Oral History Program Darrell Christensen Interviewed by Alyssa Chaffee 13 June 2017 Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Darrell Christensen Interviewed by Alyssa Chaffee 13 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: Christensen, Darrell, an oral history by Alyssa Chaffee, 13 June 2017, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. Darrell Christensen 13 June 2017 1 Abstract: The following is an oral history interview with Darrell Christensen, conducted on June 13, 2017, in his home in Plain City, Utah, by Alyssa Chaffee. Darrell, an inductee of The Cowboy Hall of Fame in 2017, discusses his life and his experiences in the rodeo community. Sarah Kamppi, the video technician, is also present during this interview. AC: Alright, today is June 13, 2017. We are in the home of Darrell Christensen in Plain City, speaking with him about his experiences in the rodeo. He’s recently been inducted into the 2017 Cowboy Hall of Fame. Darrell, thanks for letting us meet with you today. We appreciate it. I’m Alyssa Chaffee and I’m with Sarah Kamppi. DC: Pleased to meet with you! AC: First of all, I’d like to ask you when and where were you born? DC: Born in Plain City, 1934. AC: 1934, okay. What was it like growing up in Plain City? DC: All agriculture. There was no subdivisions. There was houses, obviously, for people to live in, but it was mainly agriculture. We had cows and we milked the cows, we grew onions, potatoes, asparagus, about anything you can think of in vegetables, and it was hard work. We grew up during the Depression, and you young gals don’t remember that. It was 1934 when I was born, and the Depression was right in that area. My father raised five kids on fifty acres of agricultural ground. You couldn’t even turn a tractor around on fifty acres now, although we still have farm equipment. 2 AC: What were some of your duties as a child growing up on the farm? DC: I can remember thinning beets, weeding onions, and hauling hay, those were probably the most back-breaking things we had to do. Of course I had a horse when I was young. My Dad bought me a horse, and I loved to ride. That’s probably how I got my start in the rodeo business. AC: What was your horses’ name? DC: Sam was one of them. He grew to be a big horse. He was actually part draft horse and part riding horse. He was a big fella, but that’s what my dad could afford. AC: What was the Depression like for farmers back then? DC: Really tough. You had to do a lot of bartering, one person would trade you potatoes for onions, and vice versa because there was no money. They’d take the produce to Ogden or Salt Lake, and sell some. But the people in Ogden and Salt Lake didn’t have any money, so it was a tough, tough time. We ate a lot off our own farm, like we had chickens for eggs, milk cows for milk, kill a little beef once a year, and we had pigs even. But it was a tough time. We never went hungry. Living on a farm you’re never going to go hungry. But I remember one Christmas all my folks could afford was a pocket knife. That was my Christmas. AC: How many siblings did you have? DC: There were five in my family; three sisters and two boys. AC: Where do you fall in that? 3 DC: Youngest. No, I got a sister younger than me, so I’d be second youngest. She’s still living, and she lives in Washington State. I have another sister still living, she’s ninety-five, lives in Roy. My two brothers are passed. AC: You said that you feel like your horse, Sam, helped you get your start in rodeo? How did you do that? DC: Well, we’d rope and barrel race, but mainly we’d use our horse to tend the cattle. We’d go gather them out of the pasture, change pastures or something. But in that starting, when I was little, I started playing around with a rope. Not always roping a cow, but roping the dog, a fence post, or whatever, and I got to where I could have a rope pretty good after practicing all my life. In fact, my granddad was a cowboy as well, and I could remember him being very happy with me that I could rope. AC: So you self-taught yourself how to rope, then? DC: Yes. I started roping, and I rode bucking animals: bulls and horses for a while, but I got bucked off and then I decided I didn’t like that, so I went into mostly roping. AC: Did you have a Plain City Rodeo? DC: We had a couple, but not like the adjoining towns and cities did. We had a couple of small hay pasture rodeo grounds, but we’d go to Hooper, Liberty, up in Ogden Valley or to Kaysville to their rodeo grounds. Lagoon had a rodeo grounds later, not at the same time. There were several places like South Fork, there was Red Rock Ranch up there that had a rodeo grounds. I can tell you a hundred stories about that. 4 AC: I’d love to hear them. DC: One day we were up there at the rodeo, and it was set up where the hillside was where people’d sit. There wasn’t bleachers, there was just a hillside overlooking the arena. A bull jumped out, and