How many of us would like to change the path we set out on? Would we do what we love or feel compelled to follow the status quo? If we could jump into that uncertain future, what would it look like?
Born into a rodeo family near Harrison, Ark., Kathy Parker spent weekends and summers traveling to rodeos with her parents, George and Bonnie Parker, and younger brother, Keith. Now living in rural Vinita, Okla., she realizes those childhood occurrences set the stage for a fulfilling change when she arrived at a crossroads in her life.
“I had a horse and a dog waiting on me before I was born,” she said.
George, a rodeo clown and bareback bronc rider, took the family to various events, something she remembers as a charmed life.
“I was always riding horses and anytime we went to livestock shows, I would take my horse along to run barrels,” Kathy recalled. “But it wasn’t until I was in college that I realized other people hadn’t done much of anything in their lives.”
She recalls going on overnight trail rides and cook outs along the Buffalo River, learning how to play guitar and sing bluegrass music, later performing in a band at Dog Patch. She took part in the Bicentennial Wagon Train with her grandfather, John Henry Shaddox, and established an annual wagon train, bearing his name, that still treks 100 miles from Harrison, Ark., to Springdale, Ark., each summer.
She attended the University of Arkansas, obtaining her bachelor’s in agriculture education, and then her master’s while teaching ag education at Elkins (Ark.) High School.
“I liked teaching ag, I really did, but it became apparent to me that if you were to be a good and successful ag teacher it would have to be your passion to the degree that it would be your life.”
Her heart wasn’t in education.
“My life really started when I moved to Oklahoma in 1990 and I learned how to do real ranch work,” Kathy added.
The life transition brought new experiences.
“I never wanted to be anything but a cowboy,” she remarked. She become a pen rider at the South Coffeyville Sale Barn and the Tulsa Stockyards, working during the week at the Pryor, Okla., newspaper as a reporter and then managing editor for more than 20 years.
“I was pretty green when I started out doing ranch work,” she said. “Curtis Capps owned a rodeo company and was a friend, he began teaching me how to do real ranch work.”
She started participating in the WRRA, the women’s version of ranch rodeo competitions in 2000. The events encompass every aspect of ranch work such as, trailer loading, simulated calf doctoring and branding. She participated on various teams until the competitions began to move further out west, making it no longer time or cost effective to continue.
Today, she works for Delaware County in land records, writes freelance articles and posts in her blog, Park-n-Ride. Weekends find her on any ranch needing hands to work cattle or attending benefit rodeos.
Life has never been dull in her 55 years.
“It’s taken a long time to be drug this many miles,” she laughs. “Some talk of checkered pasts. I could make a crazy quilt.”
She has no regrets about jumping in with both feet, realizing that at the crossroads you either stay the course or jump. No one wants to think, “Why didn’t I try it to see if I could?”
“I’ve been blessed and I thank the good Lord for my life,” she said. “I think the greatest ending would be to just fall off my horse dead one day after years of working cattle.”
