Cowboy Churches usually don’t have gymnasiums or ceramics classes. Rather than basketball or skate night cowboy churches host team roping, bull riding, barrel racing and other rodeo sports. The youngsters enjoy “mutton bustin” (sheep riding) until they are big enough to sit a saddle on their own. According to those who attend, Cowboy Church most often appeals because dress codes don’t exist, and the music is worshipful but it is country. With common decency applied, you really can “come as you are.”
Author: Dan Acree
Taking the Bit
“I don’t make a pretty bit. I don’t make a high shiny show bit. I make a working bit. Some say a bit is a bit. No, it’s not. It’s like any other working tool. You got to have different things for different horses,” Kirby said.
The Texas Longhorn
If you are looking for a Texas symbol as big as the state itself, consider the longhorns. They evolved from cattle brought to the Americas from the Canary Islands by Spanish explorers in the late 1400s and early 1500s. By the early 1800s wild longhorn cattle were common throughout Texas.
Talk to the Horses
“What you’re looking for is a partnership when you train them,” he said. “The horse responds to what you ask freely and without resentment, willingly. When you break horses, you’re breaking their will. They do the job but they don’t do it willingly. He [the horse] needs to be part of it. You need to be able to express what you want in a way the horse understands.”
Four Rivers Outreach
Folks like the Horns (Jeannie and Arthur) and the other volunteers are God-sent to touch people’s lives and give them a hand up. It is so easy to let this part of our community stay invisible, tucked away on the back streets and alleys. Imagine the courage it takes to be in that room on one of those nights, and admit to all that you are a flawed human being and that you are asking both God and neighbor for help.
Better than Smoking
ove, love, love your magazine. It’s a lot cheaper than smoking and without the mess, no odor and best of all it comes to you. No jumping in the car trying to find a place open at night.
Praise for Texoma Living
We were so excited to learn that we will again receive your wonderful magazine. Texas Monthly does not even compare!
Postcard Mystery Solved
The vintage postcard on the cover of the August issue has a reference to your magazine (“Home of Texoma Living! Monthly”) so did you modify an actual postcard from the fifties? What is the origin of the artwork?
Scholar in the Saddle
Spence Hardie grew up in the years after the Civil War wanting to be a cowboy. His family ranched in Montague County near Saint Jo not far from the point where the Chisholm Trail crossed the Red River from Texas into Oklahoma and ended up on a ranch in Gunter.
On Being a Cowboy
By most accounts the business of photographing kids on ponies began not long after the camera was invented. There are tintypes in museums with faded images of boys and girls astride, usually Shetland horses.