Oral History Program Jim Fain Interviewed by Lorrie Rands 5 June 2014 Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Jim Fain Interviewed by Lorrie Rands 5 June 2014 Copyright © 2014 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: Fain, Jim, an oral history by Lorrie Rands, 5 June 2014, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. Jim Fain June 5, 2014 1 Abstract: The following is an oral history interview with Jim Fain. The interview was conducted on June 5, 2014, by Lorrie Rands. Woodrow Johnson is on Camera. Jim discusses being inducted into the cowboy hall of fame, and some of his memories. His wife, Karen, is also present during the interview. LR: So Jim let’s start at the beginning. When and where were you born? JF: In Corydon, Iowa, August 8, 1942. LR: How long did you and your family live there in Iowa? JF: My dad was a farmer, worked his dad’s farm in Allerton, Iowa. He got sick of farming and we left Allerton, I’m not sure if it was fall of ‘47 or fall of ‘48. Probably ‘47 because I was five years old. He bought a travel trailer and had a ‘46 Ford sedan pulling it. Course travel trailers back then were…he had like a 20 foot trailer, it probably weighed as much as this trailer did. It was a pretty good size trailer really to be pulling with a ‘46 Ford. We headed for Phoenix or Buckeye, Arizona. Actually my mother had a brother there that’d been in Buckeye for quite a few years. He had a ranch he grew sugar beets and what else? KF: Cotton and… JF: Sugar beets, he grew sugar beets and cotton. As a hobby he raised palomino horses, so that was my first exposure to anything western, cowboy, was his ranch. I had two cousins, female cousins, and Joan, the oldest one, had a pair of chaps. I told my folks I wanted a pair of pants like that so that was my first real exposure to anything cowboy like. We lived out in Buckeye for I’m not sure how long, a year maybe. I don’t think it was two years till dad got a job in Phoenix and 2 we moved into Phoenix, bought a home. Which I wish you could call it a suburb, this trailer almost has more square footage than that house did. It wasn’t a very big house, but it was a new home and he worked for a realtor there in Phoenix for a while and decided he didn’t like their business practices and if he’d a stayed in the reality business he could’ve been a millionaire, that’s the way Phoenix ended up growing. I went to grade school at Isaac school and had a friend there who participated in junior rodeo. His name was Jimmy Emerson and he exposed me to junior rodeo which is that first photograph in there. That Jimmy Emerson talked me into entering this rodeo. You’re supposed to be 12 years old, I was 13, I lied. I fell off the calf and it hurt, but that was the start of it. I entered several junior rodeos around the Phoenix area and up until…they didn’t really have a high school rodeo association then like they do now. So there were various junior rodeos. I’m not sure they called it the AJRA the Arizona Junior Rodeo Association back that far or not, but it evolved into that if not then. There were junior rodeos all around Phoenix, can’t remember some of the ones I went too, but that got me started in junior rodeo. Course there wasn’t a national high school rodeo association back then either at that time or if it was, Arizona didn’t belong. The junior rodeos went up to age 18 so actually when I was in high school I was still entering these so called junior rodeos. After high school graduation I went to Colorado with a friend that I’d gone to high school with to Longmont. He had lived in Longmont previous, Longmont, Colorado, and we got to Longmont and hired on a construction job there where 3 they were building storage silos on a sugar plant. So it was just one of these deals and they’d set the forms, fill the forms, shake them down, the forms would jack up. They’d pour more concrete and the forms would jack up. Finally I don’t know how high we topped out, probably a couple hundred feet at least. Course back then there wasn’t any safety measures or anything. I was on the boon, had this boon that would swing out over the edge and that’s how we’d bring materials up above. I’d just have one arm hooked around this boon and run the lever on it. My buddy, who didn’t know a thing about running a wench, he lied and said, “Oh yeah I’ve run a wench before.” So he ran the wench and I ran the boon up on top. We worked there two weeks I think it was. I think I made 112 dollars and rumor was they were going to lay us off anyway so we quit. I kind of kicked around Colorado for a while and finally caught a ride back to Phoenix with some guys that’d come to Colorado to rodeo. Somehow I got out to Golden, Colorado, to the rodeo and these people I knew from Phoenix were there and they had room and so we went—oh I left out the racetrack park. Finally ended up on Centennial Racetrack just trying to get something to eat, washed windows in the cafeteria for a bowl of stew. Finally hooked up with a horse trainer. I can’t remember how many, he had maybe about a half a dozen horses in his stable. He had a saddle horse that I could ride and pony horses to the gate on race day. Whoever owned the horse would pay me something like 3 dollars a head or something to pony him to the gate. Well this saddle horse I was riding, he got so he didn’t like the racehorses stepping on his heels and he stated kicking at them. So oh gosh, he’s going to end up 4 crippling one of these racehorses and that’s about the time that I went to Golden and got a ride back to Phoenix. So we came back by the racetrack late at night and gathered up my stuff. Next day we were in Phoenix. I don’t remember what I did in that time period from getting back to Phoenix until another friend called me and said they were hiring at the park service at the Grand Canyon. So I went up to the South Rim and hired on as a laborer. I think we made a buck and a half an hour or something like that, but it was steady. So I worked on the, I can’t remember what month that was must have been March maybe first part of April that I was working on the South Rim there for a while as a laborer. Then they transferred me over to the North Rim which was the best thing that ever happened to me because that’s where I met my wife. So we go to the north rim and first summer there I don’t remember if I had any fire time that first summer, but mostly what I did is a laborer on maintenance. We did a lot of road work. Is that noise going to bother you anything? KF: I’ll just shut it off. JF: Nobody’s dying from the heat. So anyway I worked that first summer there on the North Rim. Karen was the line cashier in the cafeteria at the time and that’s how I met her. They fed us real good and real cheap then. I couldn’t believe it. Utah Parks Company was the concessionaire and all the park service people ate in the cafeteria there. Breakfast was 50 cents, lunch was 75, and dinner right off the tourist menu was a buck. So we were eating really good and working hard. I 5 think I weighed about 160, I got up to 170/175 pounds at that time and I was 20. How old was I? KF: 19. JF: 19, okay. So that summer went by, she talked me into going to school down at Arizona State and of course Arizona State had a rodeo team. I didn’t get on the rodeo team, well I did get on the rodeo team, but I really didn’t get to compete. I ended up using a year of my eligibility in the national intercollegiate rodeo association that governs college rodeo. So I wasted a year there at Arizona State that I could’ve used, well one year at Arizona State that I could’ve used when I got to Utah State. Anyway I went to school at Arizona State, I didn’t know what I wanted to do major wise, and so I had an Ag major with art as a secondary what do you call it? LR: A minor. JF: Minor, yeah. So I ended up after the year at Arizona State with barely a, what’s the lowest? KF: D. JF: D, yeah barely. They were on the letter system, barely had a D, didn’t fail any classes, but I didn’t do all that great either. At Arizona State you’d think it would be pretty western, but I caught more crap down there wearing my cowboy hat than I did when I got to Utah. Which Utah State being an Ag college, it was more of a rural type setting at Utah State. Where at Arizona State they didn’t care for cowboys all that much. I had to have Basic English, and right off the bat in this first semester of Basic English the assistant instructor assigns, we were to do a 6 research paper on some phase of the play Shakespeare. I’d heard of Shakespeare, but I had no idea what Shakespeare was about so I dropped the class. Well this smart jerk, when I signed my drop paper says, “Well good luck on any future ventures you might undertake.” I wish I’d a kept track of him because I’d like to have gone back and showed him my MFA in photography. So I had that year in Arizona State, went back to the Grand Canyon, worked that second summer. Stayed into the fall till they closed, mostly maintenance work, some fire time. We didn’t have any big fires while I was there. The year before I got there they had a major fire. Karen experienced some of the, not actually the fire itself, but a lot of the crews came into the cafeteria to eat so she was aware of what was going on. Ah see I stayed in late that year, came to Utah State the following winter quarter. KF: Winter quarter of ‘63. JF: Winter quarter of ‘63. KF: 18 below 0 at 8:00 in the morning. JF: First venture into Utah State and I liked to froze to death. I had one coat and a sweater and the coat was okay for a cold day in