Joyce Zeiss

I grew up in Toledo, Ohio, crunching popcorn and watching cowboy westerns at the local movie theater on Saturday afternoons: Roy Rogers, Randolph Scott, and Hopalong Cassidy. Fictional cowboys, but for two weeks every summer I visited a real cowboy, my Uncle Buell, on his ranch in the Pahsimeroi River Valley in north central Idaho. There he raised cattle, sheep, and hay along with chickens, turkeys, and a few pigs. Best of all, he owned two saddle horses, Midnight and Sea Biscuit.

I can see him now standing by the log cabin door in his big straw hat, blue jeans, long-sleeved shirt, and dusty cowboy boots, a wide smile on his sun-tanned face as he greeted us with his western drawl. The next morning, after the chores were done, he’d saddle up Midnight, the gentler of the two horses, and I’d put my foot in the stirrup, grab the saddle horn as he held the reins, and swing myself up into the saddle.

I’d grab hold of the reins, give Midnight a gentle kick in the flanks, and off we would go down the gravel driveway to the gate near the main road. Every summer I became a better rider, and one year Uncle Buell invited me to help him take the cattle up to the summer range in the foothills. I was no longer a city slicker, a tenderfoot, a greenhorn. I had made it.

As I grew older, I learned more about my Uncle Buell. He hadn’t always been a cowboy. During World War 11, he had been a welder on a repair ship in the South Pacific and, in1945 had been present in Tokyo Bay  for the Japanese surrender on the battleship Missouri.  After the war, he worked for a local rancher until he could afford to buy the place on the Pahsimeroi.

Earlier, during the Depression when the crops failed as Idaho became part of the Dust Bowl, Uncle Buell often entered local rodeos. One of the biggest was the Henry Stampede held in Soda Springs, Idaho. In 1934, he won 2nd place in the saddle bronc riding contest, no easy feat. To the cheers of the crowd, he had to stay atop the bucking horse for eight seconds, holding a rope tied to the reins in one hand, and never allowing his other hand to touch the horse. His prize: a Levi Strauss silver belt buckle. Though he probably could have sold it for a little spending money, he never did. Today it hangs in my home alongside his picture as a reminder of when the West and I were young and I was a real cowgirl.