here he goes up this slope, and of course everyone was scattering trying to get out of the way. He overtook a lady, I think he hurt her a little, not too bad, but he ran her right over and got away, he didn’t stomp her, she was just in the way. Other times various things happened, like people got bucked off, and they got teased about being bucked off by the cowboys. We had some real good friends over in Hooper. There was a good friend of mine named Dick Wittison, he rode bucking horses, and he had a ranch there. I had a good friend in Cache Valley by the name of Gary Jensen. He was a pickup man in rodeos for years and years. I got people that I know through rodeo, all over the Western United States. After I quit competing, I started announcing rodeos. For example, I announced Hooper Tomato Days for forty straight years. I had a blast. We’d go all over. I’d go to Colorado, Nevada, Idaho, and Wyoming. That was the area that I worked in. I traveled a lot, but the main thing, I made a lot of friends. I liked the people who have the Western lifestyle. AC: How did you decide to do announcing, was that always an interest to you? DC: Well, I always liked to talk, and I guess the producers remembered that. One day, I was entered in a rodeo down at Lagoon and they had a great big bleacher down there. It was the fourth of July and there was about 10,000 people watching the rodeo. I was preparing for my events at the rodeo, and the stock contractor 5 that was putting on the rodeo come up to me and says, “Darrell, would you like to announce the rodeo?” I thought he meant somewhere in Podunk, Idaho or something. I said, “Yeah, I’ll try it.” He says, “Okay, go up into the announce stand, we got to have you today.” I about fainted. The first time in front of ten thousand people, it’s pretty intimidating, but that’s where I started. I actually got more confident and more contracts to go, and I kind of made a fun career out of it. I never made a full time living at it, but I did love to announce rodeos. AC: How does one become an announcer? Are there certain things you need to learn? DC: Yes you do, and I had kind of a mentor, a guy by the name of Val Leavitt. He taught me a lot about rodeos and announcing. I knew the sport of rodeo, roping and so on, but he taught me the finer things of announcing. Some cowboy or cowgirl really may foul up, but you don’t embarrass them. Never say something is wrong with them. He used to tell me, “You want to get through with the rodeo when the fans still want more. You don’t want the rodeo to get where they’re looking for the exits.” Of course, through experience you learn when to talk, and when not to talk. You praise a cowboy if he deserves praise, and you don’t humiliate or embarrass anyone who doesn’t. It’s mostly on the job training. AC: That makes sense. It also said in your bio that you were a pickup man. What does that mean, exactly? DC: For years I was a pickup man, and those are the people that get on horseback and are out in the arena when the bucking horses come out and when the whistle blows, you go in on horseback and try to get that cowboy safely off the horse and 6 put him on the ground. Bull riding, you didn’t do that, you didn’t go next to the bull to get the cowboy off, your job was to get the bull out of the arena. Many times he didn’t want to go, he wanted to monkey in the arena, so I roped him, and my friend would rope him, and we’d have to drag him to the gate to get him out. AC: So, being a pickup man, is that pretty similar to being a rodeo clown? DC: Well, rodeo clown has a different job in a rodeo. Their job is to entertain the fans, for one, and then to keep the cowboy in the bull riding safe. If he gets bucked off, they try to distract the bull to go away from him, till he can get on his feet and get safe. They have a real important job. AC: You two kind of worked side by side then? DC: Oh yeah, after years I’d know about what they were going to say, in way of jokes and remarks and stuff. But it was fun. And most of them were really good athletes. Once in a while, a bull would hit them, but they’d roll and not get where they could get fatally hurt, but they did sometimes get hurt. AC: That’s really interesting. Did you do that after you competed in the rodeo, or was it simultaneous with your competing? DC: Well, I started announcing rodeos probably 1970s, and by 1970, I would have been about forty years old. I announced there until about a year ago. I retired because I had a heart attack and decided I’d watch from the sidelines. AC: How old were you when you were a pickup man? DC: That would have been prior to my forties, probably back in the 1960s. I did that for several, what we call contractors. The people who put on the rodeos, like at 7 Ogden they had a man out of Texas named Stacy Smith that brings the livestock, and he’s the producer, and the contractor of the Ogden Rodeo. AC: Okay. You said you’ve also done roping and