Phoenix, but it wasn’t good for Utah State. I lived in Bullen Hall and had to hike from Bullen Hall to Old Main, most of my classes were at Old Main being a photo major. So I got through that winter quarter, spring quarter. KF: Just winter quarter. JF: Did I just go winter quarter? KF: Just winter quarter that year. 7 JF: Okay then I went back in early on the North Rim then, spring of ‘64 it would have been. No. KF: Spring of ‘63. JF: ‘63, spring of ‘63. KF: Worked late into the fall in ‘63. JF: But yeah stayed in late that fall again till they closed. KF: You came to Utah State winter quarter of ‘64. JF: Then we got married. KF: Winter and spring quarter of ‘64 and then we got married. JF: Okay so yeah, I know that. Made it through winter, spring quarter of ‘64, we got married June 12th of ‘64. Incidentally our 50th wedding anniversary is next Wednesday, Thursday. LR: Oh wow, congratulations. JF: So we got married on the 12th which was a Saturday wasn’t it? KF: Friday. JF: Friday okay. Headed for the Grand Canyon… KF: Sunday. JF: Sunday started work Monday. We had, they had dual cabins down there. KF: Double cabins they called them. JF: With a bathroom in the center and we shared with a couple that ran the service station. So she still had her job with Utah parks and I think I’d advanced to a truck driver rating by then which was, oh what was it? $1.80 an hour, I’m trying to 8 think, I went over 2 dollars an hour somewhere finally up there on my last year probably. So spent our first summer, married summer… KF: Three months, about 3 and a half months. JF: Working there at the Grand Canyon which was ideal. I mean you couldn’t, the North Rim, at least back then, you’re pretty much cut off from the rest of the world. The Salt Lake Tribune had come in, wasn’t it a day late? KF: We were usually a day late or so. JF: Yeah, it was a day late with the Tribune. You couldn’t hardly get a radio station, late at night you could get Del Rio, Texas, which was a country station. If you parked out on the rim somewhere on a clear night you could get Del Rio, Texas, real good on the radio, but during the day time you couldn’t get radio. You could get some TV, but it was really a poor picture. This would be just off antenna of course it wasn’t satellite or dish or anything then. So finished that summer ‘64, Karen got a job at Intermountain School teaching Navajo kids fall of… KF: Fall of ‘64. JF: Fall of ‘64 so no… KF: You went all three quarters that year. JF: Where did we live? KF: We lived up in what they called the lambing sheds. JF: That’s right, yeah. Okay Utah State used to have… KF: Their old army barracks. JF: On the Far East side of campus where the dairy building is now, they had these old barrack buildings left over from WWII. The wind would blow right straight 9 through them. We had an eastern most building top floor apartment and when you’d come into the entryway at the bottom at night and flip the lights on the cockroaches would run for the cracks. You could see them. So between cockroaches and silverfish we had a lot of company. We had separate beds, the old military bunk beds up there and the wind would blow and just shake the wall in that building. Some nights you’d think that it was going to blow the windows in, just vibrate them. So we survived that winter. She hired on at Intermountain School, I hired back on at the Grand Canyon and she had an apartment over to Brigham City and the deal was every two weeks I was going to drive up to Brigham City. Well we borrowed a vehicle from my dad that she could drive. So her family was in Fountain Green, Utah, so she’d drive to Fountain Green and I’d come up from the canyon. That made it a lot closer than driving to Brigham. I drove to Brigham a couple two or three times I guess. KF: Yep. I didn’t go down, I went down maybe once a month to Fountain Green and… JF: I’d come up so we were seeing each other… KF: About every two to three weeks. JF: At least, if not every, well I don’t know if we made it every week. KF: We didn’t. JF: Just every two weeks at least. So we got through that summer of ‘65 and that was my last year at the canyon. The only really memorable things there, the first year we were married, the first week or two we were down there I got called out on two fires. They weren’t major like you think of today, but one of them was out 10 on a peninsula in the canyon. It’s called the Dragon. If you looked at it from the air it was shaped like a dragon and it was about two miles I think from the fire road where you left the truck and had to hike out to the point to get to the fire. It was oh maybe 15 acres. It wasn’t all that big and it was mostly a ground fire with some small clusters of trees and brush and what not. It was serious enough that we called for an air drop on it. There were five of us out there at the time and we called for an air drop. I wish I knew what the plane was, they were WWII vintage and I just finished a book about a bomber crew and a German fighter pilot and they were flying B-17’s. I thought it was a twin engine plane that came in, but it may have been a four engine because B-17’s were used quite a bit on fire drops back then. So we called for a drop and they said, “Well everybody’s busy. It will be late in the afternoon, 4-4:30 or so.” Well about one o’clock I hear a plane, and I look to the south and here’s a plane headed eastbound. Didn’t think too much about it. Went on about my business. I was separated from the rest of the crew just mopping up. I could hear this plane whining, engines rapping up, making his run and you don’t know where he’s at. If that load hits you it can kill you. So finally I spot him and he’s coming across, I don’t think he was 50/100 yards away from me headed to the west. He came in and laid his load right along the edge of the rim to keep the fire from spilling over into the canyon. The thing I remember, there was a spruce tree about that big around and it just took it right out of the ground. He only made that one run and we went on, I think I was out there two days. 11 They sent three guys over from the South Rim that were out of shape. They’d come up from Phoenix or somewhere and they weren’t acclimated to the elevation. They didn’t know how to work, I think we only had them there about a day. I ended up able to go back to the area, we called it the area, and the parks service headquarters there. So I hiked these three guys out back to the truck, took them back into the area. Well, all we had for supplies when we got in there, on the Dragon, was called C-rations left over from the Korean War, that’s what we had for food. So about the second day I think it was they made an air drop into us. Little parachutes with, they had water cans, five gallon water cans on pallets. They dropped a case of beer in which was warm. Steaks and we couldn’t find the grids to cook them on. It turned out they were between the pallet and the box. Somebody finally took a box off the pallet and one of the chutes caught way up in a big tree and the only thing we had to cut with was axes and a two man saw that had the handles burned off of it. So every time somebody walked by that tree they’d cut on it a little bit. Finally one afternoon, crunch, it came down. I don’t remember what was in the box, might have been the warm beer, but anyway, the tree came down. That was the only really major fire I was on. When I came back off the dragon fire I don’t think I even got back to the cabin, did I Karen? I think I went right straight back out to another one, out on the east side and it was an easy one. It was all ground fire and we did have a drop in it. The plane came over, made his drop and circled back around and of course we’re all out in the open looking for a place to hide. He came in and laid his load across and you could see the man in the plane as he went by the treetops. So I 12 mean they were right at treetop level, but those two fires were probably the most memorable ones. So back to Utah State, majored in photography, was on the rodeo team and at that time the Rocky Mountain Region included Montana so we had rodeos as far north as Havre, Montana. If you’ve never been to Havre, Montana, it’s out in the middle of the flat, near the Canadian border, not much there. We made a run, one of our weekends we made a run from Roundup, Montana, which was just north of Billings to Havre, back to Deer Lodge in two days. So I worked those rodeos, I don’t remember, but I don’t think I placed at any of them. I placed at one at Montana State and placed at one at Boise, but had three years of college rodeo at Utah State. At that time, well even now, rodeos are not too well supported at Utah State. They’re considered a club, not an athletic function. So the only funding we got from Utah State was through Associated Students. Then of course we put on our rodeo, that would help provide travel money and you could get some scholarship money. It wasn’t connected to the university, it was paid through the rodeo club. Things got better as far as college rodeo went. There were some major sponsors involved and the Utah State teams placed at the National Finals which brought in scholarship money for kids to go to school on and more travel money. Main advisors back then was Dr. Jim Bob Grumbles, he started there in about ‘65 didn’t he? KF: I can’t remember he was there before you got there or after you got there. JF: No, he got there about the same time. KF: Same time, okay that’d be ‘65 then. 13 JF: He was new too. I don’t remember the name of the, they had an advisor before Jim