Chapter 1

I fell in love with riding bulls when I was a little bitty boy. I love them. I love the way they smell. I love the way they think and react. I study them. I just love bulls.

My daddy was chairman of the rodeo committee in Carthage, Texas, when I was about five. I went to the rodeo office and arena with him a lot, which exposed me to rodeo at a young age. I was with my dad one day when Jim Shoulders came to town.

I’d say Jim’s the greatest cowboy who ever lived—absolutely a legend. He won sixteen world championships in professional rodeo, and held the record of seven world championships in bull riding until Donnie Gay broke his record. At the time, Jim wasn’t competing in rodeo anymore. He worked as a livestock contractor and raised great bulls. He’s always been kind of famous because he does public relations work and rodeo appearances.

I remember meeting Jim at the rodeo office when it was in Joe’s Café. “This is my boy, Terry,” Dad said, grinning at the other men standing around who were as enamored as I was with this rodeo hero.

Jim and I shook hands—his calloused and large, mine little-boy small. Then he said, “Terry, you want me to sign you up in the bull riding?”

“Yeah, I mean, yes sir!” I could hardly speak. I sure did!

Everybody laughed, and well, that shook me up.

As time went on people began asking me, “Terry, what are you going do when you grow up?”

I couldn’t get it out of my mind. “I’m gonna be a bull rider. I want to be just like Jim Shoulders.”

That became my focus and goal in life. I never wavered, even though my mother did her best to change my mind and thinking.

* * *

My daddy took me along to the rodeo arena. I watched the livestock unload off the trucks. Man, I’d stare at those bucking bulls and watch them come down the ramp. I loved seeing old Andy Capp, Mighty Mouse, The Grim Reaper, Dr. Jekyll, and Mr. Hyde, Batman, Robin, and all the other great bulls.

From the time I was six years old, I studied bulls and watched them buck at the rodeo. They develop tendencies of moving the same way every time they’re ridden, and I was familiar with each bull’s pattern. I knew how they bucked better than the cowboys. I had paid attention to them the year before at the local rodeo and watched them eat, drink, sleep, lay down, and get up. I knew their habits and how they behaved.

Cowboys who came to town for the rodeos were scared because Jim Shoulders’ bulls were so bad, “rank,” as we call them in rodeo. They were tough to stay on. So, the cowboys tried to come up with a game plan. A lot of them didn’t know the bulls, but they’d heard about a kid in town who did, so they’d come find me.

“Are you the little boy around here who knows more about the bulls than we do?” one cowboy asked.

I adjusted my hat and looked up at him. “Yeah, I know ’em. Which one did ya get?”

“Well, what’s ol’ Andy Capp doing?”

“Andy Capp’s a chopped-off-horned-tiger-striped brindle bull. He’s gonna turn back to the left, right at the gate. If you’re still on him after about four seconds, which you won’t be, he’ll reverse and spin.” I knew ’em all right.

During the rodeo while the bulls waited in the chutes as the cowboys strapped on their ropes, I’d sneak up and pluck a bit of hair off each bull. One at a time, I saved the hair in a little jar and stuck a piece of masking tape on it. I wrote that bull’s number and name on his jar of hair. After about three years, I had between thirty to forty bottles. I think it’s probably the greatest collection of bucking bull hair that’s ever been assembled.

I had a friend who went to Chicago to see a baseball game. He came back with a little bottle of dirt off the mound at Wrigley Field. He thought it was pretty cool.

“Let me show you what I’ve got,” I told him. After I showed him my collection of bucking bull hair, he wanted to trade me his dirt for five bottles of hair, which I didn’t do. Like I said, I love bulls. I even have that bull hair to prove it!

* * *

Jim Shoulders had a notorious, bad-as-there-ever-was bull named Big Bad John—a huge tiger-striped bull that cowboys claimed to be the best they’d ever ridden. And I wanted to ride him.

I was about eight when I started hounding my dad. “Daddy, I’m gonna be a bull rider. I can ride one of Jim Shoulders’ bulls. You’re his friend. Please let me ride one. Ask Jim Shoulders. Beg him if you have to, but please, set it up.” I had faith; I knew I could do it.

