They do it for the memories.
For one more perfect ride on a perfect horse with a perfect rope and a perfect steer. A perfect day.
The days creep on, and time passes by like a train, but these graying team ropers, here at La Fiesta De Los Vaqueros, are chasing another reminder of days past. They are 50 – the minimum age – and 60 and 70, 75, even 77, competing in the Gold Card Team Roping event, cowboys who spent at least 10 years in the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association. They are creatures of habit, yes, but also creatures of passion, for their ranches and their horses and their sport.
“I guess you can just say it’s in your blood,” said Don Kimble.
Kimble, 64, has been on a horse for 60 years, roping since he was maybe 10, a professional team roper for nearly 20 years. He’s spent the last two years recuperating from surgery – “knees, broken neck, broken back, just everything” – and it’s been months since he’s roped. He didn’t know if he’d ever get back on his horse.
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“That’s been a burnin’ fire for me, to get back up and get goin’ again,” he said.
The bones don’t bend like they used to, the joints are a little stiffer now, but the horses still run like they hear thunder and the sun still feels warm.
Kimble isn’t in it for the money — certainly not like in the old days, when he won enough pots to put him through college at Cochise Community College and then the University of Arizona — but for the competition and the camaraderie, and yes, the memories.
Like the one of Denver, 1979, when he and his partner caught a little red steer with a perfect triangle on his head in the opening go-round, and that little red steer won them a pile of money. And soon after, back in Tucson for another opening go-round, the same little red steer with the same perfect triangle on his head, and another jackpot.
“We’re keeping the memories alive,” he said, horses stirring in the background, neighs interrupting every few sentences. “You remember the great runs you made in Tucson, the bad steers that you rode good that won you money, all the steers that won you money, the color of ’em all. We’ve all drove a million miles doing this. It’s not a big moneymaker – you can pay the bills – but it’s something that stays with you that you don’t want to let get away. I started riding a horse when I was 4 years old, and for me not to have rode or roped for the last two years was damn near impossible for me. I thought, ‘I don’t know how long I can take this.’ ”
For some, it’s about the challenge to keep aflame the competitive fire, when, as Leo Camarillo said, “Your mind says you can still do it, even if your body don’t.”
Like Kimble, Camarillo grew up on a ranch with his family, where his father made “$30 a month and a half a side of beef.” They rode for jackpots on the weekend, hoping to scrounge up enough for an icebox, maybe even a small television, which you couldn’t even see, it was so snowy.
He and his brother, Jerold, became stars — a PRCA all-around title, six PRCA team-roping titles, 39 National Finals Rodeo qualifications, a record six NFR team-roping average titles between them — until retiring back to the ranch to train horses and riders.
“The amazing thing is when you finally give up, that road doesn’t seem any shorter,” Camarillo said. “Pretty soon, it gets to feel like a truck-driving job. You get to thinking, there’s got to be something better in life.”
Leo is 68 and Jerold “is fixin’ to turn 67, comin’ up,” but on certain days, like Wednesday in Tucson, they mount their horses and they saddle up, and they feel the wind gust through their grayed-over hair, coursing over their crow’s-foot-lined eyes.
“As long as I can get on a horse and throw my rope, I’ll be trying,” Camarillo said. “When am I not going to be able to do this? Is that when they’re going to bury me? Are they going to bury me on my horse? What am I going to do then?”
There is a picture that comes up on an Internet search of Camarillo from the Denver Post, circa 1974. He’s got a rope in his mouth and tucked up into his belt, he’s holding on to his horse, and a steer is bucking on a dirt field in the foreground with the stands packed.
He’s got the boots and the jeans and the fine shirt and a thick head of dark hair and wide eyes and a lifetime ahead of him.
It is a picture that was so full of life.
Still is.