Bob, he was from Texas. Anybody named Jim Bob’s pretty much from Texas, maybe Louisiana. Anyway he was there. He finally moved on and we had Darwin Nielson and Bill Laycock, both of which were range specialists and Doc was main advisor for many years. Way after I ran out of eligibility, I did help as, not really an assistant coach just assistant advisor with the team while I was working on my master’s degree. When I finished my bachelor’s I was upper division short of graduation so I decided to stay on and do a master’s degree. My master’s project was scenic photography on the North Rim of the Grand Canyon which worked out pretty good. So I started photographing down there, it would’ve been spring of ‘67 I think, I made a trip down. I got a start on it, maybe it was fall of… KF: It would’ve been fall of ‘66 unless it’s ‘65. You started on your master’s in ‘66 so ‘67. JF: Broke my right leg at Pleasant Grove, Utah, rodeo spring of… KF: ‘67. JF: Yeah, June of ‘67, June 17th I think it was. So that shot me down as far as trying to do any photography through the spring or summer, but I must of, I was able to get back down there that fall, fall of ‘67. Did the photography work on my project, got my thesis written and finished it and graduated in ‘69 with it. In the meantime we’re shooting rodeos at the same time while I’m in school and while Karen’s at Intermountain. So she would, she was carpooling and if we were going to a rodeo like Pleasant Grove then I’d pick her up Thursday after school and we’d 14 drive down to Pleasant Grove, photograph the rodeo and come back. Gas was cheap then like 25 cents a gallon or so. Get home midnight or so and she’d get up at six catch her carpool back to Intermountain, I’d pick her up Friday evening, and we’d go back down to Pleasant Grove and shoot the rodeo. At that time we were driving pretty much back and forth to the rodeos. Couple of them we camped out at. We tried camping out of Lehi one year, Lehi’s arenas about a 100 yards from the railroad tracks, so we’re sleeping in the back, trying to sleep in the back of our station wagon. Trains go by, keep us awake, the mosquitos are eating us, it’s too hot to cover up, we didn’t have any repellant. That was probably one of our most miserable rodeos as far as being there. So we just kept shooting rodeos. She finally got laid off from Intermountain School in ‘73… KF: August of ’73. I was two months shy of being ahead of another teacher with seniority. JF: So we had a choice of going to the Navajo reservation or quitting which she did. We’d just bought our house at that time so she got nine weeks’ severance pay from the school and had nine week unemployment that she could collect. What we would do is when we’d leave town for rodeos she’d check in at the unemployment office and her time would stop. KF: It was nine weeks on the severance, on the employment. I can’t remember if it was six months or what on the unemployment. JF: While she was gone, see her time stopped. So we were able to string her unemployment out through the summer and make our transition into fulltime 15 rodeo photography easier. So we made it through that summer and the transition, like I say was easier. From then on we’ve been shooting rodeos. KF: He competed, the last time he competed in a rodeo was 1979 at the Ute Stampede in Nephi, Utah, and he broke some ribs. Just before we had to be in Fargo, North Dakota, for the National High School Finals rodeo. JF: Broke my leg in ‘67, was out all that year. I entered the Spanish Fork rodeo, would’ve been a year and a couple weeks after my broken leg. I had a brand new bareback rigging. I don’t know if you’ve seen what a, I don’t have one along to show you, but its leather about that wide. Oh it’s about yay thick and it fits over a horse. It was a piece of equipment that went over the horse’s withers. Had a handle in it you could ride a horse bareback and have something to hang onto. LR: Oh okay. JF: Well that evolved into what they called bareback rigging. The early ones the handle in them was just really raggy. If you could ride a bucking horse with that you were really doing well. Then somebody come up with the idea of taking adhesive tape and you would wrap your handhold with the sticky side out and then you put your hand in there and it pretty well stuck in. Well the taping of the rigging evolved to putting rosin on the rigging, dry rosin so your hand, you’d have a grip. The raggy handhold evolved to a stiffer handhold and that evolved, that had a leather rawhide and then a guy invented an aluminum handhold that they cast. So it’s what they called a hard handhold. Well the Pro Rodeo Cowboys Association outlawed it first thing because the horses weren’t bucking anybody off. The bad thing about it was if you didn’t get your hand out of there at the time 16 you got bucked off, if your hand rolled over you were hung up, you couldn’t get out. I used the metal handhold for… KF: A season. JF: Two or three horses. I didn’t use it long before they outlawed it. So then you go back to the old rawhide rigging which is just as stiff, but it has a little more give to it. You can hang up in it just as bad too, which I did several times. Twice for sure. Preston, Idaho, the summer after I had my leg broke I’d been on, it was only the second horse I’d been on, and the horse. I need to back up, I missed Spanish Fork. Okay Spanish Fork, year and a couple weeks later was my first rodeo. Had a brand new rigging, and I didn’t have what they call bind in it. When you run your hand in a rigging and close it and you roll back like this your hand’s pretty much locked it. Well what they call bind was another layer of leather under your hand so that it was wedged so when your knuckles came over like this, and you couldn’t come out. You had to open your hand and pull it out. So anyway, I didn’t have the bind in my rigging and I had a big old roan horse they called Roanie of course. Bout the second jump, lost my hand and he threw me out the back. We call it out the back door. My chaps were up like this and he kicked my chaps on both sides as I went out. I was looking right at one of the judges and he goes (gasp noise) when that horse kicked. He missed me and I had to have landed on my butt, it’s a wonder I didn’t break my tailbone. So the next weekend’s Preston, and I get the bind in my rigging to keep my hand from being jerked out. So I ride this horse and what I should’ve done 17 was reached for the front of my rigging. Well I grabbed his mane, well by grabbing his mane when he jumped and kicked again I went over my hand, (whistles) so I’m hung up and I’m dragging around the arena. The only thing I could think of to try to slow that horse down was I tried to grab his front leg. Don’t think I slowed him down much, but the pickup men are trying to get to me and all I can think of is try to grab his leg. Finally he stepped on me and I came loose. Stepped in the back of the leg that I had broken, luckily I didn’t damage it anymore. Tore my chaps off. You were extremely pregnant at that time. That was the first of July. KF: No, I was pregnant in ‘67 not in ‘68. JF: No, with the baby we lost. KF: That was ‘67. JF: Well that’s when I broke my leg. KF: That was June when you broke your leg. JF: That’s right okay. You weren’t pregnant at Preston, okay. Yeah broke my leg in ‘67, lost a baby August of that year and I’m still in a cast. It was just a pretty rough summer all the way around. So back to Preston, I get loose finally, the next day Swanney Kerby says, “Ah wouldn’t have given you two bits for your life last night.” He was not a very sympathetic person most of the time. First, second Kirby rodeo I ever worked was at Moab while I was working at the Grand Canyon. I fell off this horse and he’d drug a foot off my head and cut it. Didn’t knock me out or anything, didn’t even stun me, but just enough to cut it. It was (sound effect) squirting blood, it’s no wonder Kerby got pretty excited that time. 18 He thought I was going to bleed to death. Head wounds are that way, they just really bleed. So I went to the hospital, got my head sewed up. That’s the first night of the rodeo. Next night, fellow I was traveling with from Prescott, Arizona, guy named Roy Archer, he’s a saddle bronc rider. His horse falls down, jams his elbow in the ground, dislocates his shoulder, so hauled him to the hospital and they shoot him up with sodium pentothal and while they’re trying to put his shoulder back he’s reciting “The Cremation of Sam Magee.” The sad irony of that is, I don’t know how many years later he ended up dying in a house fire. I don’t know what started it, his home was in Prescott, Arizona. Apparently his daughter, I don’t know how old she was, was in the house and he went back in to try to save her and both of them ended up dying in the fire. It’s one of the sad sidebars that I’ve never forgotten, that he’s reciting “The Cremation Sam Magee.” These doctors and people in the E.R. are just scratching their heads, so we drive back to Williams, Arizona. I had a bareback horse that threw me out the back door after and being kicked in the head two nights before, well when I went out I did a full backflip and landed on my knees when I hit, which didn’t hurt anything, but as I’m going out all I can think of is, “Don’t land on your head, don’t land on your head.” I had the stitches in it. So back to the Grand Canyon we’re, I don’t know how you’re going to piece all this together. Back to the year after I broke my leg, came over to Preston. Then we worked various rodeos around northern Utah and southern Idaho. Don’t remember where all we went for sure. The nice thing about rodeoing 19 out of Logan is there’s a lot of close rodeos nearby. At the time, at that time late ‘60’s early ‘70’s I think the farthest from home we got would’ve been what Idaho Falls maybe? Burley? KF: Probably. We used to go to Phoenix and photograph, I only entered Phoenix once. JF: Well we went to Preston the year after I broke my leg. I entered the bareback riding at Preston once. WJ: Are you riding in these or photographing? KF: Riding bareback. JF: Well both. The rodeo at Preston I just entered the bareback riding. The rodeos around here in Utah, yeah, I was photographing and entering. I’d give my camera to somebody and if I got lucky they’d get a picture of me. Anyway that lead up to finally 1976 I felt I’d been photographing long enough. I put in for the National Finals Rodeo in Oklahoma and we photographed it. KF: ‘76, ‘77 and then started back again in ‘79. We didn’t get it in ‘78. We did it ‘79. JF: ‘79-‘84 in Oklahoma City and then it moved to Vegas. Photographed it in Vegas till… KF: ‘85 through sometime and then we had a couple years we didn’t do it and then we got asked… JF: ‘90 something. Photographed the national finals for 15 years anyway total. You have all that information I think. The years that we photographed the different, the various finals rodeos. 