Oral History Program Dean Steed Interviewed by Brian Whitney & Lorrie Rands 17 June 2015 Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Dean Steed Interviewed by Brian Whitney & Lorrie Rands 17 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: Steed, Dean, an oral history by Brian Whitney & Lorrie Rands, 17 June 2015, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. Dean Steed Salt Lake City, UT 1979 Dean Steed and his dog Fred Murray, UT 1983 Dean Steed Evanston, WY 1983 Dean Steed Wendover, NV 1987 Dean Steed Cedar City, UT 1987 Dean Steed 1 Abstract: The following is an oral history interview with Dean Steed, conducted June 17, 2015 by Brian Whitney and Lorrie Rands. Dean Steed discusses his experiences with horse riding and participating in rodeos as part of his induction into the Utah Cowboy Hall of Fame. Also present is Steed’s granddaughter, Savanna. BW: Today is June 17, 2015, we are in the home of Dean Steed interviewing him for the Cowboy Museum. The time is about 10:15 a.m. Brian Whitney and Lorrie Rands are conducting the interview and we are in Farr West. Thanks for inviting us over. So why don’t we just start with some of the easy ones. When and where were you born? DS: I was born in Tremonton, but I lived in Plymouth until I was about 25. Then I moved to Farr West or to West Weber should say. SS: What year were you born? DS: I was born in 1947, 21st of March, 1947. BW: So tell us about growing up in Tremonton. DS: Well it was in Plymouth and my dad owned a ranch up there. We run cattle and horses and it’s on the northern part of Utah here right up by the Idaho border. If you’ve ever went up there, all that mountain range you’ll see across there, my dad owned that. My brother owns it now and he runs Black Angus Cattle on it and horses. We hung out there, when we was kids we were on that mountain day in and day out. We had to go up there by daylight, check the cattle and make sure they were all there, fix fences and stuff like that. That’s how I started riding 2 horses and stuff like that. I started riding anything I could get on just when I was a little kid, I mean lambs, pigs, calves, whatever we could ride we got on them. I mean we’d go out in the pen and jump on a pig or whatever. We had them all, just kids being kids. BW: How old do you think you were when you first started getting interested in riding? DS: Well I started riding bulls, regular bulls when I was twelve years old. Back in my younger days they had a roping club called Plymouth Roping Club. You’d rope the calves and tie them down. Us kids would be there and then when the calves got up they’d put the piggin’ strings on the calves and then we’d get to ride those calves. Then Vern Oiler started a little rodeo, he called it Miniature Rodeos. He had Shetland ponies and calves and there was about twelve of us right around that area that was really involved in that. Probably around a dozen kids would just go to the different rodeos they’d put on and ride their calves and their Shetland ponies. Then it grew to where other people from Ogden, Malad, from just all around starting coming and entering it and riding it. That’s kind of how we really got started in the rodeo, with the miniature rodeos. Then I lived there in Plymouth, we had Plymouth 4th of July Rodeo and Plymouth Labor Day Rodeo and we rode calves up there. I won I think two or three belt buckles in the calf riding up there. Then as we grew up we got into high school rodeo. LR: In Tremonton where did you go to school? DS: Well in Plymouth, we had our little school up there, our grade school. Then we went to Bear River High up there in Garland is where that was. I went there up to my eleventh year and then I got kicked out. 3 BW: So here comes a good story. DS: Yes, I got kicked out. I was in class and Gordon Capener was my teacher and somehow my hand slipped and rolled a cherry bomb. The cherry bomb went off, the desk went over, all the paperwork and all the books went everywhere. So anyway he grabbed me and I was kind of a cocky little thing, he grabbed me and I hit him and got kicked out of school. So the principal he left the room and I go, “Well I’m safe.” Pretty quick the principal, a little short guy he came back in the room and smacked me across the head a couple times. Told me, “To get out of school and don’t come back until my parents brought me back.” Being a smarty I say, “I ain’t coming back to school. I don’t need your darn diplomas.” I never did graduate. Mr. Kearl called me back and told me if I’d come back and rodeo for Bear River that he’d graduate me. If I didn’t even turn in an assignment he’d graduate me. I still told him, “I didn’t need his education.” Which was pretty stupid, that was pretty stupid. I did rodeo up until the eleventh grade, high school rodeo. In ninth grade I won third in the calf roping and third in the bull riding which took us to Valentine, Nebraska, for the high school rodeo finals. There was four of us who went in the car and Ned Sylvester, he took the car. We went out to Nebraska, me and my brother had about thirty dollars between us for five days. We got over there and I placed third in the bareback riding first go around. In the bull riding they had a whistle for cow cutting in this arena and a bull riding whistle as well. I had a bull that jumped about three or four jumps and then went into a spin which was good. I had him rode, I was on the bull’s back, I had him rode and the whistle went off 4 so I got off my bull. Well that whistle was the cow cutting whistle