Oral History Program Tim Oyler Interviewed by Sarah Kamppi 5 June 2017 Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Tim Oyler Interviewed by Sarah Kamppi 5 June 2017 Copyright © 2018 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: Oyler, Tim, an oral history by Sarah Kamppi, 5 June 2017, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. Tim Oyler (Vern Oyler’s son). 5 June 2017 1 Abstract: The following is an oral history interview with Tim Oyler, conducted on June 5, 2017, by Sarah Kamppi. Tim discusses his father, Vern Oyler, and his experiences with being a prominent leader in the rodeo community. Alyssa Chaffee, the video technician, is also present during this interview. SC: My name is Sara Kamppi, and I’m here today with Alyssa Chaffee and Mr. Tim Oyler, who is the son of Vern Oyler. Okay, Mr. Tim, where was your father born? TO: Well, my father was born on June third, 1922 on the family farm in East Garland. You know in the early years they didn’t rush ya to the hospital like they do now. Grandma’s sisters helped deliver my Dad when he was born. SC: So you mention a family farm. What do you know about the family farm? TO: Well, I know that my great-great-grandfather and my great-grandfather moved to Northern Utah from Germany, and they settled in East Garland. They had a hundred and sixty acres that they were allowed to farm, and my great-grandfather broke that up and split that up to all of his sons. Then the sons farmed for a while and then they’ve handed it down to their sons. I’m the fourth generation on our little farm, and it’s not much, it’s just twenty acres. It’s not enough to make you a living, but it’s just fun to have because you can raise your animals and your hay and everything. That you need to raise to keep the family farm going. It’s not like any farming that it used to be. If you have less than say a hundred acres, you’re basically just wasting your time. The big farms have taken over. But our family farm, it’s just exactly what it was, a family farm. My aunt lived next to us, and now my cousin lives next to us. The neighbors have all gone, and 2 their kids don’t want their farm no more, so they get all sold off and that, but we’ve kept ours. SC: Interesting. So your dad was born there… how many siblings did he have? TO: He had three sisters, two brothers, and then they had a younger sister died at birth. SC: So where did he fall, was he in the middle? TO: He was the second to last. The youngest of the family was my uncle Thane, and dad was just born a number of years before him. Uncle Reed was born a few years before my Dad was. SC: Okay. So, we have here that Mr. Vern and a couple of his friends gathered wild horses and crossbred cows. What type of horses? TO: Well, you remember the West was chuck full of wild horses to start off with. So in the early days, they’d go out and round up out in western Box Elder County and into Nevada, and gather the wild horses. Also, they would buy horses at the horse sales that they had here in Ogden, of people’s horses that were spoiled, and they couldn’t ride them anymore, or they were young and they just went back. So they would buy them, and they would make them the bucking stream (?). Then, to get the cows, you know, they would go in to Arizona and buy the brahma cow cross, and bring them up. They wasn’t riding the big bulls then, back in the late 1940s and early 1950s. They were riding wild brahma cows, because they had introduced bulls into the riding events. And now, gracious, you’ve never heard of them riding a wild cow. It’s all brahma bulls and crossbred bulls and bulls with PBR, and PRCA, country like that. 3 SC: Okay. So, what got him interested in horses and cows? Do you happen to know? TO: Well yeah, he had uncles, Uncle Dave Ike, and Uncle Gene Ike, they were old time cowboys. Of course they lived across the canal and over the road a little bit, so as a young man, Dad grew up loving the Western style of life, and loving riding the horses. And he just got in to the rest of it where they get him into riding Brahmas and roping, and it just evolved from there to where he started producing his own rodeos, because there wasn’t a producer in Northern Utah or in Southern Idaho. So Dad started up his rodeo business with his friends, and then a couple of years later he bought them out. Short time later, what I remember as a young child, they would take these horses that were in East Garland, and they drove the bulls and the cows, but they drove the horses to the rodeos in Plymouth, and over the mountains to Smithfield and Preston. All those cowboys would get together and drive those horses, and make a weekend of