20 LR: So how did you get to that point where you could photograph the finals? Did you send them a portfolio or… JF: No. KF: He just contacted the office in Denver. JF: Just via reputation I guess. LR: Oh okay. So you had from, starting in ‘69 when you stared photographing… KF: Starting in ’66 in Utah. LR: Okay, so okay I got that wrong. So starting in ‘66 when you started photographing up until ‘77… KF: ‘76. LR: When you went to the finals you had created that much of a reputation… JF: Yeah that was what? 10 years. LR: Right and they just wanted you… JF: Well see there wasn’t anybody really that interested in doing it at that time. KF: There weren’t that many photographers and not that many interested in it. Jim had gotten in with the guy that was the editor of the sports news. He’d gotten, he liked Jim is what it amounted too. This guy liked Jim, I can’t even remember who it was, but they liked Jim and they liked the quality of work he turned in. JF: I don’t remember who the editor was at that time. I’d have to look back through my old issues. KF: It was Bill somebody or other when Jimmy was growing up. JF: Bill Crawford. KF: Bill Crawford that liked Jimmy. 21 JF: Anyway, national finals in Oklahoma City. The Indian National Finals. How did we get hooked into that? Through Jay Harwood? KF: Jay Harwood, rodeo announcer. JF: Jay Harwood was a Blackfoot Indian from Montana. KF: Clem McSpadden was… JF: Clem McSpadden from Oklahoma was part Cherokee I think. KF: Cherokee or something like that. JF: They were two of the main people. KF: They were announcers for the Days of ‘47 rodeo in Salt Lake. JF: Putting the National Indian Finals together, which they had their first one in Salt Lake in ‘76. We photographed the National Indian Finals for 25 years. College National Finals… KF: 18 I think. JF: Well College National Finals I was supposed, it was in St. George in 1967, I was supposed to photograph it and it was in July, wasn’t it? KF: Somewhere around the 10th of July, something like that. JF: You wouldn’t want to be in St. George in July anyway. Well I broke my leg at Pleasant Grove in June. KF: About three weeks later he was supposed to be in St. George photographing the national finals, college finals. JF: So we didn’t get to photograph the finals in St. George, which I’m really glad because it was really hot. I did go to the St. George rodeo in September with my leg still in a cast. I had a full length cast, hip to toe. 22 KF: Plaster, heavy. JF: On the trip down there that fall I had five other guys traveling with me. I had a brand new Ford station wagon and we didn’t have AC in it. So the front vents were open and I’ve got my leg propped up on the hump and there’s two windows cut in the cast where there were pins in the leg. The guy that was sitting in the middle, I saw him start sniffing his pits, I knew what was happening. The stink was coming out of this cast so I kept moving my leg more in there and the air’s coming through, the hot air’s coming through the vents and he’s still sniffing, trying to see where that’s, see if it was him or not. I finally got to laughing. You son of a! He about swatted me, but that was the funnest part about having my leg in a cast was being able to do something like that. I had it off two weeks after St. George. The bad thing about St. George at that time they had a gulley washer, a rainstorm came through the first night of the rodeo. It rained so hard you couldn’t see for 100 yards so the rodeo was postponed until the next morning. The next morning, that was back when they played football in the Sun Bowl there, so it had grass. Well the next morning there was about that much water on that grass the humidity was about 190%. It was really miserable. That’s the only time I’ve really seen it rain that hard in St. George or that a rodeo got put off. About the one thing that will stop a rodeo is a down pour like that, lightning, or the grandstand caves in or a flood takes the arena out. It’s not much that will stop a rodeo. KF: Evanston, Wyoming, we had snow and that put off a performance. 23 JF: Snowed on us one year in Evanston and they put it off till the next morning, wasn’t it? KF: Till the next morning. JF: See these guys, when they enter a rodeo and they’re coming from 500 miles away or somewhere, they can’t drive to the rodeo and hear, “Oh sorry we’ve had to call it off.” After they’re entered, well the entry fees would be refunded, but the travel? So it’s not often a rodeo gets stopped. Course today now, with the cellphones, I mean the word gets around like that as to what’s going on. These guys are in constant communication as to who’s doing what at what rodeo and so on and so forth. LR: So what was your favorite rodeo that you photographed? JF: Prescott’s kind of still the old time feel of rodeo. Rodeo’s gotten so developed now with sponsor money and slicker productions. KF: What used to take three hours takes two. They’ve sped it up that much. JF: More of a laid back kind of a production. Tucson, I like photographing it because the way the arena’s set up I don’t have to move around all that much. It’s not really glitzy, but they have a lot of sponsor help on it. It’s a well-run rodeo. I can shoot a lot of great shots. Main reason I like the arena the way it is, it runs north and south. The bucking chutes are on the east side of the arena so I’ve got good light coming into it. They have a photographer’s pit right in front of the grandstand which the press uses. Myself and Dan Hubble are the so called official PRCA photographers so we can move around where we want to. He sets up on his end, on the south end of the photographer’s pit. I set up on the north end of the 24 photographer’s pit and it’s been that way for years. Used to be the committee, they didn’t really try to control photographers and at one time there was like six of us there. Which isn’t good for any of us. None of us are making any money and a couple of them were jerks. I don’t know what it is about photographing rodeo, it attracts some weird people sometimes. They think because they’re in the arena they’re god, they can do whatever they want to do, which isn’t cool. So the Tucson committee, the guy that’s general manager I’ve known him for years. They finally decided there’s going to be two photographers, myself and Dan Hubble. Dan Hubble’s photographed the national finals more years than I have through circumstances. So he and I have photographed the Tucson rodeo for over ten years. KF: It’s been about 20 years together. JF: I photographed the Tucson rodeo for… KF: Over 30 years. JF: 30 years, 31 years. So lot of what we’re able to do goes back, because we know people way back. We’re third generation, sometimes fourth generation if you want to count the little kids rodeos, with our rodeo photography. KF: Kids that were in the mutton busting. Well actually some of the kids that were fourth generation, we shot in the mutton busting, we are now shooting at Utah Junior High State Finals and High School State Finals we were fourth generation on those kids at the state high school finals. One of the last years that we photographed the state high school finals. JF: So… 25 LR: Having done this for a lot of years, what do you think is your legacy that you’re leaving with the next generation coming up? I mean is there anything you think that you’re hoping to leave with the coming up photographers? JF: Whole lot of worthless negatives. As far as a legacy, I don’t know. KF: A reputation for quality work. JF: Yeah, rodeo is fickle. I mean we could’ve quit years ago and five days later, “What happened to what’s his name?” They’ll be some people that’ll remember us when we quit, but like I say rodeo is fickle. The PRCA will honor their champion cowboys, but it hasn’t been until the last maybe five years that the photographers have started getting some respect. Part of that is the media coverage with photography, or that rodeo has gotten so big now with, PRCA pro rodeo on TV, the PBR, and bull riding, when they started that, that helped attract people to rodeo itself. So that’s another thing, the guys that started the PBR, I photographed them in high school rodeo, “100 years ago.” KF: