Brother Cowboy

I look at all the fancy equipment they have now to practice roping….you can go buy a plastic steer head and stick it in a hay bale or go upscale and buy a full roping dummy to drag around your arena with your four wheeler.When I was a kid, you could use real bovines or go out to the bone pile and find a head with a good set of horns and tie it to a saw horse. Or there was the ultimate roping dummy, your little sister. When I was around seven and my brother was around fourteen, he of course, needed to practice his roping skills. He wanted a running target, so I was called into service. This was done WITH MY PARENTS BLESSINGS! Yes, my parents allowed this. Even encouraged it. I would be told to take off down the road and the hill being chased and roped by my older brother.On one such occasion, I complained that I didn’t like it when the rope got around my neck, so my mother graciously pinned a pillow case around my neck like a wild rag, to cut down on the rope burns. I kid you not. I don’t know rather I hated getting heeled and tripped or headed and getting rope burns around my neck.So with my pillow case in place, I started running down the road with my eyes squeezed shut wondering if I was going to get headed or heeled. I was dreading my fate so much, I headed on my mission as blind as the three mice from the nursery rhyme! I ran right into the fence. I was a short kid and the top wire of the barbed wire fence along the road was exactly eye level. I hit the fence with some pretty hefty inertia behind me and the blood began to squirt from the area around my eyes.My parents suddenly realized that letting my brother use me as I roping steer was probably an ill advised venture. Luckily, I had my eyes squeezed shut so tight, that my actual eye ball was saved from injury. But it did scare my mother so bad, she finally put a stop to my career as a roping dummy. I really think that my brother owes me reparations and a percentage of all the money he has won roping, which would be quite a windfall for me. Be blessed…Trailer Park JeanNo children were harmed in the making of this photo.