Ride 'em, Cowboy! or, My Life in the desert... #1

 The De Anza Trail Caballeros

An interesting episode in my life!

What year did this begin? I think it was 1968…It started when I met Bill Smith while I was working in Reno. We became good friends as he was the first sheetrocker I had ever met that read…books! And that was when he told me about the job he had every spring. For a full week he worked as a wrangler on a trail ride. I asked him some more questions about it and he told me that as a wrangler on the ride, he had to set up camps, feed and water the horses and do general chores. Then he elaborated; there were 150 riders and most were professional people; lawyers, stock brokers, dentists and doctors. Some had been going on the ride for 30 or more years. The wranglers drove trucks and set up mangers, watering troughs, hauled hay, etc. They also had to eat the same food that the "paying" riders ate. Steak and lobster, Filet Mignon, etc. Free bar too! The caterer, Cowboy Catering was from Wickenburg AZ, 

The original De Anza trail through the desert as De Anza explored what is now known as the Anza-Borrego desert, for the King of Spain. This routine had been modified through the years and now this original trail was only used once every five years. There were four or more other trails they used in the intervening years. Then Bill asked, "Would you like to work as a wrangler this year? I can probably get you on…”

Of course I did it, I accepted and in a few weeks I took a week of vacation and headed south with Bill. The ride always started from, or ended in, Riverside, CA. In Riverside I met ‘Judy’, the head wrangler! Great guy as well. Also Dave Shepard, our farrier. There were a total of 6 wranglers for the 150 horses and riders. The first thing we had to do was to gather up all of the trucks we needed from a local truck rental, then we were off to Art Swarner's house and storage sheds (in San Bernardino) to get the gear we needed. Art was one of the original Directors and the oldest rider. The biggest items were the mangers, an arrangement of vinyl covered canvas, steel cables, chains and come-along’s. Plus, shovels, rakes, feed and water tubs, kick poles, salt and hundreds of other miscellaneous items. The worst of these were the poles that supported the mangers. The poles were made of galvanized steel, about 3" in diameter and five feet long. One end was pointed and the other end had a hook to hold up the sides of the manger. The poles were driven into the ground with sledgehammers to a depth of about 18". I soon had an intimate knowledge of those poles and the ever-present sledgehammers. I remember that you had to pound the poles down till the hook portion of the pole was at your belt buckle height. Standing on your toes while measuring with the buckle was soon practiced by all, as that would save you a few strikes with the sledge!

Once all of this gear was packed in the trucks, we would head back to the De Anza Riders clubhouse in Riverside. Most of the riders would be there with family and horses. A few of us would be chosen to load one of the trucks, the largest one, with hay. The rest of us would begin driving stakes to support the mangers. Driving stakes at the Club house was alway the worst as ground was was also the parking lot. All of that traffic compacted the ground to the consistency of iron. The whole setup time would take about 3 hours the first day, and the times would get better as the week progressed. Unless…we ran into the unexpected! And that was always a possibility. No, it was more of a probability. Example; at one lovely site, we unrolled all of the canvas, set out all of the “iron” and dropped the hay bales. We knew we had selected a site with the possibility of easy pounding. Oops! Too easy! With one or two whacks from the sledge, the poles actually began to slide into the ground of their own accord. We watched in amazement as the heavy poles started disappearing into the ground. We had selected a spot over an underground river, just a foot or two beneath us. So we had to rescue the poles before they disappeared and then had to drag the tons of equipment to a new location. 

It was always hot and sweaty work, even when it was raining. Every day brought us a new campsite and new problems. In the 10 years that I did this, I probably helped to set up the campsite 70 times and it was almost always in a new location. We rarely went back to the exact same locations. We built horse camps in the desert, on ranches and in the mountains. We built them in city parks and even in the middle of the Marine Corps base, Camp Pendleton. 

After the first year, I decided that the best place to bunk down for the trip was on top of the hay truck. The hay truck, being quite large and heavy, was used as a “dead man” anchor for one end of the manger line. We would use a logging chain with 3” links to secure the manger to the frame of the truck. The other end of the manger was tied to the middle anchor, another truck, designated as the “Bed truck”. This is where most of the wranglers slept. From the bed truck, another manger was stretched out and anchored to something very secure, such as a large tree. When the mangers were all set up and the horses were tied to it, the hay truck would slowly roll from side to side as the horses pulled against their ropes. Very pleasant at night and you could see all the stars from this lofty bedroom.

Morning for the wranglers began at 5:00 AM as we led the horses, 2 or 3 at a time, down to the watering tubs. This was always a lot of fun, with a very thirsty, ill mannered horse in each hand and 5 other wranglers doing the same thing with some thirsty, ill mannered horses of their own to drag to the water tub. It was a real rodeo at times, with lots of kicking and biting, among the horses, not among the wranglers. Then we fed the horses one more time before breaking for our own breakfast. At 7:30, the riders began assembling and mounting up for their daily ride. By 8:00 we were fully engaged in tearing down the camp and putting it all in the trucks and trailers. Then we were on the road to our next stop, usually a 1 or 2-hour drive. Then the whole process started over again. Drop the iron, drop the mangers, pound the stakes, setup the mangers, haul the hay and fill the water troughs. It would usually take about 3 hours to set up a camp and 1 hour to take it down. So the rest of the time was free time for us except for horse tending. No matter what, the horses were our responsibility after the riders tied them to our mangers. As soon as the rider took his horse off the line, all the responsibility was his. It must be noted that the horses were, in most cases, family pets that were rode (ridden?) infrequently.

The food was always great and lots of it. The bar was always open for the wranglers. And since the large beer cooler was located in our bed truck, we would sometimes start our day with a cold beer at 7 in the morning, especially after a hard night of drinking around the campfires. If we had an especially difficult day we sometimes had what was called a “Cork Tosser”. That was when Judy would raid the bar truck for a couple of bottles of liquor, usually bourbon, and then we would share and consume the bottles, tossing the corks out the back of the bed truck as we had no intention of putting the corks back in the bottles. Many of those nights found me passed out early. One night in particular; I woke up in the middle of the pasture, flat on my back, looking at the stars. How did I get there?