The ‘4th’ in Silver City
Frontier Days and Summer Rains
A.D. Sietzler saddles
By Stephen L. Wilmeth
If not profound, my knowledge of A.D. Sietzler has tacit impact on my daily life. Right there … is Aunt Izzie’s (Isabelle Moss Estes Kinney) Seitzler made saddle. It is the one in the second rack second from the top. I rode it as a kid at Cliff at my maternal grandparents’, Carl and Leona Rice.
I would wager the little silver horn saddle that we primós rode on the Mangus at our paternal grandparents’ was also a Seitzler. I have no idea where that saddle is today. I hope J.T. McMillan has it in Texas where he moved after they sold the ranch.
The only mental picture I have of Seitzler is the picture in the Shelley book of A.D. at his shop. I always thought it was on 13th Street until I looked at the picture last night. It says it was on College Avenue. He was gone when I came along.
I still like the idea of it being on 13th Street. That was where Mr. Mauldin’s little grocery store was. That was where I first kissed my wife, and that is where the image remains of Terrell Shelley coming up the then unpaved street with his hound dog rigged with lace up leather gators on each leg above the paws.
“What’da need them on there for?” I had asked.
“’Cause he needs ‘em that’s why,” was Terrell’s ‘Shelley’ answer.
“I knew that …”
Bonnie Maldonado’s poem
Hank Hays sent me an email entitled The Day the Horses Come to Town. It sat there for days as I was hitting the high spots (at long intervals) in the rest of my life. I finally read it. It was nostalgic.
It was a poem by Bonnie Buckley Maldonado. The setting was Silver City, New Mexico, 1960’s, and the Fourth of July. Those were the years of ‘Frontier Days’. Lucky were we who lived there and experienced that time … especially the early ‘60s, before Viet Nam, the Beatles, and Yesterday. The world has never been the same since.
We all went to the parade in the morning. Bonnie writes about pitching horses on Bullard Avenue where the parade would proceed. Maybe there were, but the ranch horses that came to town that I knew were broke horses that had seen everything, done more, and had a pretty good handle on the antics of human beings.
There they’d be standing hocked up dozing while the proceedings were coming together. Some little kid had been thrown up on more than a few while the parade riders were commiserating with each other and more than likely smoking cigarettes.
I never had the urge to smoke, but I loved to smell those cigarettes when they were first lit. It mixed with the smell of horse. It was part of our lives around horses. I can remember my grandfather riding along rolling a cigarette and lighting it while shielding it from the wind up under his open ‘jumper’. He could do it with one hand. You always caught that first sweet whiff.
With riders formed, the parade would start. There was probably a parade marshal, but he wasn’t enough of a feature to remember who he was. The horsemen were mostly known. Their union was amongst themselves. The gathering was for them and they owned the moment.
The crowd was always big. It was packed with town and country folk alike. Nobody was offered public endearment without earning it. A dude could be spotted as far away as he could be seen. Assessment was usually silent and final, but blatant demonstrations would be checked and lightly tolerated.
“Hey, you’d better pucker on both ends there, Bub,” a shrill suggestion might be offered. “You hold on much tighter and you’ll break that horn off.” The crowd would laugh … and humiliation was complete.
The Sheriff’s Posse was always front and center. It was there that Ms. Maldonado’s reference to A.D. Seitzler saddles was likely made. They were scattered from front to back in those formations.
She could have also mentioned Williams’ saddles. Those saddles were contemporaries early in Doc Seitzler’s reign as ‘maker’.
There would have also been a sprinkling of Dick Hays, Wilburn Thomas, Garrett Allen, and another young man from the Animas country who would build his own reputation, Clifford Yarbrough. They no doubt learned from Doc or those who sat around his shop, talked, and watched him skive, pound, stitch, and carve. We knew them. We called them by their first names.
What wonderful, memorable days it was to order one of those saddles. My only such unconcluded memory was with Garrett Allen. Garrett brought his order book out and asked the questions. Cantle height, swell measurement, gullet height … “uh, Garrett, what do you think?”
The questions about seat length, straight up or Cheyenne roll, and horn type could be answered. So could the matters of eye appeal. Buck stitching, tooled or rough out, and conchos were all known and comfortable to answer.
You didn’t order a new shop made saddle every day. The fact of the matter was saddles were like buying a house. You did it only a few times in your life. Those custom saddles were just too expensive.
Horses and cowboys
To start a ‘Fourth of July’ parade description of horses, Johnnie would have to be highest on our list. He was everything anybody would ever dream of having as a ranch horse. He had come from Oklahoma with his brother, Joe. He was a bay horse with the classic quarter horse good looks of the day.
My Uncle Bill roped on him and my maternal grandfather would take him to the parades. He liked the crowds and the Williams’ saddle over there in the first rack … on top … was the saddle that would be used. It was a full tooled, silver horn saddle with medium length taps. It still looks like a parade.
By the first performance of the rodeo, the roping and barrel horses would be warmed up and ready. For a local rodeo, the Grant County pool of talent was very good. More than a few have said that six or eight of the local ropers could have competed at world levels if they had been inclined and could have traveled.
There was a world champion barrel racer. Joyce Shelley was also Miss Rodeo America. From 1964 to 1968 she would leave her mark on rodeo that was eternal.
Another barrel racer had similar talent and rode really good horses. Pammie Wilmeth Calloway, and, in particular, a little home grown palomino were sensational. Her dad, Roy, good enough to be mentioned in the second book of legends, would rope off those good looking Mangus and Skipper W stud horses. They’d behave like choir boys.
Calf roping was the event in those days. Team roping was not the dominant event it has become. Otho Woodrow on any number of superb horses would be there. Otho continued to rope into his ninth decade. There is a story of what kind of cowboy Otho was. There had been a bull that jumped out of the arena and was looking for a fight. Otho arrived immediately and defused the thing before it even got started. He roped the bull and didn’t trip him, but got him choked down until other ropes got there. The cowboys all came back in after the big adventure smiling and talking to each other, coiling ropes, and ready to rope again.
Jim Brister, Preacher Green, Young Wells, Clyde Yarbrough, Tip Pinkerton, Walt Nichols and a few others were area ropers who could, on any given night, beat the best anywhere. Jim Brister was not just a good rodeo cowboy he was a great cowboy. One of his last roping horses was a horse he called Jiggs. Jiggs was an overo sorrel paint. Jiggs came to be turned out on my grandparents place. He was standing by the road one evening with a dangling leg. How he broke it nobody knows. My dad put him down.
Blessed rain
Summer rains make New Mexico. How many times during those years did the clouds open up and the first welcome rains of the monsoon season fall during that first performance? For years it was almost an annual event down to the very hour. When that happened everybody would cheer, hats would come off, and arms would extend to the heavens. Blessed, blessed rain …no rain would smell better … no circumstance would be more appealing than the first performance of the Frontier Days Rodeo … ‘the day the horses (came) to town’.
Stephen L. Wilmeth is a rancher from southern New Mexico. “Chalky, Champ, Panda, Goofus, Jack, Mangus, Bingo, Snooper, Chico, Biscuit, Berta, Joe, Buster, Dunny, Pecos, PeeWee, Dolly, Blue, SOB, Papalote, Sebas, et.al. … you remain forever in our memories, and … in our hearts.”
THE WESTERNER sez
One of my fondest memories was getting to know and rope with Otho Woodrow.
As a sign of the times, the Sietzler saddle below is for sale on Craig's List.
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