rope everything. You had to rope to brand the cattle, and we had a lot of cattle out there that I used to rope. You have to be a good roper. Being from that area, we were told that we were uneducated because we didn’t know about the cars or trains. However, we were educated in other ways. Others would try to explain what a train was and when someone from my town saw one; they would still ask what it was. It was mostly the Catholic preachers who would come and tell us what the city was like. They would tell us about the electric lights, what cars were like, and what kind of life they lived. So we asked them a lot of questions about cows, since that’s all we knew. We were ignorant about how they lived. They asked us to help them fix the road in our town so that cars could come and deliver goods to us. So we fixed the road, and the first car that came to our area was a brown pickup. When we heard the noise it made, we started running after the truck. Some of the others saw the pickup and began to run away, while others stayed close ‘til we got to the ranch. When it reached the village we surrounded the pickup and some people touched it, while others didn’t want to touch it. One girl said, “Come on, Carissa, touch it! It’s warm,” and she said, “No!” then her brothers said, “Come on!” She said, “Are you sure they’re not going to take me?” Men would come and take a young bride then take them away, you know. That’s how we 3 started. That’s where we come from. We were educated in farming and roping, but we didn’t know much of anything else. LR: So, when living on this ranch in this remote part of Mexico, is that where you learned to rope? FZ: Yes, everybody there ropes. The cows run wild there, so you had to learn how to trap them. To trap them you had to know how to rope so that you could do whatever you needed to do with them. It’s a way of life. It’s like hunting for something to eat; it’s the same thing. We would even go chase deer. Everything was primitive. LR: How old were you when you left Mexico? FZ: I moved to a city with lights, and there I began working with big bulls. I worked with the bulls and milking cows. I’d like to say I was about ten or eleven years old when I moved out there. My father was killed, so I moved out there to make a living for everyone in my family. Outside of an office it was hard to make it big, and it was a rough life. When I sat at a table for the first time to eat, I was very embarrassed because I was different. Where I am from we don’t have a protocol on how to eat, so I would watch everybody first. I remember they put out a bowl that looked like soup, and I was hungry for soup. I didn’t see clearly that it was just water so you could clean your hands. It was hard to learn all of these things, and it was still hard to learn when I moved to the United States. I know all of these things now because I wanted to learn. It’s easy to learn customs of another country if you go to school to learn about them, but learning 4 without going to school is hard. So it was hard for me to speak English, and to learn it. I never feared people, though, because my father sent me to sell tomatoes and chilies to the neighbors when I was young. I was embarrassed not knowing their customs, but I wasn’t afraid of them. Having to sell to them helped me to not feel intimidated. Just like how I am talking to you, I am very relaxed doing it. The principles my father instilled in me are the same principles I still use today. BW: Now your father didn’t want you to learn to rope. FZ: No, he didn’t. He wanted me to date and take a wife. If your father had a farm, you needed to be a farm boy. Roping wasn’t a good way to make a living. Now it’s a good business because now you have a lot of sponsors. I’ve been roping PRCA since 1966, and I have a gold card to travel. It was hard work, and my father knew that. He didn’t want me to learn to rope, because it wasn’t like farming. Farming was a better way to make a living. I had other friends that liked roping, too. I even formed a group with other kids and we practiced roping in secret for a long time. BW: Oh, you practiced in secret. FZ: Yeah, we had a big hill with a tree at the top that we would go to. When someone hollered we snuck away to rope, and we had fun. We were in grade school, and were bandigos. Sometimes you had to be a brat to get attention, so that’s what I learned. The Catholic Church sent teachers to our village school to help us learn. There were people from the village that were twenty-five years and older in the same room to learn as us younger 5 kids, so we wouldn’t get any attention. The older people made up the majority of the class, but I would still attend even though I was young and small. The Catholic priests taught us how to dig deep into the ground for water, and from there life began to be better for us. LR: So, you immigrated to the United States in the 1960s. Were you by yourself or did you come with your family? FZ: No, I didn’t have any family with me. I had a lot of friends in Catholic school, but they went out to work. By then I had some money, but my friends moved to join the