fun out of it. SC: Interesting. So, if you don’t mind me asking, when did your Dad meet your Mom? TO: In high school. She’s two years older than he is. She always told me that he was the dirtiest basketball player she’d ever met. But they were high school sweethearts. SC: So why was he the dirtiest basketball player? TO: Well, because he loved to just go out and be completely physical about it in high school basketball. If the coach needed somebody else on the other team fouled out, he’d send Oyler in. Then pretty soon he’d be fouled out. SC: So this says by 1947 your Dad had bought out his partners and made the Vern Oyler Rodeo Company. Do you know why he bought them out? 4 TO: Well, they wasn’t really as interested, once it got started. Rodeo producing and rodeo is a busy lifestyle. It’s a hard lifestyle, and some of his friends, you know one of them was a dairyman and still had milk cows, and the others had full time jobs and that. Dad was able to continue to run the rodeo because our family were all contractors and carpenters. He hated to swing a hammer with a passion. He just hated it, but whenever times were really tough and in the winters and stuff like that, he’d pick up his hammer and go help his Dad and brothers in the construction business, but he had the time to devote to the rodeo. That’s why he went full time with it, he loved it so much. SC: Interesting. Okay, what do you know about the Beet Pulling Days, and how was your father involved with it? TO: Well, about the same time that Dad was getting tired of the rodeo group, and starting to sell it out, he was contacted by Mr. Boyd Muntz, who was the chairman of the famous Garland Beet Days. Now, you gotta look back, because Garland was the big town in Nothern Utah because of the Utah-Idaho sugar factory. So that was the town that was most developed and where everyone was living at the time. Tremonton was just a small suburb of Garland. But now if you look at it, Garland is a town that’s just about to die, and they’re struggling now to keep it going, and Tremonton has become the bigger of the two towns. But the gentleman come to Dad and said, “Vern, we want to have something for Wheat and Beet Days for the kids, and we would really like you to put on some type of a gathering and see what you could do so that the farm kids and that could enjoy Wheat and Beet Days.” Dad said, “Well, let me think about it.” So he went and 5 got some other friends and got them together. At that time Shetland ponies were the big thing. I remember him and Mr. Ray Uddy going and buying a Shetland stud, and they paid 500 bucks for it. Ma was mad. They just had to have that, because Shetland ponies was a big thing, a big deal. So he went and got some Shetland ponies and got some younger calves, but they didn’t have any way of combining them. So what he did, he sat down in his carpenters shop, and he’s very very skilled. And he built the bucking chutes, I think you folks have a picture of it, all of us standing in front of these bucking chutes. And from the spring till August, when it was time for Wheat and Beet Days, they made the miniature rodeo. That was the very first one. In fact, this is the very first poster for the miniature rodeo. My Dad drew this out. It talks about the famous Wheat and Beet Days. And he named the clowns. Dee Calderwood, a cousin, was the announcer, and Gary Christensen and JD Allred, friends, were the clowns, and if you notice, any age from one to fourteen. And about a hundred and twenty pounds. It was very, very successful. I even got thrown off my first Shetland pony there at that rodeo. But it was something that everybody in the communities loved to have, and they loved to see the kids. You know, farm kids are always out riding and doing things, and doing high school rodeo and, so this just started. AC: Did they truly have one year old children riding in that? TO: No, but they did have kids that were like three and four years old. Dad had it set up to where, depending on your ability as a young kid, if you’ve never been on a horse before, he had some Shetlands that would just trot. He’s got pictures of a little gal in there, she’s three years old. Smiling a big smile on her, just as happy 6 as she could be. But if the little kids come and their dads were cowboys, and they’re coming in with their own rigging, well, I’m gonna use their rigging on them, and Dad would give them one of the Shetlands that really bucked hard. SC: So about what year was the first miniature rodeo? TO: Oh, let’s see. Let me go down here to my notes… 1957 was the year of the very first miniature rodeo in Garland. SC: And you mentioned that the business was so