instead of my whistle. So I didn’t qualify the bull riding and second round I drew a big, strong roan horse and he bucked me off, cracked my wrist, well I broke my wrist. While we was over there we started taking the barrels out from under a raft in this pond and the next thing we know that place was lined with cops. So they run us out of the rodeo. They told us to leave Nebraska. So we left Valentine and on the way home there was a corner there that said, “40 miles an hour.” Well Ford Hamblin he was driving, he said he could drive better in the dark than at nighttime. We ended up rolling over in the ditch. A farmer came and pulled us out to the edge. The hood was there, the cab was pushed down on the car, the front windows broke out and we drove that from Nebraska to Plymouth, Utah with no windshield and the car, the top of it was all bent in. So that’s some of the things we used to do. LR: Just having fun. DS: We had fun when we were there and we’d buy a short stack of hotcakes and a couple eggs and I’d take a egg and Herb would have an egg or hotcake and egg and that was our breakfast. Back in those times, hamburgers are what? Twenty five cents apiece, so we didn’t have to worry that much about spending a lot of money. You know we had fun. BW: How long had your family owned the property up there? DS: Well my great grandmother I think, I’m not sure, but I think they come from Farmington and then they went to Idaho. Her and my great granddad came back to Utah and they bought some ground up there in Plymouth. Her and those kids 5 cleared off twenty five acres of sagebrush to start farming. Then they bought the house, it burned down here a few years ago but that house was over 100 years old. My great grandmother lived in Plymouth and so that’s kind of as long as it’s been. She died at the age of ninety eight, just pretty near ninety nine years old. LR: What was her name, your great grandmother? DS: I think it was Janice. SS: I know. You better call your dad. BW: Well you can correct it if there’s an error. LR: That’s not a big deal. DS: Grandpa George, that was her son, married Ida, was my grandmother. Then all of the kids were born right there in the house at that time. My dad had eleven in his family I think, because my mom had fifteen in her family. She lived in Thatcher when she met my dad. She married him and they all lived at that one house. It was my great grandmother and my grandmother, my grandpa before he died, my dad and two of his sisters and us kids. BW: What a compound. DS: Then his sister got married. They were married before I was born, but they all lived there and then us kids came around. So you had my granddad and my great grandmother and my grandmother and my mother and dad and two of his sisters living in that house and got along great. BW: Anybody else in your family do competitive? DS: My brother fought bulls with me in RMRA, which was Rocky Mountain Rodeo Association. We fought for Gerald Young and he fought for I think about ten 6 years in RMRA with me and then we went pro. We went pro because Gerald Young sold out to Swanney Kirby. We went for Swanney Kirby and I think he worked with me two or three years there. So then my brother he rode bareback horses. That’s the one that owns the mountain range and the ranch up there and cattle. That was about all that we rodeod. My dad didn’t rodeo, but he could really ride a horse. I mean he knew his horses and he loved his horses. So we grew up on a ranch riding horses from the time we could even get on one. LR: Okay, I’m kind of going to back you up a little bit. DS: I get ahead of myself so you do whatever. SS: All the time. LR: After your high school days when did you start rodeoing with the RM… DS: RMRA? LR: Yes. DS: Well I was married, my first marriage, so I was probably, I started fighting bulls for Gerald Young. I fought bulls for some high school rodeos earlier when I started fighting bulls. Then I went for Darrell Young in about 1969 I think. I would say about 1969 and I went with him until 1975, me and Herb fought for him until about that time. He had some really good stock. He bought 10 bulls from Neil Gay, Donnie Gay was his son, but Donnie was an 8 time World Champion Bull Rider. Darrell bought some bulls from him and they were some outstanding bulls, good bulls. You’ll see through this I’m a bull person, I love bulls. I’ve got a head of a bull right underneath there. That came from Cotton Rosser, my one boy custom slaughters beef and this bull hurt himself so Cotton had him come down 7 in Murray and slaughter him for him because his back was hurt. I ended up with the head. I really love bulls. I love rodeo bulls, that’s all. LR: So when you said you rode for Gerald Young what do you… DS: I fought bulls for Gerald Young. LR: Fought, that’s what I mean, you fought bulls for him. DS: I also rode bulls and barebacks while fighting bulls for Darrell at the RMRA. I went to the circuit finals or the RMR finals about every year from the time I started riding to the time Swanney bought him out. SS: Explain to them what fighting bulls is because you fought bulls and you clowned. DS: Yeah I clowned. Fighting bulls which is not like the old Mexican bull. Fighting bulls is protecting cowboys. The cowboy get bucked off you’re going to get in between that bull and that cowboy to let the bull know that you’re the bait. So he’s going to follow you right and leave the cowboy alone. LR: Oh, see I thought you meant, when you said fought you were riding the bull. DS: No. No riding the bulls, that’s a