bucking broncos as well. What were some of the other things you competed in with rodeos? DC: No, announcing, roping calves, and team roping. Then a few bucking horses, and a few bucking bulls until I got smashed enough times that I decided that wasn’t for me. You gotta have a special talent, a special toughness to be a good rodeo rider, and I apparently didn’t have the toughness, because I didn’t like it. AC: So the majority of your career then is being a pickup man and announcing? DC: Yes. AC: Okay. On your bio it says that you did countless hours behind the scenes of rodeos. What all did you do behind the scenes? DC: Well, we had four children, and we’d haul them to rodeos, take their horses and help them with their horses and make sure they were ready to compete when they were called. All four of my kids are rodeo people. In fact, they still are. Two of ‘em rope professionally, and the other girls were barrel racers and goat tiers and various things, but we’ve had about four or five professional rodeo guys. When I say professional, they did it as maybe a side living. Make some money to go with whatever else they were doing, and they were good at it. AC: So I’m curious, did your dad do rodeo things as well? DC: No. Ironically, my dad never rode a horse that I can remember. My granddad did, but not my dad. I don’t know, he just didn’t like to ride them. He used them on the 8 farm as pulling implements, and my dad was real good with horses, but I never seen him ride one. AC: That’s fascinating. So what gave you the idea to do rodeos and ride horses and such? DC: Well, I was really excited and liked rodeo. It had danger, it had color, it had funny and it had interesting people, and all the aspects of the rodeo that I liked. So I decided to start out humbly with my cheap horse, and I started roping, and different things. As I got better and older, I got better horses to compete on. I never did have a horse that would probably be called good now, but at the time I had some good ones. Lot of friends in rodeo, and that was part of my life, the social end of it. We’d go to the Morgan rodeo and stay two or three days, and their wives and all the kids and so on would intermingle. Lot of social life with the people in rodeo at that time. AC: Was your wife involved in rodeo sport as well? DC: She never did compete, but she would help us with the kids, like the barrel horses and stuff, but she never did compete in rodeo. She’s a registered nurse from Arkansas, where apparently, they didn’t have rodeos. AC: So how did you two meet? DC: She came here, and she wanted to go to the Ogden Rodeo, Pioneer Days, and watch. I happened to be competing in it that year. She called me and I says, “Yeah, I’ll take you.” So I took her to the Ogden Rodeo. That’s where we met that day. AC: Oh, interesting. She called you because she saw your name on the program? 9 DC: One of her relations knew I was entered in the rodeo and told her. AC: So your friends with one of her relations, I see. So how long was your courtship and everything before you got married? DC: Not too long, probably a year. I like to say she was a registered nurse, and when I met her, she was in Oregon, and then after we met and got married she come to Ogden and worked at St. Benedict’s hospital for a long time in the surgical unit—Ogden Region they call it now. AC: Did you have to go all the way out to Oregon to date her? DC: I made several trips to Oregon, yeah. At that time I had lots of cars. I was making pretty good money. I’d buy a car, and I didn’t mind traveling a thousand miles. When the car wore out I’d get another one. AC: Wow, that’s commitment right there. DC: Yeah, I didn’t make a lot of trips to Oregon. AC: That’s really cool. I like that. What year did you marry her? DC: 1959. AC: Okay, and you had four children, correct? DC: Four children. AC: Are they all pretty close in age? DC: I have two in Plain City, just a little town, and I have a girl in Corrine, which is just north of us, and then another daughter in St. George. They are spread out a little but not out of state. AC: Very cool. So tell me a little bit more about your travels. Is that mostly as an announcer that you traveled around? 