early endurance rides

["Susie Jones" <mjones@springercoop.com>]

The recent thread on "how long ago did endurance riding (as a sport) start..." has been interesting to me... I have an anecdote about endurance riding (not as a sport) from the 1930s/40s.

 

I live in northeastern New Mexico & one of my good friends is a retired cowboy - about 83 years old - his name is Jiggs Porter & he started working for the CS Ranch when he was in his late teens.  We get together about once a month at the Colfax Tavern to play dominoes & swap stories about cowboying in the 30s/40s/50s/ 60s/70s & endurance riding in the 80s/90s/00s.

 

Back when he first started cowboying, there was a phone at the Crow Creek station (where Jiggs lived then & still lives today), but not at ranch headquarters, which is 21 miles away.  Jiggs was often dispatched to deliver phone messages to headquarters, but he needed to be back by lunch time since there were other chores to be done in the afternoon.  So he'd do 42 miles before noon & then go out & spend the afternoon doing whatever other ranch chores needed to be done... since he was getting paid 80 cents a day at the time, I figure he got paid 40 cents for the 42 miles he did in the morning... I kid him that I now pay $70 to $90 for the same "privilege"!

 

(He's also got lots of great stories about conditioning polo ponies & the ranch selling trainloads of horses to the remount - I relish the time I get to spend with him!)

 

Susie Jones, AERC# 7997

Miami, NM