completely different thing. A Cowboys on top of the bull, the bull throws the cowboy off and he’s on the ground, so that leaves it up to the bull fighter. They call them cowboy lifesavers now, but back in my day, the bull fighter would go in, just jump on the bull’s head or go in between the bull and the cowboy, whatever you had to do to keep that bull off that cowboy. That was our job. SS: So he wasn’t a contestant. He was more just like contract person out right? So he was paid to work. 8 DS: I was contract person. I contracted for Gerald and Swanney to clown his rodeos. We did clown acts. I also worked in the barrel, got in the barrel and my brother would work the barrel outside of it. That’s kind of the way that went. BW: So there’s an element of entertainment with it as well? DS: Yes, oh yeah. You had to have your acts, your jokes, fight your bulls. As we got going along in the rodeos, we got in the professionals with Swanney Kirby we would even ride bareback horses, without a rigging or nothing. We just jumped on them in the shoot, have them open the shoot gate, my brother and I would ride them out and see who could ride the furthest on it, on a bucking horse, just hold onto the mane. John Wilson I think, started this. You’d get on a bull, sit on his neck and wrap your legs under his neck and then you’d hold onto a rope around his girth. They’d open the gate up and then the bull would just go running, bucking across the arena. Your head’s looking over the tail and your butt’s looking over the horns, so you’re backwards on him. John Wilson started, Chuck Hansen did it a little bit, and then I started doing it in RMRA or in the professionals or Swanney. I rode a lot of bulls backwards. SS: So that was like a specialty act he did. DS: That’s just something to thrill the crowd. At Ogden and Tremonton with Cotton Rosser we rode buffalos. He’d bring buffalos in, Cotton would, to ride and me and my brother Herb we’d get on and ride the buffalos for him too. LR: Why did you start doing the, instead of competing, doing the… BW: Bull fighting. LR: Bull fighting, thank you. 9 DS: Probably stupidity. SS: ____ he’ll give it to you. DS: What it was is Tim Oiler had a rodeo in Fairfield, Idaho. He got another rodeo somewhere else, and a friend of mine was fighting bulls with him, so they asked if I wanted to go up there and fight bulls. So I went up there, and the first time I ever fought bulls, a bull ran over me and I thought, “Hey, I don’t know if I like this or not.” Then we came back from there and I fought the Utah High School Rodeo Finals which at that time was just Tremonton. That was the only rodeo they went to at that time when I started fighting bulls there. I fought bulls there for three days and I really started liking it. Then when my brother, Herb, came out of the Navy, I had a rodeo in Mackey Idaho, it’s a high school rodeo finals. He went with me so that’s when Herb and I started teaming up, that’s how they knew us as Herb and Dean, fighting bulls and clowing the rodeos and that’s where it started with me and him. Today Herb has got Parkinson’s and he’s still breaking horses, he’s still breaking colts. So we’ve been in the rodeo all of our life, I loved it, it was my passion. That’s what put me in the wheelchair was a high school rodeo. I was a professional, but I worked high school rodeos still. I’d done this high school rodeo for about two or three years up in Hyrum and a cowboy gets hung up and I went in and got the tail out, the rope out of this hand but I couldn’t get away from the bull. He kicked me behind the neck over top of me and separates six or seven vertebrae on my neck, it paralyzed me. BW: About what year was that? 10 DS: That was in 1989, but it’s just a passion, you just love it. It’s like with Savanna and Rodeo Queening. She loves to Queen, she loves doing competition. I don’t know if she’d tell you that, but she doesn’t do something halfway, she does it all the way. That’s the way I like it to think I’d done my rodeoing and my bull fighting, I didn’t go in there to impress a girlfriend or a buddy I went in there to protect the cowboy. When I was rodeoing high school rodeo like I say in ninth grade I was second or third in the calf roping, third in the bull riding. The next year I won the bull riding in the state finals and my dad lost a job at Thiokol at that time so I couldn’t go to Missouri for the national finals. After I went pro I worked a lot of good rodeos. I had certain rodeos I really liked working. LR: What were those? DS: Ogden was one of my favorite rodeos to work, my hometown, right here. St. George, I really liked working St. George. In 1989 or 1979 I got to work the Indian National Finals in Salt Lake with Chuck Hinson. Then I worked some Idaho or some rodeos in Montana, Oregon, Washington, they were the world’s toughest rodeos. I liked working those, fighting bulls there. BW: What makes for a good rodeo? What makes one better than another? DS: Well I think the crowd helps, the stock. Ogden is just a rodeo where you’re in that arena and if you’re looking back at that mountain range, it’s just a perfect setting for rodeo. It’s a big arena, but it’s just a perfect setting for rodeo. St. George is a beautiful place, it was in kind of a whole area, football field and you had cement walls and stuff and the bleachers, but it really was a good, beautiful rodeo. Right from the rodeo grounds you look up and see the LDS temple there in St. George 11 and that’s a beautiful temple. So I enjoyed working that one, but I really