Daddy looked at me like I was crazy. “Son, when you’re grown you can do anything you want to do. If it’s riding bulls, then you get after it but until you’re grown, you ain’t ridin’ bulls.”

It broke my heart, but I honored my daddy and I waited, and waited, and waited. Finally, I was grown. At least I thought so. I must have been about ten. We were working calves at the ranch one spring afternoon and had about a hundred cows in the corral and the herd bulls in a pen. My favorite smells lingered in the air—cattle and manure.

I sidled up to daddy. “First things first, Mother’s gone to town and we’ve got the bulls up.”

He nodded. I’m sure he knew what was coming next.

I pointed toward the pen. “Let me ride one of these ol’ boys. I know they ain’t rodeo bulls; they’re herd bulls. But they’re still bulls. We’ve got the side delivery gates just like at the rodeo arena. Let me ride one! Please?” It wasn’t set up as a bucking chute but it was fixing to work real good anyhow.

“Terry. You’re a little boy.” Daddy took off his cap and ran his fingers through his hair. “Those bulls weigh eighteen-hundred to nineteen-hundred pounds. I can’t let you ride one.”

I hooked my thumbs through the belt loops of my Wranglers. “Well, then let me ride a cow. I ain’t picky.” Not picky, just desperate.

“Our cows weigh twelve to thirteen hundred pounds. I can’t let you ride one of them either.”

We’d just finished working a little 350-pound Simmental cross-bred heifer calf, and she still stood in the chute. We’d ear tagged her, cut a notch in her ear, wormed, and vaccinated her with two or three different vaccines. A bad day for a calf. She was all stirred up.

My daddy looked at me, at the heifer, then back at me. “Tell you what, we’re going to get this out of your system right now. You get a rope and get it on this heifer calf,” he said. “We’re fixin’ to bull ride.”

My hands get sweaty now just thinking about it. I looked around and found a half-rotten lead rope off an old horse halter. I tied a knot in the end and made a loop in it so I could put it around the heifer like I’d seen the bull riders do. I knew how they put those ropes on the bulls and even though this wasn’t a bull rope, this was my chance and I wasn’t about to miss it.

I grabbed that rope and threw it on her right quick, before my daddy had a chance to change his mind. Daddy took a stick, reached through the chute under the heifer to catch the end of the rope, pulled it up to me, and I got it around her. She squirmed all over that chute, bumping the wooden slat sides. I sat down on her just like I’d seen those bull riders do. I’d been waiting for this chance my whole life.

I sat there thinking. This ain’t even a bull calf. It’s a little heifer. Well, this little girl calf’s daddy was a bull and that’s good enough right now. I’m not gonna blow my chance on a technicality. I pulled the rope as tight as I thought it should be. It started making funny sounds like it might break, so I decided that was good enough. I scooted up on the rope, got a good grip, and knew what to say. Back in the old days, the cowboys yelled “outside” when they were ready for the bull to be released into the arena. This was my moment. I swallowed once, and as loud as I could muster I hollered, “Outside.”

Chapter 2

Daddy swung the old wooden gate. “Eeeeeeeeeee,” it creaked and we were free.

That little hussy went “braaaahhhh!” She jumped as high as my daddy’s head. She wadded me up and chunked me out in the pen. To tell you how long I rode her, well, I hit the ground before she did.

My mouth wide open and only half-done saying, “outside,” still working on “...side,” I hit the ground so hard it knocked the breath out of me. I scooped me up a face full of fresh... well, we’d run about a hundred cows through there that particular day, so you can imagine what I got up my nose and in my mouth.

I lay in the corral groaning and thought I was about to die. My dad came running—she’d tossed me way out there. Looking back, I know his life flashed before his eyes. He at least wondered where he’d be sleeping for the next couple of weeks if something has happened to his baby boy. I couldn’t talk, just grunted and moaned.

He surveyed the situation, not knowing what to do. Finally, he undid my britches, grabbed me by my little no-longer-white T-shirt, yanked me upright, and pulled my face right up close. “Son! Son! Are you all right?”

I got a little air, spit out some of that stuff, and finally got to where I could grin and talk. “Daddy, that’s the most fun I’ve ever had in my life.”

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