military and go to Vietnam to help the United States because that’s how politics work. If we helped them, they wouldn’t kill us. They helped because they had to. Now I know how it works, and the United States is everywhere in the world, and we fought for them. We broke the mold and joined the United States because they helped us. So I decided to join and went to Cheswick, California where I enlisted in the military. Because I used to ride bulls, I had broken my leg and nose, so I didn’t pass to be able to go to Vietnam. I was so disappointed. So that’s how I started out in the United States, I wanted to thank them for Vietnam, but now I think differently. LR: Okay, so how old were you when that happened? FZ: I was probably eighteen. LR: Okay, so what year were you born? FZ: It’s a long story about a lot of things; we could be here for days. My Father was killed when I was very young. I sent my grandmother from my 6 mother’s side to tell my grandfather that my father was killed. We had moved away to a little place and my grandmother drove us for about four or five hours up into the mountains. It was way up there and far away from everything. She had borrowed a mule and saddle and travelled a half-day to tell my father’s father that my father had been shot and was in the hospital. When my grandmother arrived my grandfather asked why she had come, because my father was not his son. After that I changed my last name, and took my mother’s last name instead. It’s been hard for me my whole life. We had to learn to forget and forgive. But forgiving is hard, so hard. My family didn’t talk. My grandfather was very rude, and I didn’t expect that. To this day, when I go back to Mexico, I have cousins that won’t talk to me because of my name change. I tell them that if they were in my shoes they would’ve done the same. This has been hard for me since I loved my father so much, and it’s something I’ll take to the grave. Now it’s a story that I can share with my kids, and that’s just the way it is. I think anybody would feel the way I did, and would have done the same thing I did. BW: Who shot him? FZ: They fight a lot in Mexico. He was well known throughout Mexico, and that’s just the way things are. Today it’s the same, and there are banos that come through because they want to sell drugs to the United States. The United States consumes drugs. I remember giving all my land to 7 people to other people because I knew if I stayed there I was going to get killed. It’s worse today, worse than ever, and I don’t think it’s ever going to get better. BW: How old are you right now? FZ: On my papers one says I was born in ’43, but the other says ’44. BW: Oh, okay. FZ: I feel good. I have a pacemaker and they did surgery on my head, because of bull riding, which kept me from going to Vietnam. But I still work everyday, and I feel good. LR: So, were you riding bulls in Mexico? FZ: Mmhm. LR: Were you part of a rodeo circuit there? FZ: There are associates there that go from fair to fair; similar to how they do it here. Mexico doesn’t have museums or anything like that, but the history of rodeos and where roping comes from is such a good history. Like the way the Mexican people fought to kill the Spanish that were in southern Mexico, but there is nothing to commemorate it because politics get involved. They’re not interested in telling it how it really was, and it’s still a bad, bad place. LR: Looking at your little biography here that I received, you taught yourself English with a book on Buffalo Bill. FZ: Yes, he was my hero. I worked in a rodeo and I carried a big dictionary with me. It was a big, classic dictionary that I got in Little America in 8 Cheyenne. I traveled all over the place, driving. At one event, I was supposed to lead the Tijuana Girl Queen to the stage, but I didn’t because I was so into the book. I did see some Buffalo Bill movies back then, and I wanted to go back with the dictionary and really see what was really said in the movie. After that I started reading signs and stuff. I realized I didn’t speak correctly, but I figured that I should know how to read signs to be able to figure out a truck and be able to drive. I felt that if I could speak it and learn what things mean I would be okay. I still didn’t have any fear because of selling the chilies and tomatoes to my neighbors in the village, you know. LR: What brought you to Utah? FZ: Utah is a special place, I think. Anybody can come. I came here from the ranch to perform, and I had a lot of good friends in Ogden. I have the Jones’; Mr. Jones was the Mayor of the city, and Dick Diamond, or Dick Brenner. Fida Royal trained with my horses and many, many others. When I came to Utah I felt that the people were so nice and wholesome, and they always came to see me perform. I just felt that this is where I needed to be. I never realized it was this cold, though. I had never come here in the winter before. I worked in the state in Mexico and had a business with my horses and my brother. I owed my brother money that I didn’t have, so he took my horse instead because that’s just how things work there. I lost everything. I