Taking frugal to the little things
by Julie Carter
There are several items of a cowboy's life that he treasures
highly, sometimes more than life itself. Right at the top of the list are his
spurs.
Spurs are a standard part of a cowboy's day-to-day working
equipment and, usually, they never come off his boots. Understanding that
cowboys seldom remove their spurs will dictate the type of furniture, carpet or
other flooring in the house he lives in.
It is also a reassuring sound late at night when the work
has gone long past sundown, to hear the familiar jingle come through the back
door. Spur jingles are as recognizable to a ranch wife as the sound of the
ranch pickup to the resident dog.
Spurs are a point of pride for the cowboy. They regularly
are handmade, inlaid with silver, embossed with initials, brands and good luck
totems. A spur can reveal a cowboy's geographic origin, riding philosophy, ego
or intelligence quotient.
Foot jewelry will include bells, jingle bobs, pizza cutter
rowels, tooled straps, and silver buckles. Whatever they look like, it can be
and often is, a topic of regular conversation. By nature and more often by
necessity, cowboys are frugal. All sorts of items will be recycled until safety
becomes an issue and even then it is a debatable moment.
Case in point, one cowboy I know owns a tie-down strap
homemade from material he and his buddy partnered on when they were in college
30 years ago.
That tie-down, a mark of frugality, ties to a new $3,000
saddle set on a very expensive horse to go to some high-dollar ropings. But he
sees no reason to replace it as long as it still does the job.
He is sure that strap is the reason his horse can stay on
course when he's after a triple-A running steer.
This same frugal cowboy shares the story about another
cowboy, a very economy-minded individual, who needed to replace his worn-out
spur rowels. In his mind, the store-bought rowels were simply too expensive. So,
he decided quarters would work just as well. He could put them in himself and
avoid the saddle-shop labor component.
The next time these two models of frugality (read that,
“cheap”) met, the former 25-cent spur-roweled cowboy was wearing nickels for
spur rowels. He said he had saved 40-cents that way and the horse didn't know
any different. The rest of story was that it took a week for him to figure out
how much he'd save before he could determine if it was worthwhile.
Bill, a Texas Panhandle short-grass rancher, had a cowhand working
for him who was especially proud of his spurs. The cowboy wore them all day,
every day and even presumably at night for a number of years while working for
Bill.
At one point, the cowboy needed a loan. He needed $600 for
some undisclosed emergency and to prove his sincerity, he offered to put up his
beloved spurs for collateral. Bill felt like nothing short of threats of life
and bodily harm would part that man from his spurs, so he loaned him the $600.
Whatever the emergency was, the cowhand skipped the country
with Bill's money. The spurs are now a family heirloom, known to three
generations of family as "the $600 spurs."
Julie, with a few
“heirloom” spurs on the wall, can be reached for comment a jcarternm@gmail.com
I can remember how upset I was when they started bailin' hay with twine instead of wire. That was until I figured out all the ways I could fix up and repair my tack with twine.
I can remember how upset I was when they started bailin' hay with twine instead of wire. That was until I figured out all the ways I could fix up and repair my tack with twine.
2 comments:
Out here in CA, seems like every bale has these one inch long loose "shreds" of bailing twine on the hay.
I still miss the wire, and burlap sacks.
Yes...to both.
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