National High School Finals. JF: I never had been associated with the PBR. I wish I was. There’s a photographer out of Wyoming, Wilson, Wyoming, that somehow fell in with photographing the PBR rodeos. I don’t know what they pay him, but they set up strobes in the arenas for him. He photographs it, flies to the contests and that’s all he does now. He photographs a few other rodeos on the side, but shoot, he’s got a steady income. Fellow we know that was a barrel man years ago for the PBR he got 50 grand for the season. Which was, I don’t know eight or ten maybe, rodeos. All he had to do was stand in the barrel. They didn’t want bulls fighting the barrel, 26 so he was just there as a fixture and a funnyman, he told jokes, did funny stuff. Man I’d love to have 50 grand for a few performances. I did photograph, when the wrangler bullfights first started back in, I think it was about ‘82, via knowing the rodeo stock contractor who initially got the thing going, through him I got hooked up with a representative from wrangler that was over the bullfights, and I photographed over two seasons about eight of their contests. KF: Each season. JF: I think I got a grand a weekend to photograph their meets. KF: Plus his expenses. JF: Yeah, plus expenses. Then they didn’t do anything with the photographs. So I don’t know… KF: Used it more in-house maybe. JF: Well I don’t remember. I didn’t do that much printing for them. I still have the negatives, I didn’t even send the negatives to them. So that was a good lick for a while. So as far as a legacy, yeah, somebody’s going to have a bunch of negatives and cd’s. National cowboy hall in Oak City has collections of Devere Helfritch which was “the man” back in the ‘40s and ‘50s. He was about the only one shooting rodeos back then. KF: Doubleday. JF: Well Doubleday was prior, way prior to Devere. Doubleday’s stuff as far as I know, I have no idea where it went. The Cowboy Hall of Fame in Oklahoma City has some of Devere’s work. I don’t know if it’s his whole thing, but they’ve got it. KF: Louise Surpa. 27 JF: Yeah, Louise Surpa out at Tucson. Louise photographed rodeo up to the time she was about ‘81 or ‘80. She wasn’t in the arena. KF: The last few years. JF: Yeah, she gave up being in the arena. I’m still in the arena. Her work may go to the cowboy hall, I don’t know. KF: Our youngest daughter, in fact, in our will she’s in charge of the rodeo stuff. The photography stuff. JF: Yeah, all our stuff’s willed to her. I told her if she can’t figure out a way to make money off of it, don’t let anybody else make money off of it. Take it out in the backyard and burn it. “No dad I’m not going to do that!” She gets really upset. KF: She had a fellow that she and her husband know. They were over at his place about two weeks ago and were talking about Jim. He’s very high on Jim, what he thinks of Jim and Jim’s quality of work. He was quizzing her about dad’s or Jim’s stuff. JF: Yeah, where it’s going. KF: She told him, she said, “My dad said to take it out in the yard, backyard and burn it.” He says, “Oh no you can’t do that!” LR: Do you have a favorite picture that maybe you’re the fondest of? JF: It’s hard to pin down. I wish you were at the house, I could show you some. Do you want to come to Logan? LR: Sure. JF: Trying to think, we’re heading for the Grand Canyon Wednesday. Be back Thursday, Friday. I’ll be back Friday. 28 KF: That would be one of his favorites right there. JF: Is that the view from the bottom? KF: View from the bottom. JF: Yeah. LR: Oh wow. JF: This is just a small sample of my work. KF: Get in the backroom and up in the cupboard there should be a picture book and show him… JF: Checking out? KF: Checking out. I don’t have checking out anywhere else. You guys can have that. LR: That is so cool. Thank you. Do you have any questions? WJ: What happens to your photography? Is it the rodeo’s property or is it I mean… JF: Oh no, no. It’s mine. KF: It’s his. JF: We sell photographs to the cowboys. I guess that we didn’t make that clear right from the start. LR: It’s okay. WJ: I was wondering without going into salary or anything. KF: We’re just strictly speculation. WJ: You’ve got to be able to sell it in order to keep doing it. So I was just wondering where the money comes from. 29 JF: The cowboys generally. Okay what we do, I photograph a performance, used to be the old way I had to process film. We’d shoot the rodeo, process film, hang it, it’d dry overnight. We’d get up in the morning, cut it and make proof sheets. KF: Contact sheets. JF: Yeah, I assume everybody knows what a contact sheet is. You lay the film on the paper, actually I used to lay it by hand one strip at a time. You got a safelight so you can see a little bit. Then I got these plastic negative pages, so I put the film in the pages and I’d fold the top margin of the page over the top of the paper and lay it down. That would keep it squared, then lay a piece of glass on it. When I just laid the strips on, there’s no way to keep them from crawling. You had to really be careful to lay the glass on or they’d (sound effect). So I started using the plastic pages to make proof sheets. We stapled the proof sheets to these celuter boards, insulation boards. Cut 2’ by 4’, lean them on the side of the trailer or wherever. I got some stored away. So the cowboys they’d come to the rodeo, they view the proof sheets. “Yeah I’d like to order this.” She writes up the order, collects the money and then I print it later. We used to, we’d print them, take them to the next rodeo. It used to be these guys entered a rodeo they were there for a week-end. Lot of them worked more than one event. Well now the bareback riders, they hit the ground they’re gone. They’re headed for the next rodeo. So we don’t’ get the traffic that we used too. When everybody hung out for a day or two. So anyway we’d have our proof boards on display and they’d view them and order them. The proof boards that I 30 got stowed under the bed back here we’ll put out at Herriman this weekend from the Moab rodeo. So each weekend we put out proofs from the past rodeo. KF: Then they go into loose leaf notebooks that I have in a box that the guys can if they miss us at the next rodeo, or two or three rodeos, they can see us and look at the books to order. JF: Yeah, we have the past year’s proof books with us. That gets to be a big hassle when we got PRCA proof books, college proof books, high school proof books. We stopped shooting high school rodeos this past spring (2013), but we’re still carrying proof books from last year. Main reason we stopped, well several reasons why we stopped high school rodeo. The state, took the state finals away from us couple of years ago because of one person’s stupidity and shot themselves in the foot so to speak. So I have a brother-in-law that’s helped us for… KF: Since 1979. JF: Yeah, high school rodeos are run in two arenas. So I usually shoot the rough stock arena, brother-in-law Wayne Williams would shoot the timed event arena. He’s what 60? KF: About the same age we are. 69/70. JF: ‘69 or ‘70 and his body’s breaking down on him. He’s had some problems, he broke his neck years ago skiing at Beaver Mountain when he was in college. He thought he was having nerve problems. He could push the button, but he couldn’t tell whether his finger was on it. He had to look and if you’re shooting fast action it’s kind of a pain you know. He’d get his finger on the button and then he could 31 shoot. He did marvelous really, considering. When he first started helping us I got more saleable pictures from him who had not shot a rodeo before than I did from some guys helping us that claimed to be rodeo photographers. So he’s been with us for a lot of years. So had this problem with his hand, well it turned out it’s… KF: Carpal tunnel. JF: Carpal tunnel so he’s, he didn’t have surgery yet on that did he? She’s had hers. KF: He had his done on the right hand, but not the left one. JF: So turned out his right hip gave out on him before his hand did. So he had hip surgery three, two weeks ago… KF: He had carpal tunnel in his right hand first, then he had the hip surgery now he’s got to have carpal tunnel in his left hand, then he’s got to have his left hip done. JF: So he was seeing the writing on the wall. He wasn’t going to be able to hold up much longer on it so we quit doing the high school rodeos. KF: After a year ago, August. JF: Which gives us a break this spring. We thought we were going to get a lot of stuff done around the house and we didn’t. We didn’t get a darn thing done hardly. So anyway Wayne wasn’t able to precede so we quit the high school rodeos. We still do a few college rodeos, mostly PRCA rodeos. If we weren’t on social security we wouldn’t be able to keep going. The sales have dropped off, part of it because of the way—used to be when guys entered the rodeo they came to the rodeo office, they paid their fees, timed eventers checked the draw to see what they had. Well now they pay their fees through a system the PRCA has set up. They don’t even deal in money with the rodeo secretary anymore. 