can’t say what makes a rodeo better than another, it’s just something you like going to and working. I mean I’ve worked some really good rodeos and I can’t say I didn’t like working any of them. I know in Wyoming when I worked up there the wind stopped blowing just to change directions and that was it. We went to Keyenta, Arizona and I did get a beautiful belt buckle from them, the Indians gave me a belt buckle down there in 1979. We went to Wyoming in 1977 and we had to wear those sunglass covers over our eyes and tape them because the wind was blowing so hard. The dust was so bad you couldn’t even see the animals buck. That’s the way it was in Wyoming, so some of them we worked, but there were better rodeos. BW: Some of them you were probably glad when it was done. DS: Yeah. BW: Tell us about the wilderness circuit. You were selected as the bull fighter. DS: Yes the wilderness circuit, I was named the Clown of the Year three different times up there in the wilderness. The first time we went it was in Twin Falls, Idaho, and Utah, Idaho and Nevada cowboys were there at that time. It was really put together for the cowboys that worked rodeo yet still worked a full time job and they couldn’t travel as heavy as the other guys who were doing nothing but straight rodeo. That was what it was designed for, put together for, so that they would have a championship to go to. We worked that for, oh I think I worked that for about six or seven years. Then after it came to Ogden, that’s when it kind of started making money. Before that it was just, it was really hard to make 12 money there because we couldn’t find a place that was really settled to where the crowd really came into it. It came to Ogden in I think 1988 because the year after that I got hurt. I never did get to work in Ogden, but that wilderness circuit, it was designed for the cowboys that couldn’t really travel like the top fifteen cowboys who traveled. SS: So it just cuts the United States up into twelve different circuits and then you compete within your circuit. Then those people who do good at their circuit finals, the final that he worked, would then go to the national circuit finals. DS: See the circuit finals didn’t start until it was, what year did it start in? SS: I don’t remember. DS: You better find out. SS: I’ll get on top of that. DS: Yes, it came here in 1989 or 1988. So it probably started in about 1980 I’d say or 1982. It was called the Circuit National or the Dodge National Circuit Finals and that was up in Pocatello. Now they’ve moved it since then, I think it’s in… SS: Kissame, Florida. LR: So the wilderness circuit is still something that happens today? DS: Right, yes it happens today. It’s still going on and what you have the top two, I believe it’s the top three that wins the events in each circuit. Now that’s all the whole nation has their circuits. Then all the top two will match them with one rodeo and that’d be the Circuit National Finals. I remember Laine Frost, we put on a bull riding school or rodeo school and Laine Frost, he came down to work or to teach the bull riding. They ran Pocatello at the time so when Laine was up at 13 Pocatello then Tuff would come down and teach the school. Then when Tuff was in Pocatello working the circuit national finals Laine would come down and work it. Finally both of them got to come down, but Louis Fields taught the bareback riding in that school. He’s from Elkridge, Utah. Louis’s one of the top cowboys out of Utah at that time. I think he won three bareback riding championships and two all-around cowboy championships. I think his career started in college. In 2007 I received this award back here, the day of the National American Cowboy Award for Weber County which was a surprise to me. But that’s how the wilderness got started and why it got started. BW: Now you were also an advisor for Spiker’s High School Rodeo. DS: Yes I was. I was an advisor for the High Spikers Rodeo for about three years I think and that’s when I had Jerome Robinson come up and put on a bull riding school for me. I believe at that time, I can’t remember, it was a long time ago. But I was an advisor for that and I really enjoyed it, I had some pretty good kids in it. I had some guys like myself when they were younger. BW: Threw cherry bombs under desks. DS: I remember a story down at, I think Spanish Fork, and I was braiding bull ropes, the guys on the high school rodeo, some of them were with me, and I was braiding a bull rope down there at the Fork and these little kids come up to some of the guys that I was directing or advising and this little kid said, “Hey I want to be a cowboy.” Well two or three of the guys that were with me were a little on the wild side. If he wanted to be a cowboy he had to chew tobacco so this little kid he had his mouth full of tobacco. They’d have him run and they’d rope him by the 14 feet and he swallowed about all of the tobacco he had, juice and all. So we went back to the arena and I was at the area and pretty quick the cop car come in. Just about two different cop cars come around my truck and I was thinking, “What is going on here?” They got out, told me, “Get up by the truck, stay there and don’t move.” They pretty near tore my truck apart and I said, “What’s going on?” Well they had to take this little kid to the hospital and have his stomach pumped and they were looking for drugs. I mean they tore my truck apart. I told them, “I’ve got kids of my own. I didn’t…” Finally Stevie Thompson and these guys say, “Hey it was our fault. We