successful that it was mentioned in Life magazine? You wanna talk about that? TO: Yes. We played for a full year. Dad and his friends and every community, once they seen it, they wanted to have, on their, you know, their celebration day or the 24th or 4th of July or whenever, they’d have Dad bring his bucking chutes. They were all portable, you’d put them in a semi-truck and they’d go all around. The word got out, and in February 1958, Life magazine sent Mr. Jorn Gurgitz to Utah State University, and in the field house, they set up the chutes and everything for a rodeo. He come, and did a story, and he was a great photographer. He took some beautiful photographs of the actual rodeo that we was having. My friends and all of us, we was the cowboys and the cowgirls, and he went back, but we never, ever heard whether the story got published or not. But he sent Dad back all of the pictures, and so we kept all the pictures, and there on the back of the pictures it tells that they are Life magazine pictures. I tried going back on the internet, you can buy all of those back issues, but they’re pretty expensive. SC: So did your Dad have any other jobs before he got into the rodeo business? 7 TO: Oh yeah, he was a handyman. Anything… and what really surprised me, and I didn’t know this until a number of years ago, is that he couldn’t read a blueprint. You know, he was in the construction business. Blueprints are the first thing you look at. He couldn’t read them. But he could take a stick of wood and look at this doorframe and say okay, and he’d cut a stick of wood and it would fit perfectly. He was just that great, and he loved working on old sheep camps, anything with old wooden wheels, and he just loved to tinker and build things. He cut logs and made stools, and tables, and when things got tough, the family also mined quite a bit out in Western Box Elder county, and Dad would go out with cousins and my grandpa and them, he’d go out and help in the mines or else in construction. So he kept himself very busy, but his true love was being in his own shop and tinkering with somebodies sheep camp. SC: So did he mainly take care of the maintenance with the horses, like horse shoes. TO: Oh yes, the little Shetlands and the bucking horses, you don’t shoe them, and the calves and that. But he took care of all of them, he maintained them, he trained them. People think you don’t train bucking horses. But you have to work with them, and you find those that have a disposition, and that’s why he was like instrumental in developing the very first bucking flank. He, he invented it with, out of his shop. AC: So tell us, it says in the bio that he developed for the Shetland ponies something where you pull it and it release. Is that what it is? TO: In the old days, with the old rigging, and I’ve tried to find a picture with, that had the old bucking straps on. Let me show you. 8 AC: Yeah, please do! TO: I brought it with me. This is the very first one, and in the old days, with the big horses and that, the stock contractors, Dad wasn’t the only one but they had this here with a buckle, and then on this side, they had another buckle. After you tightened the flank, and the horse was through, the pickup men have to come and ride up and they had to pull these buckles. It had the tendency to get the bucking horses to quit bucking, and a lot of times, the horses would give up and they’d have to run him into the pickup chutes, the flanking chutes, to take the flanks off of him. So Dad went down here to Smith and Edwards, talked to his good friend Gene Smith, and said, “I need something that would release really quickly.” So they went out in the yard and found some old parachute levers. That’s exactly what that is, and as you can see, Dad modified it a little bit, turned it around, and believe it or not, this is the very first of the standard that they use today. They still use it. It’s been manufactured now where it’s wider and that, but this is the very first one. When we was the clowns, of course, they didn’t have pickup men with horses at the miniature rodeo, and so we’d ride up alongside kids and we’d pull the flank would fall off and the ponies would stop bucking and we’d get them into the chute. AC: That’s interesting! And when does that one date back to? TO: This one dates back to the very first rodeo. Right to the first one, cause he knew that with the little horses and stuff like that, big flanks just wasn’t gonna work. So he went and he built these for the Shetlands. AC: That’s amazing! He was so clever then, obviously. 