Old notebook unearths a tale that needs telling

By Bryan Painter

Published: August 26, 2007

Editor's Note: Columnist Bryan Painter is catching us up today on the subjects of past columns.

Recently I came across my notes from a July 2000 interview with the late Jim Shoulders.

I mentioned in columns after Shoulders' death in June that the 16-time Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association world champion was one of the greatest storytellers I had ever met.

So obviously I couldn't fit all the great stories he shared with me in the story I wrote in 2000.

That's one reason I'm so glad I found the old notebook.

Shoulders was a worker — whether as a cowboy, a stock contractor, a rancher or a pitchman — whatever. Even when I saw him sitting in the stands, he was promoting or supporting bull riding or a rodeo.

"I'm not a very good tourist,” he said in that interview.

And he backed that up with story after story related to working. Here's one of those stories of the pitchman at work.

Shoulders would sometimes take "Buford T,” a Brahma bull weighing about 1,900 pounds, to promotional events for Miller Lite beer. This included taking the bull inside some crowded night spots.

"I'd say, ‘Excuse us,' and people would turn around kind of mad that I was being pushy,” he said. "But when they saw Buford, it was like a parting of the sea. They'd be on the pool tables or under the pool tables. We instantly had room. Buford thought he was a person.”

The date was July 27. I took a good long look at and through Sweetwater School amid the Sheetrock and workers and unpainted walls. An F3 tornado struck the school on May 5. A day later, Don Riley vowed that the 2007-2008 school year would start on time — Aug. 8.

Everyone was working hard. But I didn't see any way they'd meet that.

The superintendent of the small western Oklahoma district was optimistic.

So I called back recently to see if he made it.

"We started Aug. 13, missed it by three school days,” he said. "We'd had it ready if we'd had the carpet here.”

Now, the school's all-purpose building and its gymnasium need repaired.

Sweetwater had about 70 students in pre-K through 12th grade last year. This year, Riley said they have 90 students.

"That's more kids than we've had in a long time,” he said. "And that's a good thing.”

I knew recently upon returning from vacation I would be fielding at least two questions. These are polite questions and I admit I ask them of vacation-returnees too.

How was your vacation and where did you go?

"Great” is the answer to the first.

But the answer to the second is "back in time.”

I didn't need a DeLorean DMC-12 as was used in "Back to the Future,” just some swimming trunks and a fishing pole.

When I was young, we would visit my relatives in Stephens County. My parents would take me to Clear Creek Lake to swim.

The feel of the sandy bottom in the swimming area this summer brought those memories back.

We also went fishing at farm ponds, and I did that again as well. If I'd never gotten a bite, I still would have been happy.

But as the sun started going down, so did the tip of my pole thanks to a 3-pound channel cat. People search all the time for things that make them feel young again. The location and the experience did it for me — a fishing pole in my hand on the bank of a farm pond in Oklahoma.

Suddenly, instead of wearing a baseball cap that covered my one-third salt to two-thirds pepper hair, I was wearing my little straw fishing hat that had a rubber gator attached to it. I'm not kidding you, I've got a picture somewhere to prove it.

But that's not the point.

The point is that going somewhere for vacation was even more special when it meant going back.

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