10 DC: Well no, I told you I graduated in Engineering at Utah State, and I worked at Hill Air Force Base in industrial management for thirty years, and did a lot of traveling in conjunction with my job. Like I was telling this other lady, I went to Atlanta, Texas, Washington D.C., New York City, Chicago, and a lot of places in conjunction with my job. They’d send me to some Air Base, like close to Atlanta or Hawaii, or somewhere, there’s all the air bases scattered all over the United States. We were in engineering at the time, and worked with other people throughout the United States. I retired after about thirty-two years, and I’ve been retired quite a while. I can hardly remember what it was like at Hill Field, but we spent a lot of time there, had a lot of fun, and made enough money to raise a family. AC: So were you civilian? DC: Civilian, yes. AC: What kinds of things did they have you work on in those different cities? DC: Well, we would organize the place, how many people they needed, like a layout of their facility. Do different studies on how to make it work easier and better, and more economically possible. Mostly it was like a management function. But we used a little math and studies like that, and then we worked on individuals, and wrote out what their job was. We called it a job description. They call it various things now, but it was just a written record on a sheet of paper that said what they did. That was kind of a big part of our job. AC: Interesting. When did you graduate from Utah State? DC: 1961. 11 AC: Okay, when did you get your job at Hill Air Force Base? DC: Well, I got out of school, and I went to work for the Del Monte Corporation first, and I become the Area Superintendent in this area. They had a facility over in West Ogden. I loved the job. But to get the next step, they asked me to go to Illinois, and I didn’t want to go to Illinois, I wanted to stay out West. So the next job I got was with the US Post Office, and I worked there two or three years, delivering mail to houses in Ogden. We were foot soldiers, didn’t have a truck. Then I got a job with Ogden Stockyards, which was a big industry in Ogden at the time. Lots of cattle and sheep went through Ogden, and I worked there a couple of years, and then I finally decided I was going to Hill Field. I’ll tell you what made up my mind. I was in a night shift and part of the job over there was to unload and load and feed cattle and pigs. One night in January, I can’t tell you the year, but it was January, cold as the Devil. Here comes this train load of pigs, little baby pigs, and I opened the freight door, and outcome these pigs, just squirted out of there, all over the ground. I was chasing pigs in the middle of the night, about freezing to death, and I decided there was better things for Darrel to do than that. So I went out to Hill Field. AC: I think that was a good reason. So as part of your job at the stockyards, did you have to kind of herd and rope the animals? DC: Well, we didn’t rope them, but yes we had to herd them, and we had to feed them. We had to load them on box cars and unload them off box cars. You probably have never seen a box car that was a cattle car, but they did have them. Hundreds of them. I remember one afternoon I reported to work and the 12 boss says, “We got a hundred and fifty railroad cars of sheep for you tonight.” That’s a lot of sheep, and they are hard to handle. It’s hard to load them and hard to unload them. They’re scared of shadows, they’ve got to be handled just right. AC: How many sheep were typically in each box car? DC: Oh, they had double decks, and there was probably over a hundred sheep in a box car. I’ve never made the multiplication on the number of cars we did versus the number of sheep, it’d be in the hundreds. AC: It says in your bio that you laid the foundation for the Utah High School Rodeo Association. Tell me about what your contributions were to that? DC: Well a big part of that was a board. They had a state board, and I was elected or chosen to go on the state board. It wasn’t my own idea, but I did work on it. From there, they elected me President of the Utah High School Rodeo association. They gave me a belt buckle and says, “Here, run this thing.” We had a very successful time when I was there, good revenue coming in, both in advertising and gate sales and we had big prizes and all kinds of goodies like hats, and saddles. The foundation was probably most of the scholarships. We’d take what money we could earn or beg from vendors, and people like Smith and Edwards, which was a store in Ogden, cross western wear. They were a big supporter and fan of rodeo in general and high school rodeo. Anyway, they provided the money so that we could give out a lot of scholarships to our seniors. Many kids got to go to school because of the scholarships. AC: Interesting. Tell me exactly what the Association was. Was it to fund kids who were in rodeos, or did they also put on rodeos as well? 13 DC: The Association only put on one rodeo a year, and that was the championship finals. It’s been in various cities, but it’s been in Heber City for a long time. Each kid that was in high school rodeo had to be a member of the association, the mom and dad would donate to us and help us. Individual rodeos were put on like the Bear River high school. Around this area they had a rodeo called Spikers, and it had Weber, Ogden, Ben Lomond, I think Kaysville come here. Down south, St. George, there was several clubs, all in this same high school rodeo association. AC: Sounds like a lot of work to try to organize all that. DC: Yeah, we had secretaries at state level. Those gals really knew what