One of the old-school cowboys anticipates rodeo time
It’s a job title every little boy
– and most little girls – hope some day to put on a resume or
employment application. Cowboy.
But most kids who grew up in the 20th Century came to realize at
an early age that
”
cowboy
”
is a job best left to Saturday matinee fantasies.
One of the old-school cowboys anticipates rodeo time
It’s a job title every little boy – and most little girls – hope some day to put on a resume or employment application. Cowboy.
But most kids who grew up in the 20th Century came to realize at an early age that “cowboy” is a job best left to Saturday matinee fantasies.
Dick and Carmen Vieira of Hollister must have missed that lesson. At 81, Dick can still put “cowboy” on his resume, a job he pursues with passion as fresh as the day when, back from the war-torn Philippines, he began doing what he had set out to do as a boy – raising cattle and horses and caring for the land he loves.
“It’s been a good life,” Dick said. “We wouldn’t trade it for the world.”
Like a lot of couples who learned how to make marriages work – Dick and Carmen were wed in 1950 – the two effortlessly finish each others’ stories, or urge the other to contribute a bit more.
“Fifty-seven years,” Carmen recalled. “They’ve been wonderful years, and never a harsh word.”
“Sometimes we might not talk for a week, but never a harsh word,” Dick amended.
The two agreed to host visitors at their home off Santa Ana Valley Road this week on one condition, that the interview explore the deep bond the San Benito County Saddle Horse Show and Rodeo has to the community.
Dick showed his first horses at the show – which opens next Friday, June 22, at the Bolado Park Fairgrounds south of Tres Pinos for a three-day run – in 1952. Over the next half-century, the long days spent in the saddle paid off.
He’s got a trophy case with memories dating back to that first year. Since then, he’s won Best All-Around awards five times, and captured the red-hot team roping title four times – each with a different partner.
“We enjoy going to the horse show very much,” Carmen said. “We enjoy visiting with all the people.”
“All our lives we couldn’t wait until the horse show got here,” Dick said.
As his daughter, Merri, recalls, Dick didn’t have to wait long for his first saddle horse show and rodeo.
A miraculous recovery
Each year, Domie Indart, a member of one of San Benito County’s pioneering ranch families, would make first-rate saddle horses available to children in the Santa Ana Valley area. They would saddle them and ride several miles over the Diablo foothills to Bolado Park to attend the show. Dick began when he was 7.
He’ll be back in the show again, 64 years later, on Sunday, June 24, when he rides in with families he’s known all his life in the Grand Entry.
“He has to,” Merri said. “He has to be in the show.”
Dick doesn’t ride as often today. In 1999, while working on the family ranch where he grew up, part of his saddle rigging gave way, and he was plunged into a pond used to water cattle. Alone, hurt and helpless, he nearly drowned. The ranch, located along a dirt track that’s still open to the public, is located in Brown’s Valley, between Panoche and Santa Anita Roads. It gets only a few cars and trucks a day.
His discovery and survival are miraculous. He spent five months under sedation before it became clear he would survive.
“I remember lying in a warm feather bed without a care in the world, and I believe God brought me back to take care of this little guy,” he said, nodding toward his great-grandson.
Johnny was just a month old when Dick suffered his accident. Today, Dick and Carmen care for their great grandson, a handsome boy with a healthy curiosity and penetrating eyes. He is clearly Dick’s right-hand man.
While Dick complains of “not having the strength to throw a saddle on” since his accident, and regrets ignoring physical therapy in favor of a return to active ranch work, he remains a remarkable specimen.
Both Dick and Carmen are compact, fit people, with ready smiles and faces kissed by the sun. Their home – which could stand in as a museum to Western artifacts – is as tidy as any. The yard is well kept. Visitors enter by stepping over an old grindstone, and mortars and pestles left by native populations decorate the garden. At the bottom of the hill is a collection of fence posts, equipment, and antique implements. A horse-drawn road grader keeps hay rakes company. Scaffolding for a windmill rests on its side. And an outhouse presides over all. The land surrounding their home has been artfully disked, and not a weed shows. That’s Dick’s department.
A full day’s work
“When I get started, I like to work all day,” he said after returning from the better part of a day at the Hawkins Ranch, where he still “looks in on things” every day. He had only finished turning the rich, brown earth a week earlier.
He describes his work simply as “just to ride around and see nobody.”
The irony of their location is not lost on Dick and Carmen. Their chairs face picture windows that take in the Diablos and the valley that contains Hollister, Gilroy and Morgan Hill.
