Rapid City, Finally!

June 29th, 2013. The trip to Rapid City from Belle Fourche was long but enjoyable. Almost immediately after leaving Belle Fourche, you reach the edge of the Black Hills. The plains gave way once again to the pine covered hills. The population steadily increased, with signs of modern civilization increasing by the mile. After passing through Spearfish, it felt like we were traveling from one neighborhood to the next, all the way to Rapid City.

In the McDonalds’ parking lot in Spearfish, while drinking iced coffee, I met Dorothy, a spry little lady in her mid 60‘s who had questions about the journey. Dorothy said you can remember her name just by thinking of Oz. She walks 20 minutes, twice a day, rain, snow, or sunshine. She started doing this twice daily walk after sustaining a mild stroke. You certainly can’t tell from watching her move. Dorothy and her husband run a few small businesses and she stays quite busy. Their two sons and four grandchildren live in the area and she is quite satisfied with her life. Her passions are her daily walks and her garden. She runs a mobile home park and this keeps her busy. She really enjoys Spearfish, having lived in several towns.  It was a really pretty town, I have to say!

HD and I pulled into Rapid City in the late afternoon and we went through town to the east side, arriving at the KOA around 6:45. A little ad at the check in counter promised a live entertainment session with John Horton, “the cowboy poet”, at the pavilion at 7:00 pm. Well, I certainly wasn’t going to miss out on that one! So, I cycled to my tentsite, threw up the tent and tossed a few personals inside, then hotfooted it back to the pavilion. John is a 74 year old, tried and true, buckin’ bronc, ole cowboy. While I arrived just at 7:00, there were no other people in the audience yet. He was chatting with 2 young men, one of which was working on his guitar skills with one of John’s guitars. The ole cowboy decided to wait a bit, so he chatted with me and told me a few stories. By about 7:15 or so, a few people had wandered in, and the show began. He told a few stories, most in rhyming form, and sang some cowboy songs. He was very funny and you could see he had a big heart. He was a tough bird with a steely resolve, but a heart that would cry for a dog or a child in a heartbeat. 

After the show, John talked to a man, who had traveled from New York with his daughter, and myself for a bit longer. The New Yorker, Neil Saccamano, went to get his mandolin and flute while I rushed back to the tent to get a long shirt and pair of pants as the evening was cooling down quite a bit. When I got back to the pavilion just a few minutes later, an impromptu jam session had started with Neil, the young man who was a new guitar player, and John Horton. They each picked a few songs while the others followed along. Neil plays at a local pub near Long Island on Thursday nights back home, doing mostly Irish music. Yay, Irish!! The session was all too short as Neil went to check on his 12 yr old daughter back at the tent.

Well, John and I had another chat session and he gave me 2 of his CDs as a parting gift. Here is just a little bit of John’s story.

His mom died within 5 days of his birth. His dad was devastated and basically could not face raising John. So, he was sent to be raised by his aunt and uncle on the ranch. These are the parents he knows, so he calls them Mom and Dad. John enjoyed his life on the ranch and he loved his parents deeply. They were quite musical, playing music at night and then again on weekends for hoedowns and gatherings of all sorts. He learned to ride a horse by the time he was 5 and was put to work helping out. They had cowboys working for them, raising the cattle and all that entails: growing hay, herding, birthing calves, branding, etc. John says this was during WWII--there were no young cowboys because they were soldiers in the war. So, he learned his ranching and survival skills from the old cowboys. One of them, Sandy, was his favorite. This gentle old cowboy had only a single hand, but he quoted song lyrics and poetry with an incredible memory and a deep resonant voice. 

Once, the old cowboys were sitting around, discussing their one handed cowboy buddy. “How do you think that happened?” they asked. Little John piped in, “I’ll tell ya why. God took one hand away cuz he was working so fast no one could keep up. He had to slow him down somehow!” The group broke into laughter as Sandy, the ole cowboy in question, walked in, grabbed John and gave him a knuckle rub on his head. He said, “Well, little John, I’ll tell ya what actually happened.  Around the turn of the century, I was leading my team of horses as they were pulling the combine to gather the hay. The machine jammed and I stopped the horses to clean out the combine. I was pulling hay out by the handfuls. But, I had forgot to set the brake and something spooked them there horses and they just took off, yanking my hand plum off!” 

John was shocked. “That’s just terrible!” he cried out. 

“Yeah, I know,” said the old guy. “I lost half a day’s work that day!”

This quiet natured man taught John about horses, the out of doors, respect, music, poetry, hard work, and the ethics of the cowboy. John loved it all. So, he decided he was also going to be a cowboy AND a cowboy poet.