they were doing. All kinds of numbers and problems with numbers, kids were here and kids were there and they didn’t show up or they did show up. So we had a great bunch of secretaries. AC: So what was your main duty, did you just oversee or did you try to coordinate? DC: Yeah, tried to coordinate. For our state finals rodeo we would hire stock contractors for sponsors, we’d hire announcers, rodeo clowns, all the people to do it. To put on a great rodeo was our main objective, and thousands of people came to it every year, it was on their list of places to go to. Of course, if you’ve been to Heber City it’s a beautiful valley, always green, always cool at night. My job was to try to put everything together, and make a rodeo that was a championship rodeo and do it all in two hours. It was a little coordination struggle, but it was great fun. AC: It says you were the RMRA President. What does that stand for? 14 DC: Rocky Mountain Rodeo Association. It was an association of cowboys and cowgirls, kind of like a union, a cowboys union. We had members from all over the state, and some actually from out of state. It was an organization, not like in high school, but it was older people, and you could rodeo there as long as you wanted. You could go over and rodeo if you were sixty years old. Anyway, that was a group of people in a rodeo association, and they probably had thirty-five to forty rodeos a year, scattered throughout the state, and in the end we had a championship. It usually was in Ogden, and we had an Association Secretary, and that was usually the President’s wife. Our job was to make sure things come together, make sure things were fair, and make sure the cowboys and cowgirls liked to come to those rodeos. AC: Were you a part of the RMRA at the same time you were a part of the Utah High School Rodeo Association? DC: Yes. Yes. I don’t think my Presidency was in the same year in one as it was in the other. I think my RMRA was a few years later than it was when I was in High School President. But they were going concurrently, and in fact, they still have the Rocky Mountain Rodeo Association. Different contractors, different people running it and so on, but it’s still a lot of great people in it. What I like most about all my rodeo experiences and the people and friends I’ve made throughout Utah, Idaho, and Wyoming. I’ll bet I could stop in a town, in those states, and know someone there. Little tows you’ve probably never heard of like Junction, Utah. All kinds of little towns that they’d have these rodeos in. They’d call me up and want 15 me to come and announce, and by doing that I’d become friendly with the guy that called me, his family, and other people in that town. AC: So people would call you up to come announce for them? DC: Announce the rodeo. When I was most busy I was announcing in a five state area. I might have a rodeo in Idaho this weekend, the next weekend might be in Wyoming. A rodeo announcer has to have some kind of pride of themselves, some confidence in what they do, and what they can say, and when to say it. I loved it. I won’t say I was cocky, but I knew what was going on in the rodeo arena, and I tried to make the folks in the grandstand aware of what was going on in the rodeo. AC: So announcers, are they kind of like independent workers? DC: Yes, they’re independent contractors. AC: So how do you get your name out there as an announcer? DC: Well, reputation. My neighbors went to a rodeo last week in Idaho and said, “Hey, Darrell Christensen announces rodeos, why don’t you call him?” Sometimes you’d go with a stock contractor. He might have ten rodeos, and he’d hire you for all ten, or something. So it kind of word of mouth, and association and contractors. AC: I didn’t realize that you were an independent worker as an announcer, that you moved with the rodeos, very cool. It sounded like when you married your wife you were living in Ogden, is that correct? DC: Plain City. AC: Oh, so you were still in Plain City. 16 DC: Yeah, and we got married in Boise, Idaho, because it was kind of central for her family to come there, but we come back and lived in Plain City. We had an apartment in Ogden for about six months, and it drove me right up the wall. So as quick as we could rent a house in Plain City, we got into it. AC: So you didn’t like Ogden so much? DC: No, not to live in. I loved to go shop there, but not to live there. Too many close people. When I built this house, my closest neighbor west of me was a mile, and east of me was a mile. So we’re kind of alone. Now, as you’ve seen coming out, a lot of subdivisions, which is fine. AC: So you built this house then? DC: I did. We had a good friend that was a carpenter, and he did most of the smart work. I did most of the work as far as lifting, I know every two by four in this house by first name. We had a friend that was a bricklayer, another friend that was a plumber, and so on. Yes, we built it ourselves. AC: That’s impressive! So how did you do the architecture work, did you have to have someone advise you on measurements and such? DC: Yes. There might be another house just like this in Plain City. I went and visited and talked to people, and you probably noticed, we don’t have any stairs here except for out front, we have the same out back. Now that I’m old, I’m sure glad of that. I don’t have any basement under it, and actually there’s a reason for that. Our country right here in this area has a real high water table. So when we had rains like we did this spring, these poor people had water in their basements. We don’t have a basement. 