gave the little boy the tobacco and all this.” So they had to pump his stomach and stuff. So that was one of our good stories, I didn’t know they’d given the little kid the tobacco. They’d filled him up with tobacco and it was quite a thing. The only thing that kept me out of jail probably was the kids admitted they did it, I didn’t know anything about it. It was fun, I enjoyed teaching them and working with them. We had really a good bunch of cowboys at that time. BW: So it sounds to me like high schools will have clubs and then you’ll have some teachers who just come in and teach kids how to ride. DS: Right well clubs have to have an advisor, an adult advisor. SS: It’s not necessarily a teacher or anyone that’s even involved in the education system. DS: No it’s not, it’s just kind of an advisor. BW: Somebody who’s an expert. 15 DS: Right so Savannah at this time would probably know more about that than I would because they’re traveling more. I’ve been out of the high school clubs for so long, but Savannah could probably tell you more about what goes on in the clubs. I know it’s got to be an expensive game now. When we were high school rodeoing you went out and got your own saddlehorse and roped calves or dogged steers or whatever. Now kids are carrying 20,000 dollar horses with them to the rodeo and that’s what you got to have to win. You got to really have a lot of horsepower to win. Now these kids, I mean my heck what they have to pay for their outfits, they had them in leather, they had them in different outfits. The cowboys and cowgirls and queens have to travel to about every rodeo to make enough points to go in the national, state finals and then to the national finals. So I mean it’s just outrageous, the price the people have to pay for the animals and outfits to rodeo and queen. So it’s really got to be a big thing, it really has. BW: Interesting. LR: You don’t have any more questions? BW: Oh I can probably still come up with a few more. I’m actually interested in learning a little bit more about the rodeo clown aspect of this. We’ve talked a little bit about advising, we’ve talked about some of the regional versus national finals. Tell me specifically about clowning. Did you get trained for that? DS: You know they do have bull riding or bull fighting schools and clown schools going on. Myself and my brother we never did, we learned by the school of hard Knox. BW: Literally. 16 DS: Oh yeah, we learned by the School of Hard Knox. They did have schools then, and I would advise if somebody wanted to clown or ride bulls or barebacks or saddlebroncs or barrel racer, anything, find a good school. Go to a school that your world champions are teaching. I never had the great honor of working the national finals rodeo for the PRCA, I did work Indian National Finals like I said and high school national finals in Ogden. We worked that, me and my brother. There are schools to go to and I’d advise anybody if they wanted to rodeo, go to a good school because in rodeo it’s not if you get hurt, it’s when and how bad you can get hurt. I fought bulls for probably twenty three to twenty five years before I got paralyzed. I got paralyzed one time in St. George in 1976 when I ran and jumped a bull and he took me out of the air and I come down on my head. It was just a spinal cord shock, but I was paralyzed for about an hour and a half from the neck down. Then I thought the one in Hyrum was kind of the same thing, but it wasn’t, it was a pinched spinal cord. Like I say me and my brother we didn’t go to school we just learned on the School of Hard Knox, but within our heart and in our mind it was you take the bump, not the cowboy. If you get run over, if you get knocked down, I’ve been thrown twenty feet in the air and then come back down and then thrown up again. Had bulls just maul me on the ground, but that was our job as rodeo cowboys. Its clowns and cowboy lifesavers now. We didn’t make a lot of money back then, if we made two hundred dollars a night boy we were doing good. Now they’re probably making anywhere from six to eight hundred a night probably, maybe more for some of them. 17 BW: They still put on an entertainment routine now? DS: Yes they teach them, people teach them how to clown, how to perform, but then you got bull fighters that are the ones teaching you how to fight bulls and things like that to be safe. You just got to keep a clear mind of what you’re doing, but we fought one certain way. Now, a contractor, there might be one or two fighting bulls with them. They’ve got bulls that are born to buck and that’s what you want them to do is buck. When we were fighting bulls especially with Swanney Kirby, he brought the first Mexican fighting bulls in to the rodeo, into the regular rodeo. The guy brought them to him out of, I think he come out of Louisiana. He bought them and we started fighting these Mexican fighting bulls and I tell you what those little bulls you didn’t have to go looking for them, they’d come and find you. You could hide behind a bush and it’d find you. So we learned by fighting bulls and we just did it because it was our job. My brother, when he quit he just told me, “You know I’m done.” I kept going and when I got paralyzed I was forty two years old. What was I clowning a high school rodeo for at forty two years old? Check my brain, I don’t think it works. BW: You got kicked in the head a couple times. DS: Still it was a job I had to do, I took the job so I had to do the job. I had to do the job the best I knew how to do it. That’s