He made the announcement to his aunt and uncle. They were horrified. “You can’t make any money as a cowboy!” they moaned. They had wanted him to go to school to be a doctor or lawyer or other such “successful” man. But John’s mind was made up. 

When John was a pre-teen, his real dad showed back up and John moved from his father’s home to his uncle’s home and sometimes no home at all. 

When he was 12, he and a similar aged buddy decided to go on a survival trek by horseback in the mountains and desert in Nevada, covering close to 1400 miles in 105 days. They fished and hunted and survived in the wilderness and came home to tell the tales. They even saw an atomic bomb test near the military base in the desert. 

Later, while in military training, he was sent on a survival trip with a fellow soldier in training. Well, John knew survival skills like the back of his hand. His mate was from the area in the south, so he knew what game was available and what plants were edible. So, the two worked as a team and taught each other a few things on the way. When that training was over, they had each gained 5 lbs.

That’s not the end of that story however. Apparently, the drill sargeant who paired the two up had referred to Luke, John’s mate, as “that nigger”. Being a trainee, John didn’t say anything. But, when John graduated later and was promoted to a higher level than the drill sargeant, he walked over to him and said, “I better never hear you say that word again, or I’ll have your stripes”. Then, he went to another official, with whom he had developed a friendship. He asked for a favor. The friend said, “Sure, John. What is it?” John pointed to Luke, sitting out on a bench. “See that man over there?” “What man? I see a colored guy over there. Is that who you mean?” 

John says, “All I see over there is a good friend who has survival skills like you wouldn’t believe. We gained 5 lbs each on our survival test. You need to give that man a promotion”.

Luke was given a well earned opportunity to show his mettle. The result?  He spent a successful life in the military, training young men how to survive with nothing but a pocket knife. And a cool head. 

And the drill sargeant? He had to answer to Luke and refer to him as “sir” for several decades.

Yeah, baby!!

John was 14 when he snuck into a rodeo to do some bull riding. His aunt and uncle had said no, but the family was going to the rodeo so John secretly signed up. You had to be 16 but he was only 14, so he blackened the peach fuzz around his chin and upper lip and dirtied up his face to hide some of his youth. When the announcer gave out John’s name, John could hear his dad cussing up a storm in the stands, apparently threatening to do bodily harm to his nephew-son. Well, John said “I didn’t even place that first time. I got out of the arena and here comes Dad, walking straight towards me. I thought for sure I was gonna get a whippin’! But Dad gives me a hug and says to everyone, ‘That’s my son!’”

And his mom? Well, she was pretty upset. Not because he disobeyed and rode that bull. It was because he was dressed in his old jeans and beat up shirt. So, before the next rodeo, she took him into town and bought him the fanciest rodeo get up she could find. John still wonders how far that set them back financially. When they got home from the store, his cousin-brother complained to his mom and said, “You never bought me anything that fancy, Mom!”

She replied, “That’s cuz you can’t ride a bull like John can”. 

John rode bulls for 20 years. He has broken every bone in his body except his spine. His passion as a cowboy was not really anything to do with raising cows, but rather the horses. He has raised them, bought and sold them, trained them, and shoed them. He even did several years of stunt double riding for the old westerns in the 1960’s. 

After about 20 years of riding bulls and drinking heavily, John recognized that his heavy drinking was killing him. He would drink so much that he would basically get alcohol poisoning, with the vomiting, headaches, etc. He decided to quit and, with the help of counselors, he did just that. He then went to school to learn counseling skills. He said that he developed training and therapy programs, but there was no degree for what he did. So he worked with the doctors, educating them about alcoholism and what his program could do. John spent several decades of his life helping alcoholic and drug addicts kick their habits. He wrote songs and poetry, something he had wanted to do but just hadn’t been able to do successfully during his drunken years. That dream he had as a child of being a cowboy poet came to pass, after he first went through the fire. He had dozens of stories to share and he was a most fascinating man with an untiring energy, even in his 70’s. 

John loves the out of doors and helping people. His deepest passion? “Today” he said. 

Did I mention he could cook? His cousin-brother made fun of him for enjoying cooking when he was a youngster. His mom said, “There are two kinds of cowboys. One kind can cook. The other kind goes hungry”. 

So John waves that spatula with pride on the summer weekends at the KOA, preparing pancakes for families, when he is not telling a yarn, quoting poetry, or strumming that guitar. During the week, he takes care of his wife and still spends time walking the Black Hills of South Dakota. 

I spent a comfortable night in my tent, sleeping soundly until morning. It was time to play catch up and write. And that is exactly what I have done today. 

Good night!