MEET COWBOY CASEY TIBBS, RODEO'S LEGENDARY ...

THE HUMAN RACE

CASEY TIBBS: A ONE-OF-A-KIND RODEO STAR

???? During the late ?40s, when Roy Rogers was kissing his horse Trigger, Gene Autry was strumming his guitar, and John Wayne was romanticizing the image of the American cowboy, there emerged from the Badlands of South Dakota a young horseman named Casey Tibbs.

???? Not only was he destined to become the most famous saddle bronc rider in rodeo history, but he was singularly responsible for bringing rodeo out of the farming communities and into the eyes and imaginations of the American public.

???? The Smithsonian magazine once said that in his heyday, Casey ?lent the sport a kind of glamour it had never before achieved? Tibbs was the D?Artagnan, the Rhett Butler, the Bonnie Prince Charlie of the rodeo circuit.??

???? Until the day he died at 60 in 1990 suffering from bone cancer, he was a wild, brawling, reckless, woman-chasing gambler with a short fuse.? Around women, including my wife, he was a sly gentleman.? Around kids he was a kid.

???? He was Babe Ruth, prizefighter Jake (the Raging Bull) LaMotta and Wyatt Earp rolled into one pure undistilled cowboy.? He should have been born a century earlier.? Spending a few weeks inter- viewing him was like stepping into a dime novel where stark reality and bullshit were soul mates.? I enjoyed every minute of it.

???? The youngest in a family of 10 children, Casey Duane Tibbs was born and raised in a log cabin along the south banks of the Cheyenne River, 50 miles from Fort Pierre, South Dakota.????

???? Before he reached his teens, he was driving herds of mustangs in the dead of winter across miles of snow-covered wilderness to a ranch owned by his mentor, rodeo cowboy Gerald Roberts.? At 14 he won his first prize money ($85.50) as a saddle bronc rider in McLaughlin, S.D.??

???? From 1949-59, Casey had won nine world championships ? six for bronc riding and another for bareback riding.? Twice he won professional rodeo?s ?World Champion All-Around Cowboy.??

???? He was barely drinking age when LIFE magazine with its 5,200,000 circulation featured him on the cover in 1951.? With money to burn and wild oats to sow, Casey bought himself a Cadillac and had it painted lavender, his favorite color.?

???? The $4,000 convertible had all the trimmings:? A continental kit, bucking-horse crests for door handles, black and silver mud flaps, twin pipes, plush leather upholstery and white walls.?

???? Decked out in a black cowboy hat, lavender shirts, silver-tipped boots and championship buckles, he burned up the highways racing from one rodeo town to another.

???? Although studios like Universal International and RKO wanted to turn him into another Tom Mix and clothiers tried to capitalize on his gaudy fashions, Casey would have none of it.? All he seemed to care about was getting ?a good draw and having a good time.?

???? And that he had.?

???? Shoulder-to-shoulder, he fought, gambled, was a self-confessed Casanova (?There wasn?t a woman I couldn?t fall in love with.?) and contested with the toughest of cowboys.?

???? In just one week of craps and poker in Elko, Nevada the young buckaroo managed to lose $38,000, including oil well shares.

???? Early in his career, Casey struck up a friendship with the late Ben Johnson, world team roping champ and Academy Award-winning actor.? Johnson first saw Tibbs at Cheyenne (Wyo.) Frontier Days.

???? ?Here comes the scrawniest teenage kid you?d ever want to see with this letter from his mother saying it was OK for him to compete,? Johnson once told me.? ?Damned if he didn?t win the Novice Bronc Riding event.? In those days they called it ?novice,? but some of the rankest horses were used on that level.? And some of the guys who entered ?novice? were older than a tree.?

???? While seated at the bar in the Schooner, a Manhattan Beach watering hole, he lifted his right leg and swung it like a pendulum demonstrating a knee that appeared to have no tendons supporting it.? He estimated that during his rodeo career he had busted about 42 bones in competition and ?cracked a couple more in brawls.?

???? After a fight in a Monte Vista, Colorado saloon where he decked a cowboy, he was jumped by the loser?s relatives who broke his jaw.? He still managed to compete ? and win ? the next day.

???? ?There were toughs in every rodeo town,? he said.? ?Fights just happen.? A girl, a drunk.? Somebody?d bump you at the bar. My brother Doc showed me how to fight.? I never was great at it.

???? ?If you get into an argument with some buck, you just go right into him.? That way, you either bluff him, beat him, or get whipped.

???? ?It ain?t like that no more.? Kids (rodeo cowboys) today, they lead a cleaner life.? They contest for big purses.? Even now, there?s still a good share of rodeo cowboys doing the circuit.? It?s never been an easy life.

???? ?In my time, there used to be a whole slew of Deadwood (S.D.) cities with enough action to make starving worthwhile.? Now, after a rodeo, they spend an hour combing and blow-drying their hair to look pretty for the ladies.??

???? He looked at himself and the ?financial pinch? he found himself in and laughed.? ?I made a lot of mistakes.? Drank my share of whiskey.? Gambled.? Knew a lot of women.? But all in all, I have no regrets.

???? ?I?d ride into an arena and blow a thousand dollars on one roll of the dice.?? After an extended ?losing streak,? Casey checked into a Gamblers Anonymous in Beverly Hills, coaxed some of the members into a poker game, won $250 and left.