17 AC: So this is a one-level house then? DC: Yep, all the way through. AC: How long did it take you to build this? DC: I’d say close to a year. AC: Where were you living while you were building this? DC: In a little house we rented in Plain City. AC: That is really, really cool. DC: This particular place where we built our home, my dad sold me a building lot here. I don’t know, about an acre, and this land we’re setting on has been in the family name for a hundred and eighty years. I got abstracts of title that say so and so owned it, and sold it to so and so, all the way down to me. A hundred and eighty years. That’s unusual, isn’t it? AC: Yeah, it is. So has your family always been farmers, then? DC: More or less. Ranchers and farmers. Back in the 1800s, they came here from Denmark, and I don’t know what the people in Denmark do, I guess they farmed to, but that was their deal. Some were craftsmen, some were carpenters, electricians, and stuff. There are some of those people mixed in. I had an uncle that was a fireman up in Ogden and lived in Ogden, and I had another uncle that lived in Layton, but somewhere there was farming. AC: Did you and your wife and children farm this land when you were younger, too? DC: Yes, and I bought some other land along the way. We farmed it, and the kids helped on it, and finally about two years ago I decided I might fall off the tractor 18 or something, so I sold most of the ground to my two boys, and they continue farming. AC: How many acres did this house originally come with? DC: This particular piece is fifteen acres. I had other places like it that I bought. My total farming operation, mainly at one time, was a hundred and eighty acres. AC: Wow. DC: You say wow, but that was good, and I could do that. But a real big farm is thousands of acres. You go up to Idaho and a person may own a ten-thousand acre farm there, or five-thousand acres. But at the time, and where I was at announcing rodeos and working at Hill Field, that was enough to farm. AC: Did you have help? DC: Oh yeah. At certain times of the year I’d hire somebody to help me, and the kids did a lot of it. Like if you irrigate it at night, one of them might irrigate one night, and the other one the next night. When we got in certain parts of it, I’d hire people. AC: Okay. That makes sense. So what did you grow? DC: Hay and grain for the cows. If you got beef cows, during the winter they have to have supplemental feed, and so that’s what we grew. We grew the hay, and the grain so we had feed for them in the winter. We sold their weaned beef calves. AC: So your cows were mainly meat cows, then? DC: Yeah. My kids know about calves, they can look at a cow and tell whether it’s sick and what to do with it, whether it needs more feed, and a whole bunch of things, especially after you’re around them for years and years. You can look at a 19 cow and say, “She’s going to have a calf in three days,” or “She needs a shot, she’s got an infection somewhere and she needs a shot.” You learn as you go, just as you young ladies have to learn your trade now. AC: So how many cows, or cattle, did you have at one time? DC: Well, I had about sixteen mother cows, and maybe fifty five, fifty-six calves. There were some that didn’t. But that was probably the most I had is about fifty, sixty cows. AC: Did you have bulls as well? DC: Oh yeah, you have to have bulls if you’re going to have beef calves. We put two bulls in with different herds. We split them up and put one bull with twenty-five here. AC: Very interesting. But mostly cows. DC: Mostly cows, but don’t go back up the house into the pasture, cause there’s a bull up there. Big one. AC: Did they get pretty ornery? DC: Sometimes, sometimes they’re really hard, sometimes they’re really easy. You can actually walk close to them, and they’ll maybe watch you but not hurt you. Other times, yeah, you’re on the hook, you have to watch what you’re doing. AC: So did you milk your cows as well? DC: No, my only milking was when I was a young boy working with my dad. I have never had dairy cows that make milk. DC: Are you going to show this all during that ceremony? 