9 TO: Yes he was. AC: How incredible, and I’m sorry, the year was 1957 right? TO: 1957. That was what we said? AC: I think so. TO: Maybe I should study my dates a little bit better, you know? Oh yeah, 1957. AC: That’s really incredible. So, he was a, a carpenter by trade, is that correct? And did he have any kind of a ranch at all? TO: He had the farm that I have now. AC: Okay, but it just wasn’t sufficient to sustain the family? TO: No, twenty acres, and he had another farm. My dad died when he was fifty-eight, and the other places he had Mom sell, because she couldn’t handle all of it. But she kept the twenty acres, which I was very thankful for. AC: Did you grow up on that twenty acre farm? TO: Sure did. Grew up on that, till I graduated from High School. I’ve been rodeoing since I was twelve, clowning and fighting bulls. So after graduating, I just went into clowning and bull riding professionally. AC: What was it like growing up on that farm? TO: Wonderful. You had your own animals. You did everything that your Dad and family did, you did it together, there was chores to be done, you learned responsibility. You had your chores, you had to take care of them, you had to take care of those animals, and then you run into some sad things. My Dad and I worked and worked to get me a hog ready for the county fair, and it’s one that my Dad had picked out. I worked all summer with it, and I was so proud, and we 10 went to the country fair, the Box Elder county fair in Tremonton. The officials wouldn’t let me enter my pig in the fair because I hadn’t bought the pig from one of the stewards of the fair. I didn’t have one of their animals, so my animal couldn’t be in the county fair. And oh, my Dad was so mad and I was so broken hearted. And I thought, well, that’s fine. So then I went into banded chickens, and I was gonna get banded chickens and get them into the fair. And one year I got into the fair and really had a good time with them. I brought them back home, and the dogs got in with them and killed them all. So that’s when I said, okay, that’s enough. I’ll tool leather and put that in the fairs now so it won’t be destroyed. AC: So what exactly are bandy chickens? TO: They’re the little bitty chickens. They don’t, well, they lay eggs, but they’re not the chickens that you get for that. They’re the toughest chickens in the world. We stole some from our uncle once and cooked them up. Oh, they were tough, they were black meat, and they were just horrible. We just couldn’t eat those chickens after we cooked them. They’re a fancy breed. AC: That’s so sad, I’m sorry! So I read in the bio that your Dad’s rodeo went as far away as California, is that right? TO: Yes, we went to North Coa, California. This Mr. Anderson who had lived in Boswell, Utah, had been instrumental in working the Boswell miniature rodeos with Dad. Well, he moved to North Coa, California and bought a little resort for people from California to go spend their weekends in. Fish ponds and stuff like that. He invited us to go down and put the rodeo on down there, and it was a great rodeo. I mean, the people loved it, the kids loved it, and I’ve got quite a few 11 pictures in the articles and stuff for the rodeo that was down there. But with the old semi-truck we had to haul everything down in, and then with me following in the pickup truck, we really didn’t make any money. When you’re in a business, you’ve gotta make money or go broke and get out of the business. It was a great time, it was a great thing. We rode into San Diego, to the zoo, went into Tijuana to buy, treasures, you know. But we never went back that far. We did go to Elko, Nevada, which was much, much closer. Other than that, he stayed right around here. He was busy almost every weekend during the summer. AC: So North Coa was a one-time thing then? TO: It was a onetime thing. AC: Did you go with him? TO: Oh, yeah. Well, this young man right here. Dean Steed? You got Dean? It’s, it’s a bad picture. I got a 5 x 7 that I can’t find right now. My daughters have it, but there’s Dean Steeds very first rodeo. That’s the very first time he ever put on clown makeup or clown clothes or anything. That’s Dean Steed. AC: He was a good friend of your fathers? TO: Well, we all grew up with Dad. He grew up along with the rodeo. SC: When was your first rodeo experience with your Dad? TO: Well, let’s see, probably since I was old enough to walk. When you’re part of the family and that you go get this, go get that. Bring this and that. I was about ten or eleven, and I tried to help him back in the chutes. I tried to run the calves over where they need to be, or I’d try to get the flanks ready, because he’d be up in the fronts of these chutes, and it seemed I was always in his road. He’s such a 12 