???? Spending the Christmas holidays in Beverly Hills, Casey bought a Christmas tree and set it up undecorated in his hotel room which was across the street from the Luau, a popular restaurant.? Playing the lonesome cowboy, he?d sit at the bar, strike up a conversation with a gal, telling her it was his first Christmas away from home.? ??? Would she help decorate his tree?? How could she refuse the love trap?? He?d whisk her away and ?loosen her up with champagne? as they decorated the tree.? After she?d leave, Casey said he?d undecorate the tree and return to the Luau in search of other prey.

???? Perhaps the most harrowing incident resulting from one of Casey?s practical jokes occurred on a Sunday when he barged into a hotel room armed with a revolver loaded with blanks and fired away at a bull rider pal who was in bed with a woman.

???? ?Bam, bam, bam!? he remembered.? ?I scared the hell out of them, then just ran out the door.?

???? A few minutes later the bull rider caught up with Casey who was on a pay phone and stabbed him in the stomach with a knife.?

???? ?Then he loads me in his pickup and we drove around trying to find a hospital.? Finally, we found a veterinarian who sewed me up??

???? ?Now that?s what friendship is all about.?

???? Last time I had a drink with him was at The Saratoga, a dark Sunset Boulevard saloon in Los Angeles that blended perfectly with some of the shadowy characters that filled its booths and packed the counter.?

???? We were seated at the bar when he sighted an attorney across the counter he claimed ?was dragging his heels? over a $10,000 debt for managing a failed rodeo team.? A few weeks earlier Casey, who didn?t trust lawyers, had threatened to break the man?s leg if he didn?t pay up.?

???? He raised his highball glass as if toasting the man, then took a bite out of it.

???? Crrrack!!!

???? The bar went silent from the sharp splintering sound followed by teeth grinding the fragments into power.?

???? ?You know,? Casey said, ?I?ve never had a cavity.?

???? Those seated at the bar, including Hal Needham who had directed ?Smokey and the Bandit,? a 1977 hit comedy starring Burt Reynolds, had no idea of the threatening message the impromptu act telegraphed.? But I?m sure the counselor did.

???? For a time, he was living in a tack room attached to a stable in north San Diego County. ?He admitted that it wasn?t easy being ?down and out when people think you?re filthy rich.?

???? He didn?t appreciate being called a Hollywood cowboy.? But he knew his share of movie stars.? As actor Don Murray?s stunt double in the 1956 movie, ?Bus Stop,? he was romantically linked to Marilyn Monroe.

???? ?The cowboys working the rodeo scenes seen me with her at cocktail parties,? he recalled.? ?They were all betting on me.

???? ?So I made up this yarn about her inviting me up to her place, meeting me at the door in a negligee and carrying her into the? bedroom.? When they were howling like a bunch of hungry wolves, I told them, ?Just as I put her on the bed, I woke up!?

???? In 1967, when actress Katharine Ross was filming ?The Graduate,? she and Casey began dating.?

???? ?She liked to ride, and some friends brought her out to where I kept my horses.? We had some good times.? She liked the outdoors, but I knew real quick it would never work:? A cowboy married to an actress??

???? ?There?s a lot of Casey Tibbs in every cowboy that ever went down the road,? Bill Pedigo, a former saddle bronc rider and steer wrestler from Axtel, Texas once told me.? ?Today?s cowboy feels the same and thinks the same, but just doesn?t show it like Casey did.?

???? When Pedigo was a youngster growing up on a ranch in Axtel, his father and uncle, both rodeo men, told many stories about Casey?s legendary adventures.? It wasn?t until Pedigo was 21 and competing in the Rodeo Cowboys Association that he got to know Casey, who had retired from rodeo but was still making personal appearances.

???? Casey gave him this piece of advice:? ?Don?t quit a good bronc until you taste your own blood.?

???? Pedigo accepted those words as gospel.? He has broken bones to prove it.? While competing at Lake Charles, La., he stayed with a bronc that backed into a fence and fell on him breaking the cowboy?s ankle.

???? ?While I was waiting for them to get the horse off me, I was thinking, ?Casey Tibbs, you son-of-a-buck,? he said.

???? ?Casey showed me how to ride hurt.? He helped me with my form.? He wasn?t a great athlete.? It was all mind-set with him.?

???? ?He rode a bronc like he was out dancing with a pretty woman.? He had a certain style and flair ? like it was the easiest thing in the world to do.?

???? When in 1979 Robert Redford starred as a near-derelict rodeo star in ?The Electric Horseman,? people thought that director Sidney Pollack was basing the character on Casey.

???? No doubt, Casey remains the most famous saddle bronc rider in rodeo history.? The measure of his fame is a bigger-than-life bronze statue of him riding Necktie.? It stands outside of the ProRodeo Hall of Fame and cowboy museum in Colorado Springs, Colo.

???? ?I don?t know for sure,? said Casey, ?but I?m thinking that maybe you get just one go-around in life.? If that?s so, I have no regrets because it?s been one hell of a ride.?

????????? ? Boots LeBaron

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Source: http://bootslebaronsworld.wordpress.com/2011/09/29/meet-cowboy-casey-tibbs-rodeos-legendary-buckaroo/

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