Gary team roped with a world pro, and I met the famous Rodeo bullfighter, Leon Coffee

 

Inspired by memories of my brother is this dry erase sketch. My brother Gary won the all around saddle, at least once. To do that he had to hang on to a bronc eight seconds with no foul, and either catch a cow in his loop and milk it and pour the milk out of the bottle in front of a judge in a certain amount of time, and/or rope from his horse, going full speed, and get off and somehow and tie a calf so we'll all in a limited time, so that it could not get up, and/or team role a steer with a partner. All in one rodeo appearance. He bested the Bronco, and at least two of the other three, on at least one occasion to make him worthy to get drug through the mud, or dunked in the cattle troughs by envious and celebratory fellow cowhands immediately after the awards ceremony. My brother, and he was still a butthead even after winning the all around. But even as buttheaded as he was, he was still my brother. And I'll always be proud of my all around cowboy brother and an glad he won even if he was a butthead. Because he was my brother and I wanted him to win, and he did. Awesome.
 

 

 

 

I met the famous Rodeo bullfighter, Leon Coffee, featured in this clipping, while I was bucking out on bareback string rodeo horses- practicing bronc riding at Bobby Steiner's weekly bucking out of his pro- personal  practice arena just outside of Austin. Stiener was the biggest pro rodeo contractor in the district, and maybe the region. More about this meeting the great Leon Coffee will follow.

     Here are results from some of my latest drawing drills. The drawing drills are a series of drawing that I will do in the course a day, in a given period of time between twelve minutes, up to an hour and a half, and usually I'm trying to finish rendering a subject between under a minute, and five minutes, if the drawing involves more than one figure, or subject. 

   A common practice, that I make a point of, is to do the series of at least 3 drawings on various sized surfaces. Besides the moonwalk image, at the beginning of my post; here are some of the latest:

Included also, here: one I did of a very appreciative subject on the street, one day.

 And here are some things most people don't know about my past.  :

Agriculture has been a subject, in my art. Many people know that I grew up on a small farm, in Kitsap county, in the area of what was referred to around our district, as the central Kitsap area. There was no mall in Silverdale, in my youth. The district where I lived was either rural, or small town.

 

My name is mentioned in the beginning of the tally, of contestants' placement in a Rodeo in Kerrville, TX., in this page clipped from a regional publication on the sport.

I kept my promise to myself, to win the first rideo bareback bronc riding contest that I entered, when I got to Texas.

My foreman at 3-J Grain Co. Buda, Texas, USA

Gerry.  I had to run after him whenever he would take me to my my next work task area, to receive my instructions.  Gerry was the first real foreman, on a real job, that I ever had. He had started by out in that mill as a young man, probably, as a not legal citizen. Then he would probably retire from there. I would not be sticking around to see him get his watch. One time after we unloaded the hundred lb bags of meal and stacked them to the ceiling and I had to get atop of the pile and move them the last few feet myself- and action that made me see stars, the exertion was so great, bag after bag, almost impossible to budge, but no one else could do it, so there I was.  Gerry told me I should go down to Galveston and get a job as a porter for 18 bucks and hour.  that would be the equivalent, of 55 bucks and hour- roughly, in comparison to today's dollar value.  Easy for him to say, he didn't feel the way my body felt after doing that horrendous job.  I weighed about a hundred seventy two pounds. And i couldn't see myself beefing up, and becoming a muscle man, just so i could make 55 bucks an hour unloading shipments all day.  A few months later a great blast ripped though the port of Galveston loading dock facilities when someone standing in the wrong place lit a match, or flicked a lighter. Scores were injured, or killed. They were supposed to tell you when you started working in a place like this about the high flammability of the meal dusty air.  No one did that for me. Fortunately I chewed Copenhagen Smokeless tobacco, and was making a comment about a wooden shovel one day, and then they told me.  Good thing I had not been a smoker.

I had plans to go to a college, but then wanted to experience some real world, so when I was I was invited to accompany a friend with his mom to Texas, where it was offered, that he and I would get a chance to try our hand at working on a construction outfit, I accepted.

I packed my rodeo roughstock riding gear. 

That's right, one of the activities of my youth, had been rodeo. I completed in some semi-pro, and pro rodeos, while in Texas.

After not long with the construction outfit, they were shut down by the IRS for some misunderstanding, or failure to pay tax. I then immediately signed onto a labor gig, with a feed mill.

The last thing in the world I needed to add to my resume was working on a grain dock, unloading trucks, and shoveling cattle feed, and grains and seeing to their loading, and unloading, and movement around the complex.  I had already put in considerable time in the wonderful and physically demanding aspects of agriculture works. I had started working other farms, at thirteen, and had done occasional gig work, unloading hay trucks, or 'haying' fields. There was nothing for me to prove, and it would be a step backwards from being an apprentice in a skilled labor operation.

My motive was the simple fear of living the rest of my life thinking that I had returned home beaten with my tail tucked between, my legs, because I couldn't negotiate a difficult circumstance on my own. 

Pride won the day. 

Or. Well; whatever- at least it was the dominant force that pushed me into taking the feed mill job, and let me continue the Texas Adventure. Whether that really paid off as a "win", is still a question mark.  I suppose it was, because, maybe I will be able to weave the experience into some of my illustrated novel tales that I will be spinning.  We'll see.

Here are some pics, and some explanations, it little blurbs, about the events, maybe, and also some other photos of chapters big my life that most people are probably unaware of:

In part of my youth I completed in Rodeos, I was able to compete in some Rodeos that were held locally, and even occasionally in the next district, if I was so inclined.  Traveling hundreds of miles in Texas, even around central Texas, is much easier than similar trips up north where geaography poses poses mental fatigue challenges after awhile behind the wheel.  In most of Texas, everything is flat. It was nothing for people to regularly attend events around two hundred miles away, and return the same day.

I'll cover a bit about my military training experiences, and helicopter logging stint, in one of my next entries.  I hope you found something interesting in that blurb about my Texas experience, in my youth.