perfectionist, and you got a ten year old kid back here in your road, and he finally said to me, “Look, you’re driving me crazy. Why don’t you go out in the arena and have Gary and JD teach you how to be a rodeo clown. That will get you away from me so I can put my rodeo on, and then you can go out and be a rodeo clown and pickup man and save the kids.” That’s how I started. I started at eleven and had my first rodeo at twelve, fighting real bulls and taking care of cowboys. And that was my very first experience, because I kept getting like a normal kid, trying to help, but I was always in my dad’s road. AC: So you were a rodeo clown and you were also on bulls, is that what you said? TO: Well, I spent thirty-four years as a professional rodeo clown, and have a million-million experiences, but I had to ride bulls in college. Because it was part of my agreement when I went to Idaho State, is part of their rodeo team. I bulldogged and roped and still had to pick up a rough stock event, so I picked up bull riding. It scared me to death. I just hated those bulls, because I didn’t know where I was going. But if you turned a bull out, those Mexican fighting bulls, I loved it. Because I knew where I was on the ground. But once you get on top of one of them, naw, I was just terrified. But I rode through college. AC: Tell me a little about being a rodeo clown. TO: It’s a long, tedious, hard, lonely business. Especially if you’re by yourself. And that’s basically how my life worked. But it’s also a very wonderful experience. I put myself through college fighting bulls and rodeoing, I went all through the Western United States into Canada, performed at National High School finals rodeos, seven of those; five college national finals, I took care of the bull riders, 13 and one Canadian finals. But because of the politics in the American rodeo business, I was never ever able to do the PRCA or the RCA finals. But it was a great time. I loved it. There was something that was natural protecting those cowboys, and doing what I did and how I did it. I worked so close with the bulls, but they broke me to pieces. I’ve got memberships in probably three quarters of the hospitals in the Western United States and Canada. But it was a great life. I have millions of friends, lots of friends and lots of friends, you get a basket full of belt buckles, a ton of pictures, and when you’re all finished you’re all broken up and broke. Because it takes all the money you make to get to the next rodeo, that’s why it’s a good thing these cowboys got sponsors and stuff now, the good ones. But the other ones that are weekend cowboy, they are trying to make a living but still love the sport, they’re not making any money. They’re paying their own money to get down the road. SC: Did your Dad ride bulls, too? TO: Nope. He rode saddle bronc horses as a young man, and loved to calf rope. SC: And how did your mother feel about you being a rodeo clown? Was she concerned about safety? TO: You know, it’s really funny, because I would do a number of rodeos, and not have anything happen at all. And every time my mother come to a rodeo, I would have a bull get me down and beat me up. And it would be right in front of her. Every time. The last time was down at St. George, Utah, when a big old Scottish Highlander bull got me and threw me in the air. In fact, it threw me so high that I was looking at the rodeo announcer, Jay Harwood, going, “Oh my.” Then when I 14 come back down he caught me and then hit me and threw me into the chutes, and then he really beat me up. It broke this wrist and broke this hand, cracked a vertebrae in my neck, and broke the top of my foot, but I didn’t know that because it hurt everywhere else. That’s the last rodeo she went to. I spent the night in the hospital, and she said that’s it. It was tough for other people to handle. You know, just part of your life. But, it worried her to death. She was awful glad when I said you know, I think I’ve had enough. AC: I know I keep asking the same question, but I just need to double check. So did your Dad do riding and such, or was he mostly building the equipment that you used in the rodeos? TO: He didn’t participate in the rodeos himself, not his rodeo, because when you produce a rodeo, you’re too busy putting the rodeo on. See, I was a high school state bulldogging champion. But I had to make the decision, “Are you going to be a good rodeo clown or a good rodeo cowboy?” You can’t be both. Because, to be a good rodeo clown, like Mr. Randy Muntz, one of the best in the business, as an entertainer and barrel man. And he devotes his full time to that. He used to bulldog some steers and