where your heart’s into it. You can talk to any cowboy who’s going down the road, if his heart isn’t into it than he needs to get out of it. It’s just something you’ve got to love to do. 18 SS: Some of your clowning like your acts right, you had like a dog. Dad said you had a dog, a mule… DS: Oh yeah I had Fred. BW: Yes tell us about some of your acts. DS: Yed I had Fred, he was a dog that a buddy of mine trained for me. He could get up and balance on a broomstick handle. BW: What kind of dog was he? DS: He was a cross, just a mongrel. I think he had Dingo and Border Collie, but he was smart, I mean just smart. We’d go out in the arena with him and he’d dance. He knew how to stand up and dance with me and you’d get him to climb up on a ladder and stand up like a fireman watching. He’d balance on his little broomstick handle for me. He was a bird dog, and he’d stand up there and I had guns on him so, I’d draw up a gun and shoot him and he’d fall over dead and lay there dead. He wouldn’t get up until I bent down to where he could jump on my shoulders to get him up. He was one of my acts, and then I had a car, which I hate car acts. They break down on you all the time like up in, I was up in Idaho and I had a little car act. It started burning up on me. I had a leak in the gas line somehow and the next thing I know it’s a fire. BW: Is this a clown car? DS: Yes it was a little clown car. Then I had an old toilet act. Herb and I put together an old toilet act. One of us had to go in the toilet, that’s all there was to it. Well the other would throw a bomb in, I was always in the toilet. We’d light off a cherry bomb and it’d blow me out of the top of the toilet. I’d have the same type of 19 clothes I had on going in, but they were ripped. I had some old ripped clothes and it just tore me apart in there. That was a good act, that really worked good. We had a shotgun act, one would be walking away from the other after you’d got in a fight and the other would shoot us in the backside with a shotgun. Well we had black powder hooked on our butt with a little toggle switch. We’d flip that and it’d blow up on us, smoke would go everywhere. We had a book full of jokes and Herb and I, as far as I’m concerned, we’re one of the closest teams. I mean we knew each other’s move, we knew what we were doing and we never really run into each other much, we knew right where each other were. Like up at Morgan, Kenny drew a bull called Hellcat and he was quite a bull. This bull, he was a rodeo bull. Kenny told us, “Man, watch this bull, if I don’t get him rode, be there when I get off.” He bucked Kenny off over on this side by the catch pen gate where they put them into the catch pen. Me and Herb both went in on him at the same time and he’s whirling, hit us both. I flew out one way and Herb flew over his back and there always has to be a drunk around. “Hey guys you going to do that again tomorrow?” “No, that wasn’t an act. It was all the real thing.” Herb was a lot better with animals, he didn’t get run over as much as I did. My uncle, one time he was going to high school rodeo in Tremonton, called us and said, “Boys, I’ve got Pierson’s coming down from Idaho to put on the rodeo.” He had some pretty hunky bulls and, “I need a couple bull fighters.” We says, “Yeah.” He says, “But, I ain’t got no money.” So me and Herb says, “Okay we’ll come up and do the rodeo for you.” The second day of the rodeo Uncle Doug 20 told me, he said, “Dean why don’t you stand right here in front of this catching gate and them bulls going to run so far they run over you.” You know I was getting run over all the time. This is another thing about a school, schools they teach you how to work bulls. Now me I’d work a bull a little bit and then I’d let them line me out and that was a mistake because you don’t out run a bull. They’d line me out and run over me everytime, but it was the adrenaline pump. I didn’t mind getting run over. So you got knocked over, you got knocked down, it was just part of the game. Now you have one guy in the barrel that does all the comedy, that’s your comedy man, that’s your barrel man. He tells the jokes, the bull fighters don’t even come into the ring until the bull riding starts. They’ll come in and fight probably fifteen head of bulls that really don’t want to fight you. They just want to throw the cowboys off and walk back and start eating their grain. When we fought for Swanney, Cotton wanted to try every bull that came out of the gate. If he’d fight you, fight him. Now Swanney he would bring certain bulls and they really were some good bulls. Like I fought one he brought in from Murray called One Hundred and you’d run the bull right off the truck. He wouldn’t even pen him or anything on the truck. That bull fought me until we were both about laid out. Finally, well he hit the barrel so hard he knocked the barrel man out of the barrel. He hit the barrel that hard. Finally when they got him roped the bull just laid down. I mean he was just so tired he laid down and I was about as tired as he was. I loved fighting him, me and that bull got along so well. He was there to hook you, but John this other bullfighter from Arizona he’d fight him. 21 Every time they open out the gate he’d run over him, but I got along great with that bull and I loved fighting that bull. BW: You said more and more nowadays bulls are being bred for bucking not… DS: They’re bred for bucking. It’s with horses and bulls I think the bareback, the horse program, they’re born to buck, that’s all, and that’s