was then working back east and when my friends learned what happened to me they called me: “Come here!” and 9 when I finished in Louisiana at the end of October, I moved out to Utah. By then there was snow, and it was so miserable and cold. I didn’t know that you could get stuck in the snow, so I parked in some fields in Sandy and everyone told me not to, but I didn’t know why so I did it anyway. I worked outside in below zero temperatures, but I feel like if you want to make something of yourself you have to work for it. You have to spend a lot of money to make it work. I pay a lot of bills to keep my land and my place. This is my life. I try to be a good American, better than most people. That’s how I am. I will work with horses until I die. BW: What type of business were you doing in Mexico? FZ: I used to work for Honeywell. I used to make the chassis in the chassis plant. We built a plant there and I had about thrity-five people working for me, and in another plant I had about the same. Then Nixon became the President and the tax he imposed ruined everything. Before then I had money, I had property. If you’re not in politics in Mexico, then you need others to help you with favors. Papers are difficult to get, so I had a restaurant, too. It was so hard to get that money monthly for water, electricity, but you make it somehow. I never quit. I’m not a quitter. LR: I’m just kind of following along here. When you started performing here in the United States, you took your heritage, the Charo heritage, and incorporated it into your performing. How did you do that? 10 FZ: Well, roping, for instance, was used in the first revolution. They roped horses as well as people. They would rope wild horses and break them. Since everything was wild, roping was a way of life because they needed to trap the cows and horses to be able to catch them, so everything was incorporated in the same way. BW: How did it become part of your act? FZ: You know, people laughed when I said I wanted to come to the United States to perform in rodeos. I still lived in Mexico when I came here to perform. I came to Utah and worked the State Fair. Someone from the fair came and told me, “I want you to work the fair for ten days.” And I said, “Okay.” I was roping when they wanted to talk to me. I didn’t have anything left in Mexico when I came to this country. So, did that answer your question? BW: What elements of your performance had the Charo? FZ: I was given a recommendation and was invited to perform; so roping is what I did. I worked state fairs, but in places like New York they offer you to stay for two or three months. It gets old being there for so long. I almost cried in New York after four months. I wanted to come back west; I don’t like to go on extended stays. BW: Your costume. Were there traditional Charo influences? FZ: Yes. BW: Can you explain it for the camera? 11 FZ: One of the [??] parts of the Charo that was used was leather, other materials that they grow. Also the uniform that they had, the Charo used in the first revolution. BW: Can you describe it? FZ: Yeah, it’s made of suede. Now it’s suede with good garadine, but it didn’t used to be that way. It used to be made entirely of leather from cows or deer, but now it’s made mostly with cloth and the leather is mostly made from deer. The rodeo was actually born in Mexico because it’s so hot there. They would make a round fence where they would run horses and chase the cows with miniature steers. They would move the cows that were in heat there and then put the bulls in a different pasture. They tried to do everything in the one area in the enclosure so the cows were all born in the same area. They also broke the horses there, and that’s where the word rodeo comes from “round fence,” it means “around.” Now everything is better. Now the American saddles incorporate part of the Mexican saddles since everything is mostly from Mexico. They also wear hats to provide shade since the sun is so hot there. BW: Now, I see a lot of embroidery. FZ: Yeah, that was put on there because of Marciliano from Benjuka. He was born in Mexico, I think. His family origins are in Mexico, so he incorporates a lot of our customs. It’s similar to how when Mexican movie stars travel they represent Mexico. When he came to the United States, he had a lot of style and poise, which changed our customs through the years. 