These early spring ropings have looked good, grass is green, roping cattle are cheaper and the events continue to be successful. There are no program changes or rule changes for the season. The only change at the WSTR Finale is to add an Open Finale event. It’s time we moved our Open jackpot from the outside arena at South Point, to a full-blown Open Finale Event inside … prob­ably on Saturday, Dec 7th! Finale entries are open and entry stall and hotel forms are available at WSTRoping. 

Besides that there isn’t much news. That means you can generally expect an op-ed from me or at the least real BS. I actually have a BS story about my threat to write … “My Book.” I wasn’t seri­ous but as I tell my stories to those of you who will listen, you say, ”you should write a book”; I had an opportunity that I passed on.

A number of years ago a publishing company contacted me and wanted to pay me for informa­tion to go into two books. They would provide the ghostwriter. (I wasn’t insulted). They offered a retainer for each book and then they would pay me an additional dollar amount for each book that sold. Sounded like a cool deal. 

They explained these books would be anecdotes. They wanted all the funny and crazy things that had happened around the ropings over the years. A book version of “Ridiculousness,” and I knew immediately that I could do that. In fact, it might take two books if we included some of the clas­sification stories. Two chapters on Arkie Kieh­neisms. The time I tried to stop a fistfight in the parking lot and was trampled by thirty cowboys. The time I wrote in Super Looper about a guy’s girlfriend getting hurt in the arena, and his wife divorced him. Or the butt chewing I took when Phillip slow flagged a lady whose sisters got out of her halter-top as she faced up, hence the dress code. Hey, we could do several chapters on the fantastic stories we heard on why people got turned out.

Anyway, the free money sure sounded good, but what did I know about it. I hung up the phone and immediately started thinking whom I knew in the book business that could tell me the ins and outs. Louis L’Amour had a little place out west of Durango and I had met him back in the eighties. Since I was possibly gonna have a book, maybe we could buddy up, I could get a few pointers. On second thought, he had probably passed by now. So being a team roper my mind quickly switched from L’Amour to Baxter Black. He is a friend of mine and he had written a few books. 

I called Baxter in Wilcox, and asked his opinion. He didn’t hesitate, “hell I think everyone should write a book. Everyone has that coat closet there at the front of the house that has nothing in it. You can kill two birds with one stone.” He continued, “after all Gentry everyone knows that every team roper in the world has two or three books on the dash of their pickup truck!” His point was well taken, I have all these pictures in my office of ropers tying to “do not tie” signs, a picture of the horse running through the parking lot dragging a parking barricade with “do not tie” on it, and my favorite – the picture of the roping horse tied to the phone receiver on one of those pay phones at the back of the Lazy E arena. DO NOT TIE, above it. I never worry about offend­ing those of you that will read, I just count on you guys explaining what I said last month to the other 8O%. 

If you are looking for the point in this I told you in the title there was no news and this was random bs, nevertheless, once upon a time I was
offered a book deal!