Buck Page #2

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and afraid for life.

I couldn't believe

what that man could do

with a horse

without anything on it.

I mean, he could load horses

in a horse trailer

without touching them.

I mean, it... the horse

has never been in a trailer.

That's phenomenal.

Why let an animal live in fear?

Why not fix it?

That's pretty good.

You notice how I don't have

to have a death grip

on the doggone lead rope now.

In this particular discipline,

if you want to be great,

you have to be

a sensitive person.

That vulnerability,

that sensitivity to feel

the subtle change

is what makes you great.

That's why so many of the folks

that are really good at this

are... you know, sometimes they're

tortured souls, you know?

[Horse neighs]

I've seen some

kind of dark things in my life,

but everybody has a bit

of a burden to bear

of some sort,

so it's all relative.

It's all I ever wanted to be

was a cowboy.

I grew up as a trick roper.

That wasn't necessarily

by choice,

but the first thing is,

we were entertainers,

my brother and I.

I started doing rope tricks

when I was three years old.

You wouldn't think

that a three-year-old

could be doing rope tricks,

but I was doing rope tricks.

I turned professional

when I was six.

And as far as I know,

we are still the youngest kids

to ever get a PRCA card,

which it was the RCA

in those days,

Rodeo Cowboy Association.

And we went to fairs and rodeos

and performed all over.

But we really enjoyed

the attention of the crowds.

We were kind of

childhood celebrities, you know.

We were

the Kellogg's Sugar Pops kids.

You know, fancy roping

takes hard work,

plenty of sleep,

and good nutrition every day.

Here's a good

hardworking breakfast.

Oh, it must have been 1970,

'71, right around in there.

It was just before my mom

passed away.

That was quite a thing.

And all I remember

about that commercial,

it should have been real fun,

'cause it was a big thrill

to all the kids in school

that we were on

national television

doing these TV commercials.

All I really remember about that

is that my dad beat us

unmercifully

for not putting on

a perfect performance,

and then he drove us home,

and, heck, he couldn't even wait

till we got home.

He stopped and knocked on us

a little bit more.

I remember my mom

would drop us off at school.

The last couple of years

she was alive,

she was working as a waitress

in Ennis, Montana,

and I would beg her

not to leave,

and every day, I would cry;

Every day, she would cry,

because I was just terrified

of the fact

that I was gonna be five

or six hours alone with our dad

when we got home from school

before my mom would get home,

'cause things always went better

when she was around.

But then when my mom died,

I knew my life was over

as I knew it,

and I no longer had

my protector.

Well, after my mom passed away,

my dad really fell apart,

and night after night

after night,

he would come yank us

out of the bed

in the middle of the night

and make us sit at this

kitchen table, this oak table.

I could draw the grain in

that table for you to this day,

'cause you'd just stare down

at the table,

because even to just look

at my dad

when he was ranting and raving

in a drunken stupor,

he would take that

as an aggressive expression.

And one night, I just said,

"I'm not gonna get beat up

again tonight.

I'm just... I can't do it."

And I made a mad dash outside

and not thinking about the fact

that I wasn't very well-dressed

for being outside

in the middle of the winter,

'cause it was cold.

It was somewhere

between 10, 20 below zero.

Well, damn,

then I was really stuck,

because I knew

if I went back inside,

he was gonna beat me

half to death,

and I just couldn't go back in.

I just couldn't.

We had a dog,

and his name was Duke,

and I loved that dog.

It sounds real trailer park,

I know,

but he lived

in a 55-gallon barrel

with straw in it for his bed,

and I crawled

in that 55-gallon barrel

with that bloodhound.

It wasn't warm,

but it kept me from freezing,

and I finally,

after two or three hours,

went back in the house,

and he just looked at me like,

"Where you been?"

Reata, I can't believe

you answered your phone.

Where are you?

[speaking indistinctly]

Oh, cool.

What are you doing?

[speaking indistinctly]

For your mom or for school?

For school.

All right, well,

I'll call her back,

and then I'll talk to you

tomorrow, huh?

Okay, sounds good.

Okay, love you, buddy.

Bye.

I was watching Oprah.

I don't know if I should

admit to that.

But I was watching Oprah,

and she said that

the greatest aphrodisiac

there was for a man

was to have a vacuum

and to actually run it

in the presence of his wife.

So she knows quite a bit,

so I thought, "Well, I'll...

it can't hurt."

You know, you never know

where you're gonna get

some information.

Hey, you.

Gonna put the smaller one

in the back.

There's not quite as much room.

We got 27 years in now.

Yeah, 27 years.

I get to where I don't even

worry about what day it is.

All I know is, it's just all

in four-day intervals for me.

I don't know; you get

in a rhythm by doing this,

and you... oh, after just

a few days of being somewhere,

you're kind of ready to go

to the next one.

Hey, Mary, it's just me.

Good.

What are you doing?

Got the clinic done here.

Didn't make anybody cry.

[Chuckles]

Talk to you later on.

All right, Mary,

I miss you.

I do this 40 weeks

out of the year.

For the rest of the year,

you could say,

"Where are you gonna be

on such and such a day?"

And I could tell you

exactly where I'm gonna be

till about Thanksgiving.

Walkertown, North Carolina.

Huntsville, Alabama.

Limerick, Maine.

Bay Harbor, Michigan.

Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

Longmont, Colorado.

Thermopolis, Wyoming.

Bend, Oregon.

Bozeman, Montana.

Libby, Montana.

Yeah, there's some loneliness.

You know, it's truck stops

and driving late at night

and just trying to get

to your next spot,

and you're alone, you know?

That's when you really

miss your family,

and you want to be home,

and you think

of what it would be like

just walking barefoot

across the living room

and going to bed.

But there is no way

that's ever gonna be anything

other than what it is.

- How are you?

- Hey, how are you?

[Indistinct chatter]

She's gonna make me

a Manhattan.

And I can make more than one

if somebody wants one.

They're in the back.

Were you at that clinic

in Ellensburg

when it was so cold,

when Bob Blackwell...

Yeah, that was 17 years ago.

That was my first clinic

with you.

And they brought them in,

these horses in,

in stock trailers, literally.

They opened up the door,

and they went

into the round pen,

and there was

and he roped every one of them.

A mutual friend invited me,

and I was pretty skeptical

about the clinic

and the approach.

And I went pretty convinced

that I wasn't gonna

appreciate anything that I saw.

And then he started working

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