20 AC: No, we would have several hours’ worth of movies to show. No, they will just do a slideshow. DC: I wonder if I gotta give a speech. I’ve been to the ceremony before, when my friends have been inducted, but I can’t remember whether they gave a speech. I hope that I don’t have to. AC: You’ll do great. DC: Well, I can speak, but I’d feel a lot easier listening. There’s an old saying, you never learn anything talking. You learn when you listen. AC: I like that, even as a rodeo announcer? DC: Even as a rodeo announcer, although you had to talk, sometimes. But listening is part of life, and a good part. You girls at Weber State, when you’re talking, you’re not learning anything. But when you’re listening, to either your professor or your fellow students, that’s when you learn. AC: That’s a good point. So as a rodeo announcer, how did you learn so much about each aspect of the rodeo? DC: Well, of course by watching rodeos for a long time, and competing in it, I mean calf roping, team roping, and all these things. I knew a lot about that, and I knew a lot about horses, which were an integral part of rodeo. But mainly it was repetition, and watching. I watched a lot of rodeos in my life, and been a part of a lot of them, and you just know. You know the horses and what he is going to do, they surprise you, of course, sometimes they don’t buck, sometimes they run off, but you knew pretty well. You knew the guys. Bill Smith was in the calf roping and he was good, he won five championships. So you knew what to expect out of 21 him. Another time there’d be a young eighteen year old kid that entered that you didn’t know. You’d brag him up for entering the rodeo, and then see what he did, and then talk about that. Again, never embarrass a rodeo person, because whatever they’re doing, they’re trying, and you don’t want some announcer up in a cage saying you did something wrong. AC: I like that. So it says in your bio that your main purpose was to promote the sport of rodeo. How do you feel you’ve accomplished that? DC: I think real well. We have one of the strongest high school programs in the nation. I think over the last five years, Utah has won the national title about three out of the last five years. Beating such states as Texas, Oklahoma, Colorado, Arizona, and they’re known for good rodeos. In fact, just twenty-six million people in Texas, sometimes I think all of them rodeo. They don’t. But it’s quite a feather in the cap of our Utah kids to be that good. They have a farm system, I don’t know whether you realize it, but we have junior rodeos, where little kids start. They may start by pulling the ribbon off a goat’s tail or something, and those kids just keep improving, getting better, going to more rodeos. By the time they get to high school, they’re just about pros, and I’m really proud of that. AC: That is really cool, start them young. It said in your bio that you have enjoyed your involvement with kids. What was your work with kids like? DC: Well, in that high school and junior rodeos that I participated in, I didn’t do it myself, but I took my kids and my grandkids, and now my great-grandkids are going to rodeo. Of course grandpa knows all about it, or he thinks he does. He comes and knows what to look out for, and tries to train them, and I enjoy that. 22 It’s a barrel of fun. I can give you a hundred examples of that. The friendships are what I’ve enjoyed most about the rodeo. AC: So did you start your kids pretty young with rodeo? DC: Yeah, I would guess maybe five. They may ride a sheep, or something. I had two boys that I mentioned earlier, and the one boy told me he wanted to be a bull rider. I didn’t want him to, but he wanted to so I rented some big six hundred pound Angus calves, and they were wild. I run him up in a chute and says, “Okay, Dan, your bull ride is ready, I’ll help you with your rope.” This calf tried to jump out of the chute, and all kinds of things. He says, “You know Dad, maybe I’ll be a roper,” so I weaned him from riding right there, when he was young. AC: So you taught all of your kids then how to ride and rope? DC: Yep, and every one of them at one time or the other did rodeo professionally or college. I’ve been to probably a dozen national college finals, and I think I counted one time that I went to twenty-four national High School rodeos, taking individual kids, or grandkids. You get proud of what they do, it’s like being a champion skier or baseball player, whatever. AC: I’m impressed by the competitions you’ve been involved in. That’s pretty great. Did your wife also travel with you as you would travel around for different rodeos? DC: Yeah, but sometimes she got road-foundered, in other words she’d travel so much she wanted a rest. If I was slated to go to Podunk, Idaho, she may stay home that weekend, but she got a chance to go to most of them, especially the big ones like the national competitions. One thing I didn’t mention, that I really am 23 proud of, I was chosen to announce the High School National Finals for two years. That was a big thing for me. I really enjoyed that. I