32 KF: Procom. JF: Well Procom’s how they entered. KF: Oh that’s how they enter? Okay. JF: Everything’s done electronically now. KF: I think a couple of them did at Moab. They paid right there. At the office, yeah, they paid Wendy I think. JF: At the office, yeah. Anyway most of them have an account with PRCA. If they place at a rodeo the money goes to that account. Well then they can pay their entry fees for the next rodeo right out of that account. Where before the rodeo secretary had to write checks for everybody. They still do, no the whole total payoffs through… KF: Payoffs through the office now. That changed about a year ago. JF: Yeah, so the secretaries don’t even pass out any money anymore. Which makes it rough if some guys’ rodeoing and if they don’t have any money in their pocket, so if they place at a rodeo they expect to have a check from the rodeo. Well the way its set up now they would have a credit card on the account in the PRCA. So they can still get a motel room or a meal or whatever if they’ve got money in their account. They’re allowed to over draw to a point. Which I don’t know how far that is, but they get cut off real quick if they abuse that. Where’d we end up? KF: You were going to get the picture book out and show them checking out. JF: The most exciting thing, well the worst thing that’s happened to me photographing was at the National Finals in Oak City, ‘84… KF: ‘80 or ‘81. 33 JF: Oh it was that far back? Okay. First performance wasn’t it? KF: About the third or fourth performance. We looked it up. JF: The pickup men were bringing an empty bareback horse down the arena to run him into the out gate. As they ran by, packed dirt flew out of a hoof and hit me in the right eye. I mean just turned my head around. I thought, “Well who threw that? Why would somebody throw that?” The glasses I had on had a kind of a spring loaded ear piece on them and that helped absorb the impact. It did break the lenses and I had shards of glass and dirt in my eye. I was able to keep it shut, I didn’t try to open it and irritate it and immediately left the arena. One of the cowboys along the fence picked my glasses up, he saw what happened. Karen’s out in the foyer area with all our proof books and stuff so she has to throw everything on the hand truck. KF: A couple of the guys helped me. JF: I went into the first aid room and they put Vaseline on it to kind of cushion the debris in my eye. Karen drove us to the ER at the hospital somewhere there in Oak City not knowing the streets. KF: Thankfully it was close. JF: They cleaned my eye out and put a patch on it. Went back to the arena in time to finish shooting the rodeo from outside the fence with my other eye. I photograph with my left eye ever since. KF: It ended up being a blessing in disguise. JF: I still think that’s part of why my backs crooked. I started shooting my left eye and shooting left eye there’s more advantages to it than you would think. I couldn’t go 34 back to my right eye now. Everybody shoots their right eye. If you’re shooting your left eye you can see what’s going on. If you shooting with your right eye, you’ve got your hand up here or you got your eye closed looking through the view finder. Well I can shoot my left eye and I can see this barrel racer going around the first barrel. When she’s there, then I know I’m about ready to shoot or I can, if I’m trying to shoot a bucking horse and the pickup men are coming around I’m more aware of what’s going on. Left a couple of scratches on my eye, it didn’t hinder my vision a whole lot. That’s probably the worst thing that’s happened to me in the arena. I’ve had close calls. I have a close call somebody says, “Boy, that was kind of close wasn’t it?” I say, “Well, nah, it ain’t close unless they touch you.” LR: That’s where that quote came from. JF: Long as you don’t get hit it’s not close. This Louise Surpa that we were talking about, the lady from Tucson. Her saying was, “Don’t never not pay attention,” and that’s so true. You’ve got to be aware of everything’s going around you. I’ve seen other photographers… KF: Wiped out. JF: Didn’t pay attention. One fellow down at Tucson, I don’t know where his head was, in the clouds I guess. He was back against the wall by the photographer’s pit and he’s out here gawking around. The pickup men came from the far side of the arena, down the back side, down the front, and I’m thinking, “Jim, Jim wake up, look Jim.” There’s so much noise that there’s nothing I could do but holler. The other people on the front there, apparently they weren’t aware of what was 35 happening. I finally yelled but it was too late. They flat ran over him. Broke his camera and broke his nose. It’s no wonder it didn’t kill him. You can’t do that when you’re in the arena like that. I have kind of a second sense and kind of a timing mechanism. If the pickup men are over here and they’re chasing one around. I might look like I’m marking on my program, but I’m watching the people around me. People will react to what’s going on. I know that there’s so many seconds that it’s going to take this pickup men to get around that arena. I’m marking my program, by the time they’re coming, I’m out of the way. I know there’s people see me in my arena and I got my head down. I’m watching if there’s people around me and they start reacting then I know it’s time to get out of the way. KF: We had a pickup man working at the National High School Finals. Jim told him he says, “If I’m ever in your way you do your job.” “It’s my fault.” Kenny says, “No, we watch out for you.” JF: Because I wasn’t a jerk. There’s photographers in the arena that are jerks. This particular pickup man at the college national finals one year. There was a jerk in the arena and Kenny says he was a squirrely little blank blank. He says as hard I tried I couldn’t run over him. The guy was always in the way but somehow he escaped. This Ken was 6 foot 6… KF: Had a reach like a gorilla. JF: These high school kids hang up in the bareback riding, he’d hook a spur under the far side of the saddle and he could reach ten feet and get them out of the rigging. 36 KF: He’d grab them by their belt and picked them up. JF: One high school rodeo, one high school national finals kid was hung up in the bareback riding and Kenny actually bulldogged the horse, jumped off and had him eared down. About the time he had the horse caught, the kid’s hand came out. He was something else to watch. WJ: What is your favorite event to… JF: Photograph? Probably the saddle bronc riding. KF: It was also his hardest. It was the biggest challenge. JF: Yeah, the saddle bronc riding if guy’s riding right I’ll shoot when the horse kicks, when he’s in a full kick. If the guys riding right he’s going to have his feet up in the front where they’re supposed to be. He’s lifting on his rein, not pulling on it. The idea of lifting, if you lift and your feet are in the neck, it’s got you pulled down against the swells of the saddle. Lot of guys that’ll pull a bronc rein this way and they can ride them, but they’re not going to make a lot of points. Guys that make the points they kind of float in that saddle. So they lift on that rein, take their spring motion from the front end of the horse to the cantle of the saddle. Same as with bareback riding, a lot of these kids don’t realize there’s more than keeping your hand in the rigging. Your feet and the spurs in the front end of that horse pulls you up to your rigging. So these guys that are just flopping their legs, taking it all on their hand, they’re not going to win anything. They can’t out stout the horse so you’ve got to use your feet to help pull you in there to ride the horse. So yeah bronc riding, shooting the horse, catching him in a kick, getting the rider in a good position. I’ve got so some of these guys that I photograph and they don’t 37 ride that good, they might have a good horse and their feet are back where they shouldn’t be. I won’t delete the image, I’ll leave them in there, so they can see that they don’t ride real good all the time. WJ: It’s like watching film in other sports. You’re checking your technique. Are those one’s ever sold much? JF: No, they won’t buy them that way. I’ve got two display boards well sometimes we have three display boards that we’ll have 8 X 10’s on and they’re usually the better action, the good action. KF: It’s also some wrecks. JF: Wreck, yeah. Somebody getting wiped out. There’s one in Prescott last year a steer wrestler. He caught the steer and kind of knocked him down and everything just kind of scrambled, broke loose. When I shot the photograph the guy’s prone on the ground and the steer has his left horn stuck right in his back pocket. Just freaky thing and I put a caption on it. What did it say? I forgot now. KF: Let’s see: twist my neck will ya? JF: Oh yeah twist my neck will ya. KF: With a question mark. JF: I put it on my board. The guy wasn’t real appreciative, but it doesn’t show his face. Unless you know him well you wouldn’t know who it was. Of all the things to have happen, it looks like that steer is purposely sticking his horn into his rear. Where’s the book? KF: There’s one in a sack up in that cupboard. Back behind, clear to the back I think it is. 38 JF: That’s one of my favorites. LR: Oh I can see why. KF: This guy knew the horse, a re-ride horse, after the rodeo he says, he told Jim not to snap the picture right away because he says, “If this horse starts to rear over I’m going to check out.” JF: Billy says this horse is going to go out there and throw himself so these guys, they don’t want to get on a horse like that. Apparently the horse can buck, but Billy was ready to bail out. He knew the horse was going to do it. LR: That’s gorgeous. JF: Yeah, the neat thing about it is there’s no trashy background. That’s the thing about rodeo. It’s hard to get a so called arty type shot because of the garbage in the background, that’s just shooting flash on camera and there’s no background in it. LR: I’m just thumbing through it. JF: Oh help