...Music has always been a part of my life. My family emigrated to
Oklahoma from Texas. Grandpa played old-time fiddle. He taught his kids.
I’ve been seconding good musicians as long as I can remember.
And it’s still goin’ on! I married into a nest of Okies who play the
same good music I grew up on. They sing and play and let me hammer and
pound along behind ’em. I’ve never really minded playin’ second fiddle.
You can’t be good at everything. But there was a time when I shined.
Workin’ cows in the fall is somethin’ I’ve always enjoyed. Some of
these ranches I worked were a hundred miles from a K-Mart. It might take
several days to preg check 2,000 head so when I showed up, I’d take my
guitar. There weren’t VCR’s and satellite dishes in the old days. I was a
welcome diversion.
After a day’s work, we’d clean up, have supper and then make music
and tell stories in the cookhouse. Sometimes there’d be a cowboy who
could sing or a day-work uranium miner who’d played the mandolin. We had
a high ol’ time every night.
Now days, I’ve gotten to know folks like Ed Bruce, Red
Steagall, Michael Martin Murphy, Charlie Daniels, Reba McEntire, Larry
Gatlin, Riders in the Sky, Mo Bandy, Vince Gill, Chris LeDoux and other,
not quite so famous but just as talented. I admire their ability, but I
don’t envy it. Even if I’d had a portion of their gift and ambition, I
suspect I’d still be playin’ at the Starlite Inn in Idaho Falls six
nights a week.
I’d have spent my life chasin’ fame instead of chasin’ cows. And I’d
have missed all those nights singin’ in the cookhouse to a bunch of
cowboys starved for entertainment.
Issues of concern to people who live in the west: property rights, water rights, endangered species, livestock grazing, energy production, wilderness and western agriculture. Plus a few items on western history, western literature and the sport of rodeo... Frank DuBois served as the NM Secretary of Agriculture from 1988 to 2003. DuBois is a former legislative assistant to a U.S. Senator, a Deputy Assistant Secretary of Interior, and is the founder of the DuBois Rodeo Scholarship.
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