“Alone at the Top” was how the Pro Rodeo Sports News magazine described the crowning of Trevor Brazile, World Champion All-Around Cowboy, for the eighth time – a world record. It took Sir Edmund Hilary seven weeks to climb Mt. Everest, Admiral Peary 23 years to find the North Pole, Freckles Brown was 46 when he rode Tornado and it took me two tries to pass physiological chemistry in vet school! All monumental achievements. All-Around Champion should come with a prefixed title, some way we could address them properly like: Sir Trevor or Colonel Trevor or King Trevor.

An interviewer asked me how one can make a living in the cow business. Actually he said, “As we’re heading into the next couple of years with declining cattle numbers and steady prices, how do you think you should position yourself to take advantage of the market?” I assume he’d mistaken me as an authority in the cattle business. Maybe he thought I was a Wall Street speculator who heard rumors of another run on ethanol.

Imagine the header clinging to the rack on the back of a flat-bed, chasing a cow across the High Plains of Colorado with the hazer banging along beside him in a quarter-ton Ranger with a vet-box in the bed. Cowboy stories are about wrecks; horse wrecks, cow wrecks, dog wrecks, financial wrecks, Tyrannosaurus Wrex, and flat-bed, mad cow, Ranger-with-a-vet-box-in-the-bed wrecks! Rancher Tom had Dr. Stan-the-Man out to his place. Whilst there, they spotted a cow with a big lump on her jaw.

Say you were climbing Mount Everest with your co-ed bowling team. You cover the last hundred yards to the summit. It takes five hours. After everyone has touched the flag pole, they begin looking around and finally spot the official Tibetan Parks & Recreation A-One chemical toilet! “Whew!” says one of the climbers, “I never thought we’d get here!” as she raced down the well-worn path, shoving a sherpa out of her way! All of us know the feeling. At the county fair, tractor show, outdoor concert, rodeo, or construction worksite, it’s one of the first things we scout out when on location.

An interviewer asked me how one can make a living in the cow business. Actually he said, “As we’re heading into the next couple of years with declining cattle numbers and steady prices, how do you think you should position yourself to take advantage of the market?”

My hat is off to parents who have a job in town but insist on raising their kids in a “rural lifestyle.” Fifty or so thousand young people were at the National FFA Convention in Indianapolis last year. I would bet at least 3/4 of them come from rural lifestyle families.

I can’t remember how many songs Martin wrote, probably half of my notebook full of livin’ room hits! I guess nobody knew me as well as Martin. All those sad love songs, honky tonk songs, funny ones, bluegrass, country, cowboy, even the occasional gospel song, he heard first.

Joe Camacho is a cage fighter. Can you imagine his mother saying, as he goes off to fight the front line of the Oakland Raiders, “Be careful, Joey, and don’t get hurt.” I caught myself giving that same instruction to my son as he went off to his high school soccer game. As a soccer veteran, over the years he’s already had a succession of concussions, sprains, cracks, pulls, punches, cracks, whops, whacks and smashes! “I will,” he said, as he limped out the door.

Typically smaller, more rural communities have no veterinarian, or at least none that will take a calving call or a horse colic emergency. Veterinary schools, veterinary associations, concerned farmers and isolated ranchers continue their search for new veterinarians interested in practicing Food Animal and Equine medicine. While we are searching in our front yard it is possible that the answer is sneaking up behind us.

This Memorial Day my thoughts go back to a friend from college, Clovis May. Mild mannered, hard working, good cowboy from a ranching family in Deming, New Mexico. I don’t recall exactly what his major was, but probably Range Management or Ag Business. He was big enough to play football, but he rodeoed. A solid man in character, physicality and reliability.