yourself. This is a classic bronc riding type shot. I got one more story to tell you. On our way to Tucson in February we’re about I don’t know 20 miles north of Flagstaff maybe. Rotting along about 65 and I hear a noise and I looked in my left rearview mirror and here goes a wheel down the road. Not rolling but like this, flipping like end over end only its round. Whoppity, whoppity, whopp. I’d had the bearings backed, I had it done every year in October in the fall when we’re done. Had the bearings backed last October and the rear bearing on this side burned. Was it too tight, too loose, something? In the past I’ve had a hot bearing and I’ve discovered it. Well we stopped about 30 minutes before at 39 Cameron, Arizona. I walked around the trailer but I didn’t feel the wheels and I didn’t feel any heat. It had to have been really hot. So anyway, I get stopped, it didn’t throw us or anything. The axle didn’t go onto the road. I get out and I’m thinking how am I going to find lug nuts to put the wheel back on? Well then I get to the trailer, it wasn’t lug nuts, the whole drum, everything came off. So I walked down the road trying to find the wheel. I don’t know which way it went. I turn around to come back here goes fire out through the grass. My wheel was red hot and there was grass about oh 15-18 inches tall, luckily that’s all there was. Just this tall grass and there’s lots of dirt spaces in between, but there was a breeze behind it. By the time I discovered it was running flame probably as long as this trailer and kind of like this. Comes from the point of ignition then its spreading. The wind was moving at different directions. It was kind of heading north for a time. There was an Indian trading post oh half mile maybe… KF: Half mile. JF: Up the road and here comes a guy on a tractor and another guy with a shovel. So I’m thinking, what should I do? Fight fire or what? Didn’t figure I could do much so I got my, I had gloves, and I got my wheel out of the burn. I went and got my shovel, starting working on it and a guy driving by had a shovel. He came to help me. Between the two of us we got the southern perimeter of it pretty much stopped from moving further south. So we got it done, by then there were vehicles from several agencies there. We were near Wupatki National Monument so park service had a truck there. I think BLM had a truck there. Flagstaff had a 40 truck there. There was five trucks there before we left and a tanker truck. They weren’t really getting to upset about it. They were out on the west end of it. So me and this other fellow finished up and we’re walking back and I made the comment I said, geez it’s been over 50 years since I did anything like this. I said I used to work on the North Rim. He says, “Oh well I worked on the South Rim,” so he’d had some firefighting experience too. He said to me, he says, “I thought the way you were moving that you had done this before.” What kind of tipped me off on him, when you’re on a fire line you’ll work a section and then you’ll “bump.” You’ll pass the guy and then move on and then he’ll catch up to you. That’s what I was doing with this guy, but he was just kind of random in what he was doing, where I was working the perimeter of it. Luckily there was a lot of soft, damp dirt. It had rained several days before so you could take a shovel and lay a pretty good spray of dirt over it and stop it. So anyway then how do we get into Flagstaff? On three wheels. So we took everything out of here, all of our proofs, proof boards, stuff, put it in the truck. Got rid of that weight and got into Flagstaff. There was a shop right there on the edge of town, R.V. camp. Guy in the shop says bring it in the next morning at nine. Spent the night in the R.V. camp, had the trailer in there, into him at nine, went ate breakfast, did some shopping. Came back about 1:00, by 1:30 we were done and by 2:00 we were on the road. He put a new axle under, he replaced the drum that was ruined, put new bearings, put us all back together. That’s probably the worst thing that’s happened to us in all our years of travel. We’ve had burned 41 bearings before, but I caught them before they did a whole lot of damage. Before we lost the wheel. LR: Well thank you so much for taking the time to sit with us and to talk about your experiences with rodeo and photography. JF: Well hopefully you’ll have some, think of some questions or something that need filling in some holes or anything. I really didn’t delve much into the photography end of it, but did I? Didn’t I? LR: I thought you did. Maybe it’s just what I was looking for. JF: This is, I don’t know if you noticed the title. This is ten years, my first ten years and you can have that. LR: Oh, are you sure? KF: We have enough pictures we could do a second, a third, and a fourth and start even on a fifth decade. LR: Oh, I was looking at his. There’s this one shot that caught my eye. It’s not so much anything but the look on the gentleman’s face that caught my eye. JF: See this bull’s spinning this way and he’s like this into the, there’s a sweet spot when a bull’s spinning and he’s in it right there. Yeah he’s kind of like these snowboarders when they hit that spot they’re using a lot of body control. LR: Then this one, two, where he’s I mean I don’t know if he’s going to get back down in the saddle. JF: Did you read the name? LR: Kirby, my fair lady. JF: That’s Wendy’s dad. 42 LR: Is that Bud Kirby? JF: Yes. LR: Oh, my gosh! I wasn’t looking at the names. I should start looking at the names. KF: The first quarter of the book is High School Rodeo including the 1973 National High School Finals. The second fourth of the book is College Rodeo including some old National Finals College Rodeos. Then the last half of the book is Pro Rodeo. JF: I’ve got Chris LeDoux photos on his last box sets. KF: Had them on a couple different box sets. LR: I actually know who he is. JF: You’ve heard of Chris LeDoux? LR: I’ve heard of Chris LeDoux. That’s saying something. JF: Yeah, first photographed him at the college finals in Sacramento.. KF: In 1969, Sacramento, California. JF: Yeah, he was riding hurt. Had some broken ribs I think and I photographed, I’ve got several photographs of Chris. LR: So is this common for you? JF: Sometimes, he’s just getting ripped out of there. One photo I took at Tucson two years ago, bull riding. The bull came out and as he came out the rider slipped off into the inside of the spin. Well as he went under, his left spur hooked in the flank and he goes totally under this bull’s belly. This bull is jumping and kicking and spinning and he’d whip out and then he’d whip back under. He was under tight enough the bull wasn’t kicking him. 43 KF: Now does she know what the flank is? JF: Flank strap. KF: Flank strap, see if you can find a picture of the flank strap. LR: Isn’t that the front of the horse? JF: No it goes around. KF: It goes around the… JF: This rope here. LR: Oh okay. JF: So as he came off, his spur hung in the bull rope and he’s, his spur is hung here and his hand’s hung in the rope. So he’s getting whipped under the bull and there’s not much the bullfighters can do. They can’t get the bull lined out. If they get him lined out then one of them could jump in there and maybe get his hand loose, but the bull just kept cracking it. Finally he came loose, the bull went out the gate. With help, he walked out on his own and was up at a rodeo in Texas that night and got on another bull. Yeah. So it’s pretty amazing what the human body will take. LR: Yeah, and do you just have this… KF: We have it available for sale. JF: No, it’s a knack. LR: Well maybe yeah just this knack of being able to catch the rider or the animal at just the right moment. JF: A lot of it, you’ve seen it before, so you anticipate it a lot of times. You can see it setting up sometimes. 44 KF: I think the fact that he competed himself where he had ridden bulls. He’d been on bulls and bareback horses, and also he steer wrestled. He had a feeling for both ends of the arena. He even got on the saddle bronc one time was it? JF: One time. KF: Jim said he didn’t like that. JF: At a college rodeo. KF: Just the fact that he’d done it you know. He got a feel for it from the time he was young. You know 12 years of age or so. I think that helped play into it. LR: That makes sense. JF: A lot of it is you just have to be quick. You have to anticipate. This situation here, Chris LeDoux’s on the bareback horse and the pickup man was out here waiting to ride in. Well this little paint horse froze up, just locked up. This horse hit him and knocked him down. LR: Looks like he’s getting hit. JF: Yeah, this same thing happened to him the weekend before at a different rodeo. I wasn’t there, but it knocked Art out. The horse, he’d just freeze up for some reason. KF: He was a good horse, but he just didn’t work. JF: He got broadsided and knocked him down. So that was the case, I can’t say that I saw it setting up and was able to anticipate what was going to happen. It was a case of where it was clear what was going to happen. The horse locked up and here comes the pickup man for the bucking horse. I’ve got another shot at the college finals one year. The pickup man, the bareback horse was coming down 45 the arena. The ride was finished. The pickup man came in this way and just as he got there the horse jumped right. Hit the pickup horse in the back quarters which knocked him down. I got my camera up in time to shoot just as the pickup man’s head hit the ground. You can see the forces and he had, he suffered what do they call it? KF: A major… JF: A traumatic brain injury. KF: Very traumatic brain injury, he never did get back to quite normal. JF: He did pickup. KF: But he wasn’t back, he never did get quite normal. JF: He died at a young age. Possibly because of that wreck. It was a case of I just got the camera up in time and shot. KF: The brain damage was not on the side where it hit the ground. The brain damage was on the off side because your brain rattles around in there. So it just went the other way and that’s where the damage was. JF: There’s a shot in there…oh this one. I have a picture that a guy on a back of the chutes took over here. It shows me kneeling down out in the arena at the instant I shot that picture. LR: Oh really? KF: And the guy gave him a copy of it. JF: I’ve got the negatives. KF: Oh you’ve got the negatives? LR: Seems like an awfully big animal for that tiny, tiny child. 