that, but then he found out that it just gets too busy. You get paid to be an entertainer, you have to entertain. AC: That’s right. What are some of your favorite memories with growing up, with Vern Oyler as your dad? TO: Well, one of the best memories that I have is me and Jimmy Uddy, my rodeo clown partner (Jim and I, Tim and Jim.) Dad sent us over to Wellsville, Utah, to put a fence up around the ring earlier that morning, because they had the chutes 15 up already and Dad would bring the cattle. Well, I had a crush on a little girlfriend down in Soda Springs, Idaho, and she was on their drill team, and they were in the parade. So we went to the parade instead of getting the fence ready. And then she had to go have a hamburger and stuff. So, it comes time back, three hours before the rodeo was to start, my Dad and his friends are out there putting up the fence I should have had up. Oh, it sure gets you, we got our tails chewed a little bit. But the people that you met, the places you went, it, you know, this country’s amazing. Because it’s such a beautiful place, and the friends that you meet, you’re the rodeo clown, oh you’re the rodeo people, and everybody treats you so nicely. We went to North Coa. We went to San Diego. Dean and I, we went to the zoo. My Dad would absolutely not go into the snake house. Absolutely, he wouldn’t. And, I remember one summer, we were out picking up hay. And Dad was on the ground, throwing the hay bales to my Uncle Dave up on the wagon, and Uncle Gene was in the barn, stacking the hay And my Dad picked up a bale, and he always rolled them over so the knots were always on the top. You have to learn that, knots on a bale of hay always have to be on the top. Well, he had a snake in it. And he was so petrified of snakes that he ran all the way from the field to the barn, and my Uncle had to get down off of the haystack and tackle him to get him to loosen that bale of hay. Just because he was so petrified of them. But, yep. AC: That is so funny! So did you have a lot of snakes on your ranch? 16 TO: Oh, you always do. Just water snakes, no rattlesnakes or nothing. But yeah, and meeting the other people. Meeting the kids, that was the fun of it, the fun of doing it, and doing a good job, and having people appreciate what you’re doing. AC: That’s very cool. I was gonna ask you, I noticed in the bio that he would take special care to make sure that he got, he helped the kids get on the horses, that fit their needs and such and their riding skills? That was pretty impressive. Was he a pretty big fan of children then? TO: Loved, loved the kids. In fact, Mr. Chuck Story, whose also gonna be nominated, he had quite the menagerie of animals. Him and Dad become such good friends that Dad got some of his animals up to the farm, and it was just a delight. The school would bring the kids around for Dad to show them. And if you was a young man to come to visit you with your Dad to visit my Dad, first and last thing he did was that you had to build a rope. He had some of the old, old rope machines, and each kid would have to take some baling twine, color he wanted, and have to build him a rope. Just loved kids. I think that was his true love, was the kids and the rodeo. The one picture, I don’t know if you folks have seen the pictures or not? AC: We just were sent the one picture, just the headshot. TO: I sent quite a few pictures along. And it shows Dad, in fact, the gentleman from Life magazine took it. And it was a little baby gal, she must have been three or four years old, dressed all cowgirl, and Dad was trying to talk to her, calm her down a bit. And she wanted to ride, and he put her on that little old pinto pony, and all it does is trot, and she rode it till the clown at the time he ran over and 17 helped her off. So, he loved the kids. It was for them. Mr. Muntz started something by asking Dad to get something ready for the kids, and till his last rodeo, that was his love. Kids and them Shetlands and calves. AC: That reminds me, why was it that Shetlands were so popular back in the day? TO: Well, I really don’t know. They had a Shetland pony club. In fact, this group of people even started chariot racing with the Shetlands. Then the big guys looked at it, back in the 1950s and said “Hey, we can do that with the big horses.” But I got pictures of those little boys in a fifty gallon barrel they cut and put wheels on, and they run these little Shetlands. But they were expensive. It’s just like any other horse breed that people really got interested in. I think because they were so small, people felt that they didn’t have to have all the big corrals and all of the big places