They know that there are tens of thousands of people below who commute to jobs in Silicon Valley each day, people who never dreamed that cowboys still exist.
“It’s different in San Benito County than how it used to be. We were an agricultural county,” Carmen said. “It was ranches and horses, and it’s changed so much, because everything changes. All good things come to an end.”
“Most of the ranches in San Benito County aren’t owned by ranchers any more,” Dick added.
It helps to have spent a lifetime in San Benito County when Dick and Carmen begin talking about their lives, because they are so bound up in the lives of their neighbors that there’s an assumption that a visitor knows immediately the contributions made by French, Indart, Hawkins, Caldera and others.
One of Dick’s team roping titles, he recalls, was won with a man he still calls “Donny,” Don Marcus, chairman of the Board of Supervisors.
They are members of a close-knit community that many people believe no longer exists.
As a boy, Dick recalls, his father would loan the boys out to work in the harvest on others’ farms, a favor that was expected to be returned.
He first met Carmen at Hollister High School. He was a senior and she was a freshman, a “town girl.” Before they could become more than just friends, World War II broke out, and Dick landed in the South Pacific.
Another soldier asked him about his plans, should he survive the war, and Dick was ready with the answer.
“I said, ‘I want to be a cowboy and own my own ranch’ and that’s what happened,” Dick said.
Love found again
After the war, Dick refound Carmen, and asked her to a dance. After three years of dating, they were wed. They had two children, Merri and Trish Maderis, both of whom still live in Hollister.
The stories of cattle drives, runaway horses and hard work that Dick and Carmen tell seem lifted from a Western novel, and while they downplay hardship, their lives have not always been easy.
After they were married, Dick dropped a bit of a warning on Carmen.
“When we first got married,” Carmen recalled, “Dick said ‘You’re going to have to cook once in a while.'”
Give the man credit for understatement.
Any time extra help was needed on the French Ranch, a remote enclave locked high in the Diablos, Carmen was chef for the gang.
They lived in a ranch house far from pavement, phones and outside electricity. The house’s 13 rooms were often filled to capacity, and dinner might include 18 or 20 hungry guests.
“I got $25 a month for cooking and Dick’s salary was $100,” Carmen said.
“But housing and food were furnished,” Dick added. “And, we saved money because we couldn’t afford to go anywhere.”
Well, that’s not quite right. For one week a year, Carmen’s family would leave their Hollister bakery in Dick and Carmen’s hands while they vacationed. The couple would come to town, and Carmen would bake while Dick did deliveries. It was a vacation.
For the first 19 years of their marriage, they made do without electrical service. A generator was run sparingly, giving their daughters a welcome chance to watch the outside world on television, but the wild fluctuations in power meant that many appliances would not work.
“We had appliances still in their boxes [from their wedding] because we couldn’t use them,” Carmen said. “We didn’t know any difference until we got our electricity and we really appreciated it then.” She talks of the thrill of seeing the refrigerator light come on, and the convenience of a toaster.
Electricity came when the family moved closer to civilization, so their daughters could attend school. It meant Dick drove a bit further to work, but once a cowboy …
He continued competing in rodeos across Central California, San Juan Bautista, Gilroy, Watsonville, Salinas and others. And he had his share of success, earning titles not just in team roping – a demanding event that requires two riders to rope a steer’s head and hind feet in a race against the clock – but also calf roping and stock horse classes.
Daily work demanded working horses, “ranch horses,” Dick called them. But he’s proud of the showy cow horses that he’s had a hand in, and of the success that he’s earned in partnership with them.
He’s particularly proud that he was mentioned in a book by professional cowboy Bobby Ingersoll, a man whose gentle but authoritative way with horses earned his respect.
But it’s the work, not the trophies, that continue to excite Dick.
“We’ve been lucky,” he said. “I’ve always worked on a ranch and I’ve always had a monthly check.”
It was not so long ago that the saddle horse show and rodeo was an event that tied the whole community together. Before the parade down San Benito Street on Thursday businesses all over town would close. Nearly everyone wore Western dress, and nearly everyone was at Bolado Park for at least one day from Friday to Sunday.
Dick and Carmen wonder at how many people do not even know of the event’s arrival in San Benito County these days, and how many of them miss a living link to history.
“Bolado is one of the most beautiful places around,” Dick said. And that’s where you’ll find him Friday through Sunday next week.
If you don’t know him, he’ll be easy to spot during the Grand Entry on Sunday. Just look for a man with a bright smile and a certain way with a horse.
