WILD WEST SHOWS AND RODEOS
By BRAD PHELPS
Maybe they put the wrong woman on the new silver dollar.
Oh, sure, Suzie Anthony did her part for the American woman,
fighting for equal rights with men, and all. You can't take that away
from her. But Lucyle Richards LIVED those rights. With a vengeance.
Now just who, you might be asking yourself, is Lucyle Richards? Well,
she's sort of a cross between Annie Oakley and Amelia Earhart.
She did it all, back in her younger days: flew airplanes — bombers, as a
matter of fact — did riding tricks on horses and (horrors!) even rode
bucking broncs and steers.
Lucyle Richards, one of several names she has gone by during her
tumultuous life, was born in Pushmataha County, Oklahoma, in
approximately 1909; she doesn't know for sure because there was never a
birth certificate made.
The lack of proof of being born nearly caused her to miss a trip with
the Tex Austin troupe to England in 1934. Lucyle needed the certificate
to get a passport, but her mother was dead and she did not know the
whereabouts of her father "because I kept hiding from him all the time."
So, she got a friend to go down to the local courthouse and swear she
was Lucyle's mother.
LUCYLE RICHARDS at an honorary banquet
given in her honor by the 101 Ranch Rodeo Foundation (right) and
in her performing days, doing a back drag (left) |
 |
Lucyle began her performing career at the delicate age of 13 in Talihena,
Okla. While hanging around the rodeo grounds with some relatives one day
a gentleman named Heinze, who operated the rodeo in town, asked some of
the resident cowboys who knew Lucyle if she could ride a steer.
"Sure", they replied. "She rides horses, if you have anything that'll
buck."
After that experience, Lucyle was hooked. "When they'd buck me off, I'd
almost cry until I could get back on again," she said.
So, she quit school, changed her name (so her father couldn't find her),
and took up life in the rodeo — for about four months, until she got
homesick.
But she went back. At the different rodeos she worked, people would eye
Lucyle suspiciously and ask her how old she was. "I'd stretch lust as
tall as I could," Lucyle recalled, "and say, 'Well, I'm 18 years old.'
They knew I was lying."
Throughout the '20s and '30s Lucyle toured the country with various
troupes, now long forgotten — Adams Rodeo and Wild West Show, Cliff
Gatewood, Jack King — riding broncs , in addition to trick riding, a
task she vehemently referred to as "sissy stuff."
"I hated trick riding," Lucyle remarked. But for most of the shows she
did, it was part of the contract.
So she learned the tricks; the shoulder stands, slick stands, tail
stands, cartwheels, croupier rollups, back drags ("If you have a good
horse, you just throw your arms back and smile''), and a myriad of
others. In the process, she became one of the best in the world.
Lucyle spent exactly one month with the infamous 101 Ranch Wild West
Show, during the Chicago World's Fair of 1932-33.
She remembers the show as a class act, in which' 'everything run
smooth,'' an unusual luxury for traveling shows.
At the fair, Lucyle did trick riding on a "half-bronc" horse, what is
called an Appaloosa now. She couldn't do "ground work," that is, she
couldn't touch the ground while riding, because the surface area of the
streets where she performed was made of cobbles-tone.
Tours of the local bars, complete with horse, were part of Lucyle's
functions with the 101. Patrons would gladly buy drinks for her, and for
the horse, but, alas, Lucvie was a tea-totaler.
So she donated her drinks to the ever-growing crowd around her. "Every
time they'd buy me a drink, I pass it on to the first one there," she
said. "Everybody had fun."
Traveling in those days, with the exception of the 101, was anything but
.luxurious^-There were virtually no airlines to speak of, and train
travel, for the smaller shows, was completely out of the question.
Transportation from show to show usually consisted of " an automobile
with a home-built trailer, with a trunk on the front of it and a little
canopy to keep the wind off the horse."
The pay wasn't too hot either. "I got $25 (a week) working at a circus,"
Lucyle recalled, "and one day they raised it to $40, and I thought I was
a millionaire!"
A lovers' spat in 1939 got Lucyle off the ground and into the skys for a
while. Her husband at the time, one of 17 she has been married to, was a
pilot. The two made a deal: if Lucyle would teach him how to trick ride,
he would teach her how to fly.
But then he reneged on the deal, saying she was "too careless" to pilot
a .plane. The pail split, with Lucyle driving with her pet dog to South
Texas and her husband flying to West Texas.
The next time he heard from her, she wired him from Cincinnati. "Meet me
at the airport in Fort Worth," she said. He did, and to his amazement,
she arrived in an airplane — by herself.
"I just wanted to show you I could do it, too," she told him.
As it turned out, the new pilot's license came in very handy. Lucyle
became a ferry pilot for the United States war effort, hauling bombers
from the U.S. to Britain for use in the European Theater.
After the war, Lucyle went back to the rodeo, becoming the women's
saddle bronc champion from 1951-57 But the days of the traveling wild
west show were limited. Families were drawn more and more inside their
homes to watch the grey-tinted image; of entertainers on their new-found
love television.
So, in essence, Lucyle Richard; never quit the rodeo. It quit her. She
staunchly declares that she hasn't retired (she is currently teaching
other girls how to ride) and says she won't quit "until a horse kills
me."
If she had the chance, would she do all again? Without hesitation, she
said "I'd probably just do more of it."
And she probably would, too.