46 JF: Yeah some of these high school kids aren’t real large. KF: Is that the one of Claudia Pence? JF: No it’s a bull rider, Cal Skinner. KF: Oh Cal Skinner? He wasn’t very big. JF: No. LR: No, he’s teeny. The bull looks three times as big as he is and probably was. JF: This guy, Miles Hare, he was the first world’s champion wrangler rodeo bullfighter. LR: Wow. It’s crazy that you, it just seems like you just grab it at the perfect moment. In a normal shoot how many pictures do you take and how many of those are actually usable? JF: Oh now or back then? LR: Sure, both. JF: Back then there were a lot of poor shots. Now if it’s a good jump or kick horse like a saddle bronc I can shoot six or eight or ten shots that are good. KF: Well on a normal rodeo performance he will get between 150 and 300 shots a night depending on how many kids, or how many people are entered. Out of those say 250-300 shots most of them would be sellable with very few that you’d—now with being digital he can take off the ones that aren’t any good. When I say those numbers that’s after he’s shot and deleted some of them. He’ll still have that many shots. JF: I’ll delete as a, I photograph if I have time. Sometimes I don’t have time between rides to delete what I want to do. Generally I can pretty well get rid of the sorry 47 ones. Then at the time I do my proof sheets, okay I download my images. I’ve got them up on the screen. I file number everything, okay then I go back through and if there’s some duds I’ll go ahead and eliminate them. Which that bothered me for a time because I wanted everything to be consecutively numbered, but it just doesn’t work out. When I write on my program, okay first bareback rider out, shots 1-5. The next one, so on down the line. On the program, or the day sheet I keep track of the images I shoot. So I have to number them all or I’m out of sequence on my id. So I number them all and then I go through and eliminate the ones, the duds. I can still id everybody because they’re still in the order. There were a couple times I messed up and I had the images on the screen and I started eliminating images. Well then that puts everything out of sequence for idling it. KF: About half the way, well he used to be he’d hand the sheets to me and I would help with the id. Well then he would’ve skipped some of these numbers because he deleted but yet they didn’t line up with the day sheets. So then I’d have to say Jim what’s this? What’s this? You know that type of thing. JF: I can, like I say, if it’s a good horse I can get a lot of good shots. Bull riding I’m kind of limited by how long the rider lasts on the bull. If he rides good and the bull bucks good I can get a half a dozen good shots. The cameras I’m using are, I think the one is five frames a second, but I don’t just hold it down and let it run. A case where I would let it run is if there’s some kind of a wreck. Something spectacular is going on then I’ll let it run. As was the case with that one in Tucson where the guy was hung up and whipping under the bull’s belly. I just pretty much 48 let it, shoot a burst of six and see what’s happening. Shoot a burst of six more and so the spectacular shot that I pulled out of that was because of a burst thing. I don’t use the motor drive that much as far as shooting a ride and letting it run. There was a situation at Peoa, this guy puts on what’s called a bucking horse futurity. I don’t know if you’re familiar with how futurity work. They do it in racing. You have a colt that you think’s got a prospect of being a winner so you enter this colt. I don’t know how old they start with, in this race that’s a year or two years away. Well they do this with bucking horses too. The cowboys will jackpot it. They’ll pay an entry fee and there’s placings paid on that. The animals are judged and the stock contractor will win money if his animal wins the event, judged on how hard they buck. Well one of the guys had a horse that when the rider nodded for him, instead of turning out he jumped into the front of the chute this way and I punched the button, just let it run. Shot about ten frames and the horse went up. He didn’t fall but the rider fell off and he’s right under this horse. So I’ve got a sequence of this horse where the wreck started, the guy falls off, the horse jumps over him. So that’s a motor burst there on I think it was about ten shots of it. Stuff like that and I really didn’t get anything that spectacular. Lot of times when you shoot a burst like that you miss the peak action because it’s not quite sequenced to what’s going on. So that’s the advantage of being able to see the action and pick it out. This is one of my favorites. That’s a one shot there. KF: Which ones that one Jim? JF: The angora… KF: Oh the “Angora Can’t Fly?” 49 JF: Yeah I’ve got a 22 by, 17 by 22 print of it at home. LR: Do you think you have some shots that are just pure luck? That you just happen to shoot it at the right moment? JF: That one. I’m looking at him through the viewfinder, but all of a sudden that happens. Barely got it framed. Barely got the vertical straight. KF: He likes to let the action come to him instead of him setting up the shot, I’m talking about ranch photography. He prefers to let the guys come to him instead of telling them I want you to wear a red shirt, I want you to wear a striped shirt. He just does it as is. JF: I don’t direct it, it just happens. WJ: You don’t like posed pictures. LR: That’s not posed? JF: No. We came, we rode over this mountain, and this is in Montana. Started on the north side, rode over this mountain gathering cattle off the mountain. Down to the corrals on the south side of the mountain and that’s after lunch. They just laid… LR: They’re just lying there. JF: Yeah, taking a break. I’m shooting from, yeah you have trouble figuring out the… LR: Are you above them? JF: I’m shooting down this way. LR: Okay. JF: There’s a loading chute and a fence right here and I’m standing on the fence shooting down. I tipped it to a vertical. 50 KF: He knew he wanted to print it. Before we went to print on it, he looked at it this way. The only way that looked right was this way. JF: Vertical, it gives it a strange perspective. LR: So this one here, Buckle Up, it’s so simple and yet it’s almost one of the most beautiful pictures. JF: Yeah, I’ve got a big print of that one too. LR: That you have here it’s kind of taking my breath away. Do you do that on purpose? Do you print it that way on purpose? JF: Well that’s pretty much how I shot it. LR: In black and white? JF: Yeah. I haven’t really, I didn’t crop anything out. The light was there and I shot it so that I’ve got detail in the shadow and detail in the highlight. LR: Wow. KF: They’re going to have to come up to the house sometime to see your exhibit wall you’ve got in the living room. LR: Wouldn’t that be fantastic? I just think that’s amazing. KF: That’s just a sample of his photography. LR: Well I, do you have any other questions? Well we sat and talked photography there for about what ten minutes? So thank you thank you so much. JF: Well if you think of anything else. LR: Oh yeah absolutely. JF: If you’d like to come to the house and look you wouldn’t have to do that before… 51 KF: Oh they could go over here to the Golden Spike Coliseum and get them to let you in to the conference room. There’s about six or eight or ten of his prints at the front of the building. LR: I wish I would’ve known you were down at the station for all of the month of May. JF: Yeah, we had how many? 20 prints down there about. KF: Oh probably. He just picked them up Tuesday. LR: Yeah he picked them up as we were doing another one of these. JF: Oh you were in there? LR: Yeah we were the ones in your way with the camera. JF: Yeah. WJ: We were there with Ron and Ginger Brown. JF: Well since you didn’t say a heck of a lot about it concerning me I’m, I thought it was just a separate deal. That’s why it didn’t dawn on me. KF: Oh yeah, this could’ve been, you could’ve almost done the interview at the same time. LR: It’s all good. This has been great. JF: We’ve had to have crossed paths with Browns through the years. KF: We have several times. Jim they’ve been at rodeos that you photograph. JF: Well it had to have been back in the ‘70’s. KF: We’ve got pictures of them I just don’t know where. WJ: They mentioned that. JF: Did they? WJ: Yeah. 52 KF: They’ve bought pictures from us before. LR: They mentioned that his first rodeo… WJ: Was at the beginning of your career and he has a picture that you took of his first rodeo. JF: So it would’ve been late ‘60’s, not competing no. WJ: Doing Roman riding. JF: One of the part of their acts.