12 BW: So, going back on the movie star period. You mentioned briefly, but I want to talk more, that you were contracted to appear in the movie June of [??] FZ: You know, they offered, but the peers in the rodeo association have a lot of control over you. They tell you what to do because you belong to their group, part of the gold card group. Rosser told me, “Francisco, you have to appear. You’re stupid if you don’t. They’ll pay you money.” I said, “Cotton, if they hire me to do the movie in Mexico, I don’t want to do it.” He said, “ Well you need to do it.” I said, “I don’t want to.” Because I said I didn’t want to I was told that they might kick me out of the gold card group, so I had to do it. I didn’t want to do it, because if I wasn’t representing my country with dignity, I didn’t want to do it. They still hired me, but when I got the papers I was supposed to sign, I didn’t like it. If I would have appeared I would have been paid, but dignity is more important. BW: So you saw the script and it was… FZ: I saw the papers, and I said that I still didn’t want to do it. I was told that I had to, or I would lose my gold card. I said for them to take all the cards, if I didn’t have their card I would go on to another association. They called me stupid because I refused to denigrate the United States, but because I’m here and my kids are here, I didn’t want to appear. They put me in the movie anyway, even though I didn’t sign for it. Lawyers from California called me wanting me to sue Columbia Pictures for featuring me without signing, and they guaranteed me money, but I didn’t do it. I don’t like to 13 sue people, so I didn’t sue them. If you have morals you live by, you have to keep them. There’s nothing more important than sticking to your morals. I have friends in the movie business, like Lee Majors. He likes roping and Big Valley, and Little John with the Bridegroom. We’re good friends. We worked together in the rodeos. Loren Green was a friend of mine, as well as Michael Landon. I went to the movies that my friends worked in, and I went with them to the studios, such as Universal, all of them. They wanted me to play the part, but I didn’t want to play the stupid part. They live only on what they make from the movies, and I didn’t want to live like that. The reason I didn’t like it was that you’re given one or two movies to work on for maybe a year, maybe one or two parts, and then the rest of the year you’re starving to death. If you become a movie star you’re hot, you’re hot, and then after that they spend maybe two or three years without another movie. I wanted to be working every day. LR: Makes sense. Can you talk to us a little bit about this, I’m gonna butcher this, I apologize, Magi? FZ: Magedi? It’s part of the Magera, and the Magera is a plant they use to make the fiber that makes ropes. FZ: This is an old rope. It’s from there and it’s too stiff, but… LR: Is this the magedi? FZ: Yes, this is magedi. LR: Okay. 14 FZ: It’s stiff because of the cold weather. In the cold it gets stiff, but in the warmth it gets soft. LR: Well, now, you can turn rope with this. You can rope with that rope. FZ: Mmhm. LR: No matter what weather? You can still make it work and do what you want. How do you do that? FZ: Using wax. All ropes, even American ropes, have wax that makes them soft or stiff. LR: But not that kind? FZ: Yeah, because it’s cold. The weather here is cold, and ropes need to be worked. You can put them in the sun and work them, and then add wax too. When the wax is softer from the heat, it’s better. When it’s cold it’s very, very stiff. LR: Would you make your own ropes? FZ: No. Everybody wishes they could make some kind of rope where I come from, but this particular rope is tied so strong and tight. So we make different ropes, but not for roping. LR: What I find fascinating is from what your biography says, is you could take that rope and even if it was stiff or it was limp you could still make it work if you need. FZ: What I do is keep the ropes in a bag of rufy plastic in the cold, which keeps the rope good for about five minutes. So you keep ropes for warm 15 weather, as well as ropes for cold weather. You have to really work them to get the tone you want. LR: So you really need to understand the weather and what your rope’s going to do in that weather. FZ: Yeah, it’s kind of like clothing. The wax keeps the rope soft, and from breaking as easily because of moisture. You put the wax on first, and then start working. Eventually the rope gets easier to move. You have to have rope for warm weather and rope for cold weather. This is why they now have good ropes. American ropers use nylon, which is more controllable most of the time, but it’s very expensive. They changed it because we changed it, too, you know. BW: But the magedi’s more traditional. FZ: It’s what everybody in Mexico uses, because they grow it. They make a lot of things with plants. From agave, they make tequila, and from magedi they make hoopa, which is also a drink. The top of the Magedi is the best part to use to make tequila, while the fiber is used to make the ropes. LR: Besides the roping, you’ve worked a lot with horses. In fact, you’ve been recognized by almost every horse association in the United States for the work you’ve done. FZ: I’ve had, and trained, many different horses. I don’t have a lot of prints here, but I have trained horses to walk on their hind legs from here to that street out there. I learned how to do that when I came the United States. I can do different things suitable for both rodeo and circuses because some 16 people don’t like rodeos, but they like horses. At a competition I told a guy that I wanted to do something different, so I took my horse and walked like this, high, and walked the whole length of the stadium. I asked the horse to dance, and we started dancing. I used to do a lot of