where you put your usual horses, because they were so much smaller. They had horse shows, and that was funny too because the very first couple, two or three rodeos, Mr. Burns Hunsacker, who had all the Shetlands, he agreed to do it, but they had to have a horse show there in between bucking them. He used to make my Dad so aggravated that he had to stop his rodeo and watch the horse show. The lead class or the trot pony class, or whatever, it would just aggravate him. So that’s what finally led to him buying him out. “I’m gonna go straight to rodeo, and you keep doing your pony shows.” SC: So you mentioned that you did a lot of rodeoing in high school. Do you know if Mr. Vern did anything like that if he was younger? 18 TO: No I don’t. I don’t know whether Dad participated in high school or not. As soon as he got out of the Army he started into the rodeo business, but he probably had rodeoed like that a little bit before he got into the army, but I don’t know. SC: Okay. And how long was he in the army for, do you know? TO: Oh, gracious, I think he was in World War Two for three or four years. AC: So he fought in World War Two? TO: Yes, he was in World War Two. AC: Do you know what exactly he did? TO: Well, he never left the United States. He was in Camp Pendleton, Oregon, and drove a diesel truck, filling the diesel, you know, the machinery and stuff. That’s what I understand. It’s kind of humorous, humorous to me, but at the time it wasn’t. He wrote my mother, and as he was in the army in World War Two everyone was on food stamps, and she was living with her older sister, Aunt Bessie, and her husband, and working at the local drug store. My Dad sends her a letter and says, “By the way you’re gonna get a box. It’s gonna be sealed, and I’m gonna need you to pay for this box.” She said, “What is it?” Well, he ordered a new saddle, and it cost 250 dollars. It was one of the famous Hanley Saddles, out in Pendleton. Mother had quite a struggle paying for that thing while he was in the war. She tried to pay that saddle off, but I have that now, and it’s quite the treasure. AC: How did he feel about the army? How did he enjoy service? TO: Yeah, yeah. Even myself, I’m a Vietnam veteran. You just got to make the best of it. It’s something you do for your country, something you need to do. I didn’t want 19 to stay and make a life habit out of it because I had too many rodeos to go to. In fact, I sent people to Vietnam out of Louisiana, but I rodeod a lot in Louisiana and Texas while I was down there. The rodeo bugs still there, but you got to take care of your business. SC: Do you have any siblings? TO: Yes, I have two brothers. My older brother, Jay, lives in Mountain Home, Idaho, and then my younger brother, Val. Some of the pictures have my younger brother. In fact the flank strap is his treasure. Older brother Jay didn’t rodeo. He was an Air Force man, he retired out of the Air Force. It’s one of those situations where the first son and the Dad didn’t quite get along all the time. What is it, beat up the first one, ignore the second one, and spoil the third one? I think that’s exactly how ours worked. SC: How do you guys feel about your father’s legacy? TO: Very good, very well. When my brother come back to Idaho full time, him and Dad got back together. My saddle shop is still the same. Younger brother Val, he comes to visit, and he says, “There’s a plaque behind this door. Can I see it?” I say, “Yeah, go and see it. It’s behind the door, and it was one of Dad’s.” That was our Dad. He was a rodeo man, he was a rodeo producer, and he was a tough guy. But he loved every one of us, even my mother. They had problems in the old days, but that was his life. And this is me, take me or leave me. SC: So was he gone a lot when he had to work on rodeos? TO: No, cause we all traveled with him. Mom was the secretary. She took all the kids names, and she was the timer. She set up in the stand with the rodeo announcer, 20 and she’d time each of the kids with the eight second timer. We called her mother miniature, and because it was our life, she went along with it. I really don’t think she really loved it like the rest of us done, but she was a faithful wife, and she went along and done her share. She would probably say she could get along without it though. But the rest of us couldn’t. AC: I am curious what you brought here. You have some scrapbooks, were those some things you wanted to show us? TO: Well I really didn’t know what you gals had had in mind. These are just part of the things that, this is about Mr. Chuck Story. Very good friend. In fact, one of the lady’s is a good friend of the Story’s, so I brought this