By the time you get this issue, Storm Isaac will either have kissed you or went by without a tear. The folks over at Clinton, Ark., must have gotten more rain than the Arkansas/Oklahoma border had as we waited for the big storm. Some friends called to tell me the large Bar Eoff Ranch is green. That’s eight miles west of town. Of course those folks were Tonto and Beverly Shepherd from Winslow, Ark. They wanted me over there on Sunday for the 20-year plaque ceremony that we were set to receive. I’d sent Dan and Peggy Eoff a note that I sure appreciated all they’d done for me, but Pat and I weren’t any younger and we’d skip the Chuckwagon Races this year.
Beverly told her husband to call and get me over there because the three of us started the same year over there. In those days I came to help Danny Newland co-announce the national Chuck Wagon Racing Championship over Labor Day weekend. I’d never been and when Dan called we had a nice conversation. It included if he got rained out that weekend and had no money to pay me that he’d come smile and shake my hand for helping him. He laughed but after a few years it sunk in I meant what I said.
In my life I have been in several deals, where calamity struck. Once a guy ran off with the rodeo gates. Another guy wrote me a hot check that messed up my bank account. I told him the same thing. He paid me in cash after that. But I meant what I said. We joked about it for years.
Right after I agreed on the phone with Tonto to tell Beverly I’d join her, Dan called and said, “good you’re coming.”
For a long time I co-announced the racing event with Dan. A few years ago it was hard for me to tell Dan I couldn’t stand out in the 100-degree heat for five hours anymore. So I stepped down and after that said the invocation and announced the winners.
The three-day event draws thousands of people and some even camp out for a week on the ranch. They dance, stomp and have a mountain man rendezvous in the bottoms. Then on Friday, Saturday and Sunday they seriously race, mules, horses and ponies.
It is NASCAR on iron wheels. I have seen riders go off over their horses head, get rolled on by that horse and get up to go chase down their teams. One lady was riding as the cook when the wagon tongue buried itself in a tree; she was shot off her place and went clear over the mule’s heads. She broke her collarbone, arm, hip and I don’t know what all. Next year she was right back in that wagon and laughing about it.
Two runaway horses pulling a two-wheel truck made it between two new Silverado’s but the wheels didn’t. Another similar runaway cleared the grill and bumper off the County Sheriff’s brand new Jeep station wagon.
You missed a great one this year down there. Plan next year to spend the three days over Labor Day at the National Chuck Wagon Racing Championship with Peggy and Dan. God bless.
Western novelist Dusty Richards and his wife Pat live on Beaver Lake in northwest Arkansas. For more information about his books you can email Dusty by visiting ozarksfn.com and clicking on ‘Contact Us’ or call 1-866-532-1960.