tricks, you know. When I quit going down there, I became so much happier. It doesn’t matter what kind of trailer or truck you have, it can always break down. Brand new trucks and brand new trailers even break down. My kids grew up in the rodeo, and that’s why they don’t like what I do, because we slept wherever. I worked hard and put them through school, we’re still paying off the loans. I worked as a roper for a state fair until I had an issue with blunt force trauma. We only had two kids because we didn’t know all of the driving and travelling we would have to do, and to travel with kids is difficult and stressful. Sometimes I think to myself, what if we had had more, but we only had two. Sometimes we couldn’t take the road. At times I would finish something in Mexico then would have to be up in Canada for ten performances. Usually, I had a driver, or we would fly. At one point my wife was sick and I told her, “Well, stay home. I could send you home on Saturday.” “No,” she said. “The kids want to go, and I need to go with them.” On the way back, after falling twice, we took her to the doctor, and the doctor said she had flight stomach [???]. When I came home from one particular performance, she threw my stuff away and said, “Either you quit doing this, or I quit.” If you are a carpenter, you can’t be anything else but a carpenter. Working with horses is all I do, and I had to stay with it, so 17 she left. We got divorced, and it’s been tough. Your profession requires a lot of sacrifice, and you do it because you love it. It’s still hard even today. I could sell this place for more than a million dollars, but it’s what I love to do. The museum says that I’m supposed to give them some of my stuff, but all I can give to them is my saddles and stuff that I have. I have a lot of saddles, antique Mexican saddles, but they said they don’t want other stuff because they don’t have a lot of room. I said, “Well, I do everything with horses, so you can have saddles and stuff.” I was in a real panic because I was going to donate some of these things, you know. LR: Did you want your kids to sort of follow in your footsteps? FZ: No. LR: So, you’re happy that they’re… FZ: Yeah, I really didn’t want my kids to do it because it’s so hard. I have a guy from New York that wants to do a story of my life because of how much I have suffered. It’s hard when you want something, to be able to make a living doing it. Very few people can make a living doing what I do, you know. However, the United States is the place to do it. I have worked hard and made it, but I’ve lost it, too. I bought Mexican stores and cut the meat the way Mexican people wanted the meat cut. I knew how to run the business, but I still lost it. I remember in three months I sold almost a million dollars worth of meat, but I didn’t have enough of the meat because I wasn’t able to get enough. I was only bringing beef once a month from 18 there, and I didn’t want to go there more often because I had other places I had to be at the same time. I did another business for a while, but never really believed in business. What I do now relaxes me. This is my life. Business is okay, but if you’re not happy, business is just hard. BW: When was your last performance? FZ: I think the last time I performed was in 2003, because I told them I had to quit. The rodeo is rough on people, you know. They told me, “You come or else we will take you completely out of the PRCA. We’ll take your golden card.” It was tough, and I had to perform. I performed in the PRCA rodeo for a long time, but my last performance was for the state fair, and then I decided I had had enough. It was challenging because I had to fly and travel, and I had to have someone to take the horses, which took away the fun, too. I have a $1,000 trailer and bed set and it still doesn’t matter if you have a nice truck, you’ll still break down, so it’s hard. BW: Tell me about Tijuana Taxi. FZ: Tijuana Taxi was the first horse that I met with alone. When you want to do something different, everybody laughs at you. I moved from down south into the Bay Area, the Tijuana area, and there are no horses there. So I started working in a hospital where I started making good money. I also helped them out in finding which areas they were spending too much money, to the point that they were able to buy their own property and build their own hospital with the money they saved. Even though I made good money, there was too much pressure and I got ulcers from the stress. So I 19 decided to buy two horses. One of the two was Tijuana Taxi. Since my dream was still to go to the United States, and I was already performing there, I wanted to give the horse a name they would remember. The taxi system in Mexico is so crazy, and sometimes they even drive on the sidewalk, so the tourists are scared of what the driver is doing. Since the people remembered the taxis, I knew they’d remember the horse’s name. I performed at an event with bull riders and barrel racing, which are usually people’s favorite events, but that night they enjoyed my performance the most. The way I came into the arena with