what they do. Most of your real ranked bulls are in the PBR, with Professional Bull Riders Association. Not taking anything away from the other rodeos, they’ve got great stock too. Everything is born to buck now. They cross them over onto national finals, animal shows, world bucking bulls or bucking horses every year. That’s where you get these really good, good animals. BW: So what is that doing to the other side of the industry? The fighting side of the industry? DS: The fighting bulls? BW: Yes, if all the bulls come out… DS: Well a lot of them don’t have fighting bulls anymore. You very seldom see a rodeo where they have fighting bulls. I think the Bar-T, which would be Swanney’s old rodeo string, his grandsons run it now, but I think he still carries some fighting bulls with him. Cotton carries some kind of bulls because whatever comes out of the gate go fight them. So you have a few that still carry fighting bulls. BW: What do you think about this transition? DS: Cowboy wise, the cowboys know whatever they get on they’re going to win. They can place money, they can make money on anything they get on really, this born 22 to buck program. To me as an ex bull fighter, I don’t like it. I feel that the crowd is there to see some action. For a bull to jump out and throw a guy off and the clown move in between them and move them away that’s their job. When you’re standing out there and they just turn the bull out with nothing but flank strap on him and you’re going to fight him to the crowd. I think that still should be there. I really truly in my heart think that should still be there as something for the crowd, they paid to come to that rodeo, give them some excitement. We used to ride bulls, I used to ride bulls backwards. Jumping bulls, I haven’t seen anybody jump a bull for I don’t know how long and we used to jump one, two bulls a night. Sometimes you’d get over it, sometimes they’d hook you out of the air. I’ve been hooked out of the air a lot of times, I got over them a lot of times. I’ve got a couple pictures where I’ve jumped them and I jumped the whole length of the bull off the barrel. Most of the time when you’re jumping a bull you run at him, he’d run at you and just about a couple feet away you jump in the air and he’s going to run underneath you if he don’t get smart enough to reach up and hook you out of the air. I had a bad habit of having bulls standing there and not running at me, running and jumping him. Yes, that’s how I got hurt in St. George the first year I fought bulls professionally, but I did get taken out of there a lot doing that. A lot of times I got over it, but I still think that that is something that should be in a rodeo. At least one fighting bull a night for just the crowd to see. The danger right there at getting to ride on top of a bull and fight. BW: Do you think if you were to ask the organizers of rodeos today why they’re going this other direction would they say safety reasons or give other reasons? 23 DS: Well the stock contractors would probably say, “Hey look we’re hauling these bulls and this stock for hundreds of miles. To put one or two bulls on there just to fight is taking up room on the trailer.” It’s this and that and the rodeo is still an event, and rodeo still is not if you get hurt, it’s when and how bad you’re going to get hurt. It’s still that way. I just think the fighting bull should still be there for the crowd. SS: A lot of times too, stock contractors think you’re not like the contestants they say and the contestants are going to want rank bulls that are born to buck. DS: Very seldom do they buck a fighting bull. This One Hundred bull that I was talking about that Swanney Kirby had bought. They had him at a rodeo down south in Richfield and he’d never been nothing but a fighting bull. Well they put him in the draw down there and as he jumped out of the gate I came by and slapped him in the face and the kid won the bull ride on him. Boy he led into a spin and he just bucked right out his backside. Most fighting bulls won’t buck, they’re just going to jump out there and looking for somebody. Cotton Roster had one that he brought to Ogden a few times and this bull’s named Scatterbrain. He would jump out of the shoot about 3 or 4 jumps and then just stop. Just stop in the arena and start looking like this at you. Thinking, “Okay what one of you stupid guys wants to come get me?” I hated that bull because you had to go get him and he was standing there watching you. You had to go get him and get him moving where the cowboy gets off. Now if you got a right handed cowboy you’ve got to take this bull away from the cowboy’s hand 24 so he can get off. So this bull you can’t just run and take him any direction. You got to take that bull, circle away and get the cowboy off. This bull would stop and literally look at you like, “Okay, come and get me.” I just hated that bull. Cotton came to Ogden about three or four years after without that bull. I looked at Cotton and says, “Where’s Scatterbrain?” “Oh, he died last year.” I thought, “Oh thank God!” I hated that bull so bad. You know it wasn’t the fear it was just you knew what you’re going to have to do and that bull had the top end on you. I mean you had to make the first move and when you got to make the first move you’re in trouble. Nowadays you got three, sometimes four bull fighters in the arena and the bull, if he does want to fight, “Which one do I go get?” because you got guys running around. When you got just two bull fighters or one bull fighter out