met people from all over the United States at that, a lot of people here in the West, but even some in the Midwest and some in Georgia. They don’t have many cowboys in Georgia, but there are some. AC: Were you ever nervous announcing in front of so many people? DC: Yes, I was. At the national finals rodeo, I was a little nervous. Never been there, never done that. Of course, when I first started out I’d get nervous. But after thirty five or forty years, you don’t get to nervous. You hope that lightning don’t strike you, or power don’t go out or something, but you really aren’t afraid or nervous about what you’re doing. AC: That’s really cool. I think we’re going to wrap up. How are you doing? We’ve been going for a while. DC: I’m good. I could talk for another two hours with you. AC: We would love to hear it. Do you have any other stories from your childhood or from rodeos at all that you’d like to share? DC: Yeah, I can tell you one quickly. I used to haze for my friend, and what that means was, you got two horses, and you put a steer between them, and one guy goes down and grabs his horns, called bulldogging? Well, I was hazing and my job was to try to keep the steer straight, and the guy was a good friend of mine. He got down wrong, and I run over him with my horse. I went down to the end of the arena, and the steer was there, and I go back, and here comes the steer. He was standing in the middle of the arena, and I says, “I’ll get him for you,” and he 24 says, “No thanks, I don’t want to get run over twice.” That made me chuckle. I’m sure the announcers got a good laugh out of that, because I did run over him, but there, he was tough. Another time I went to a rodeo with my friend, Paul Light, he’s passed now. He had a cattle truck with a cover and sides and everything. We went up to a rodeo, and took our horses out, let the tailgate down, and set there around the rodeo grounds after dark drank whiskey and talked, and told stories and stuff. Finally, Paul decided to go home. So he put the tailgate up on his truck and started down. He got down on the freeway, and he heard something hollering and beating on the sides in the back of his truck. He pulled over, and it was a woman from the rodeo. She got up there to go to the bathroom, and he closed the door on her and was headed home. Oh, she didn’t like that. She probably had been drinking too, everybody had a little bit of whiskey in them. But that was one funny part, there have been a lot of others like that, but I remember that. AC: That would be slightly terrifying. So, any other stories from your rodeo days? Go as long as you like, we’d love to hear any of them. DC: Well, let’s see, I was announcing a rodeo in Spanish Fork, another good friend of mine named Randy Muntz, he’s still clowning at rodeos. This bull come out and bucked his rider off and Randy was in the barrel. They come and hit that barrel. I said something smart alecky about Randy and he got out, and the bull was still there, and the bull overtook him and run over him. We laughed and he didn’t get hurt, but man he could have. So he got hit once in the barrel, and once out. We all thought that was funny. He didn’t, of course. He’s still a good friend of ours, 25 and he was a good rodeo clown, he was a professional rodeo clown, and he’s still doing it. But I remember that night in Spanish Fork. AC: So you said he didn’t get hurt, meaning he didn’t break any bones? DC: He didn’t break any bones. He got hit and bruised, he probably had a big black spot on him. But he didn’t get a broken leg or a punctured lung or anything like that. But you’ve got to remember, cowboys are tough. There used to be a saying they had, the only way to hurt a cowboy is to cut off his head and hide it. Then you might have a hurt cowboy. AC: I like that. DC: Well, that might be all the stories I can think of right now. AC: That’s alright. Oh, I did want to ask a last question before we turn off the cameras. What do you feel that your legacy has been, that you leave behind for your kids, your grandkids, future generations? DC: That’s my legacy. That’s my legacy… I’ve great grandkids now starting rodeo. I got a granddaughter that’s eight, one seven, one four, two and so on, and they like rodeo. See, they’ve been around rodeo all the time. My kids were hauled to rodeos before they started. They’d go with me and get in the grandstand, throw rocks at each other or rope each other or whatever, and they just migrated to it. Of course, they took their kids, and I’ve been very proud of not only their ability in rodeo, but the character it’s built, because you don’t always win in rodeo. Sometimes you lose, and… a big share of a person’s personality is how to win, and how to lose. Be gracious when you lose. That’s probably the biggest thing, I’m proud of how my kids are being raised, and grandkids, and great grandkids. 26 AC: That’s fantastic. Well, thank you so much for letting us meet with you.