my horse was memorable. The PRCA rodeo, which used to be the number one rodeo company in the world, liked me more than anybody. That’s where the name Tijuana Taxi comes from, and it’s really memorable for those who understand the Mexican taxi drivers. BW: In the United states, we call roping a lot “rope tricks,” but you don’t use the phrase “rope tricks.” FZ: No, because the tricks come from Roy Rogers. Roy Rogers in, I forget which role, he was a movie star from Oklahoma. BW: John Wayne? FZ: No, Roy Rogers. He was a good actor and he also ropes. I can’t remember, Will Rogers? Anyways, he was a good roper. He opened with trick roping and he did a lot of other things, all while being a movie star. Some people still use the word “trick,” but not me. When you rope the way they do in Mexico, there is a lot of style, movement, and coordination 20 involved. It’s softer than trick roping, and it’s an art by itself. Roping is slow versus trick roping, which is fast movement. You have to work the rope really slowly to make sure every movement is correct, like painting, dancing or ballet. BW: What do you do here now? FZ: I really don’t want to perform because I don’t think I’m in shape, and you have to be in good shape to perform. I performed at the one hundred year anniversary of the Texas Rodeo and even though it was about one hundred and four degrees, I roped the whole parade. I ended up getting sick and going to the hospital, so being in good shape is important. You have to be in good physical shape to rope the horses as well as dancing with the horses. Out of all the guys in the rodeo, I probably wasn’t the best roper, but I always delivered and controlled the horses. I never formally learned roping; I just felt it and was able to do it. When you perform, you feel like you have to have control, nice things, the best suits, and the best saddles in order to be noticed. Like the way people from Vienna dress, when they walk people notice the way they walk and the way they dress. That’s how I learned about the importance of your appearance in performances. I wasn’t ever very good at roping, but I had a lot of control over the people who were watching. Howard Harris did a performance in Madison Square Garden in 1972, before I spoke English, and that performance taught me everything. I’ve been asked why I flank the animals, and I’ve told them that it doesn’t 21 hurt the animals. Their hide isn’t sensitive, and when you flank them, it tickles. You have to learn how to be practical, and how to be properly introduced. I’ve been introduced and performed so many times that I have no fear, which is why I’ve been hired so many times. In order to be successful you always have to be better than the next guy, but that’s how I did it. It’s hard to make money in rodeos, but I’ve been happy doing it. LR: So if you had an opportunity to talk to the young generation coming up in roping and rodeo and what you’ve done in your career, what advice would you give them? FZ: I would like to say, first of all, if you decide to do what I did, you have to really love what you do. You have to have confidence and be mindful of how you look and present yourself. If you don’t have confidence, you won’t make it. I lost my business in Mexico, and then I came up to Salt Lake with thrity thousand dollars and built this house. I was married to the mother of my kids, and my house was perfect. I even hired a lady to decorate it at one point, even though we spent so much time on the road with the horses. Thirty years later, I still have this house and this property. It’s good to have somebody to teach you by using the mistakes that they’ve made as an example, so that you don’t make the same mistakes. I’d tell them that you can’t just walk into a room with authority in your voice and expect people to listen; you have to be able to actually do something. There’s always room for the mediocre performer, and even though I felt like I was never good at anything, I was always there and they would hire me 22 because I’d show up. Don’t go chasing for other jobs that are offering you more money and ruin the relationship you have with the people who hired you. Don’t lie, either. Nothing will ruin you quicker than lying. You have to represent yourself well in everything that you do. I wasn’t good at everything I did, but I showed up, and I sold tickets. The reason they hired me for those shows is because I know how to work the TV audience, I know how to appear, and I’m not lazy enough to miss an appearance. It’s hard to get out there in Chicago, Houston, or Los Amgeles. The advertising is so expensive for just one show. You can make it in anything as long as you’re willing to put in the work and be available at any time. If you get hired and you don’t show up, it hurts the people who were looking forward to seeing you. The kids, or whoever it may be, are disappointed and the company that hired you will lose faith in your commitment to show up. I always went where they wanted me to go, even if I didn’t necessarily want to go there. I always went where I was hired. To do what you want to do, you do what you have to do.