there he knows where to go. To top it off I think bull fighting should still be in rodeo because rodeo’s probably the most dangerous sport there is. It really is. I don’t care if you’re a bareback rider or not, you’re going to get your shoulders jerked out, you’re going to have your rotor cups messed, that’s all there is to it. Bull, calf roping just like with Cody O. that’s a national final. He roped a calf, went down there and threw him, he won the national final that year, but just ripped his knee completely apart. When he got that calf tied, it was on national final, he just lied down on the side of the calf. He was in so much pain. So I don’t care what event you do. Barrel racing, a horse fall on you, smack your head against that ground, you get hurt. These queens in the grand entry, I’ve seen them fall, horses tip over and hurt them, it’s just rodeo. 25 LR: When you were bull fighting was that your full time job? DS: No I worked for DDO in Ogden. I worked there and on weekends I’d take off and go to rodeo. There was a lot of times that I never had no leave because I’d have to use my leave to go to rodeos. I’d use sick leave, I’d use annual leave, whatever I had. If they caught me using sick leave to go to a rodeo I was going to be in trouble, but I would. I’d be out of sick leave. I’d be out of annual leave, but I did have that full time job. Cotton Rosser asked me to go full time for him when I started working Ogden for him. I said, “Cotton I can’t. I’ve got a government job. I get hurt, I’ve got a retirement. There’s no way I can.” That way you know you’re not going to make national finals, you’re not going to do this. Most of the people that worked in the circuits, like the wilderness circuit, most of them, I’d say probably eighty five percent of them had jobs. They just done the rodeos on the side. It still doesn’t mean that we didn’t love that sport as much as somebody traveling full time because we did love it. I loved rodeo. I didn’t care, like I say Swanney Kirby up in Idaho he told me, “Dean get on this bull.” I said, “I ain’t riding that bull backwards, he spins.” He says, “I don’t care get on him.” Well I jumped on the bull, throw just a flank strap around him. He jumped out, went into a spin with me and I loved it. I mean I just loved the excitement, the adrenaline pump. Knowing that I saved a kid, a guy from getting hurt even if I got hurt. I loved that it was my job. I loved it. LR: So is this something that you wanted your children to be involved in? DS: Well her dad, Savannah’s dad my oldest boy rode, bulls in high school and I’ll tell you what this kid was a bull rider. He could hook up on a bull and he could ride a 26 bull. Then he got rheumatoid arthritis and when he got out of high school then he went on his mission and he didn’t ride much after that. If they wanted to rodeo okay, if they didn’t want to that was up to them. My youngest boy wanted to bull dog but I got paralyzed so he had to stay home and help his mom because Gary had his family and all this. My kids are great. Her dad and them guys live right up there and I call and say, “Hey, I got to have this done or that done.” They’re down here. I have my son and his wife live in West Weber. I call, they’re over here. So my kids are great to come and help me. The grandkids are great to come help me. Her dad, he works nights as a respiratory therapist at McKay Dee Hospital and every morning he’ll stop here and make sure everything’s good and everything’s taken care of before he goes home. My family’s great. LR: A kind of final question. If you had a chance to talk to these young kids that are growing up in the rodeo. What would be the advice that you would give them today? From all of your experience, what would be the one thing you could tell them? DS: From all my experience I’d probably ask them first, “Are you really serious about your rodeo?” If you’re doing it just to show off for this young lady here don’t do it. If you’re doing it because it’s something you love to do then get with your parents and say, “I want to go to a school. I want to learn rodeo. It’s something I want to do.” You’re going to get killed in rodeo. High school kids get killed, Laine Frost was killed in Cheyenne the same year I was hurt. People get hurt, people get killed, so you better want to do it and if you want to do it then spend some money and go to a school and learn the proper way to ride a bull. A proper way to get off 27 of a bull. A proper way to get off a horse, how to be a pickup man. Learn these things, have that schooling to where you know what to do when that time comes. That’s what I’d tell them. If you’re just trying to please, show off for your buddies or a girlfriend or something, don’t do it. If your hearts into it then go to school, learn how to do it and put all your heart and soul into it while you’re doing it. Get in there, you’re not going to win every time but get in there to try to be a winner. Not just to show off for somebody but to show them that you can because it’s too rough of a sport just to play around with. BW: I think we’re good. Before we shut it off though I forgot at the beginning to also say that we have Savannah Steed on camera with us. DS: Yeah that’s my granddaughter. She and her dad are the one who put me up for this award which I thank them for that. LR: I think it’s well deserved. DS: They call me when I was in hospital and told me that I’d been accepted for this award and I said, “Well…” It was supposed to be a surprise, I wasn’t supposed to know about it.