just so, and she’s on the committee, and I don’t know whether she has these stories or not. But these are just pictures of the kids. This is a picture of me in Calgary, Canada. It’s a poor picture, but that bull was the start of my downfall, because he got my down and stepped on me, took my knee out. But I still had a lot of rodeo to do, so I just sucked it up and kept going. But there’s just these little things like this. The pictures of Dad with his animals in Rexburg, Idaho, it just shows my Dad. See, here’s Mr. Hatch, the fifty-five gallon barrel, with the Shetlands. Remember, I made the statement that some young kid come with his own rigging? Dad had a horse for him. Well, there’s the world champion bareback rider right there. AC: On a Shetland? TO: Yep, on a Shetland. Cary Young. He won the very first all-around championship at the world’s first miniature rodeo. He won a saddle, and there’s just these pictures here of the kids. This is Glen’s Ferry, Idaho, and this book is just a book 21 of posters that my mother put together. You know, she argued that she really didn’t like it, but she spent hours putting it together. That’s what these are, and I just grabbed a hold of them, and brought them in case, maybe, that’s what you wanted to see or something. AC: That’s fantastic. We’d love to see whatever you show us. It’s wild to see people being bucking on Shetlands. Just a little Shetland bucking a child. TO: Well that’s the California champion right there. AC: Do you know what year that was? TO: What does it say on the back? AC: On the back, it says, “Mr William R,” and doesn’t actually have a date on it. It just says, “Alber Hill, California?” That’s so cute. TO: Right there, Daily Enterprise, Corona, California. September 22nd, 1964. With that young man, there. AC: On that Shetland, right there. That’s amazing, bucking him off. SC: So was that your Dad’s favorite horse? TO: Oh every one of them had a name. Cornflakes, Dynamite, and Miss Sally. Miss Sally was the little one that would just trot. Oh absolutely, and then there’s a lot of the Ogden Standard, the old Ogden Standard newspaper clippings and that. There would always be those little cowboys that would tell my Dad we can ride any of your horses, and he’d put them on a big one and it would throw them onto their butts. But these are just things that I have locked at home that I really hope that the museum can open up so that people can see them. 22 AC: Yeah, and we’re from Special Collections at Weber State Library, and we take things like that and put them in our archives, but you could ask the museum, too. TO: Well, and if I can get some stuff, you know, with you gals and that stuff, I’d love to put them in your archives. Like I was saying, I spend my time during, in Arizona during the winters because of the elevation and that so I can breathe better and that, and I don’t hurt so bad all the time. But I’m here all summer long, love to put some stuff together and bring it for ya. Rather than this BS section. SC: It’s important for Ogden’s history. TO: Well yeah, it’s just like I was telling this gentleman I was visiting with. The old livestock Coliseums are all gone, unless you go to like Texas or Oklahoma, in the deep South into the Cattle country, but the Ogden Coliseum was a wonderful, wonderful time. They had their big Golden Spike national show. We’d come and sleep upstairs in the lofts, you know, that was another thrill of being a part of the rodeo, and part of growing up, was Golden Spike National livestock show and all that, and staying down for the weekend. Great excitement, you know. AC: Sounds like a lot of fun. I’m curious, we asked about your Dad’s legacy a little bit. Do you think there is something he would want people to remember him by or to know? TO: I think the one thing that he would really like to be remember for was the world’s first miniature rodeo and his love for that rodeo and his love for the kids that was in it. That would be his legacy. I’m quite certain, I’ve sent some of the pictures, where some of the kids that are now older, like me, around here, the Hadley’s and those types of folks, you know. Faveros, when they were kids. For them to 23 come back and look in the museum and say, “I remember that,” they can probably tell you the name of the horse they rode that day. AC: He sounds fantastic. He sounds like he was an amazing man. TO: He was, a very amazing man. AC: Well thank you for all the stories you’ve given us, we really appreciate it. Well… do you have anything else you’d like to add before we turn off the camera? TO: Nope, that’s fine, except I’d like to share that I appreciate you two young ladies.