View from covered wagon offers time for reflection
Spending a cold February day staring at the south ends of two northbound mules slowly pulling a covered wagon into Houston lends itself to certain observations, ruminations and insights. That’s what I discovered last week while on the road with a trail-riding group called Los Vaqueros, whose
arrival — along with a dozen other groups — signals the start of the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo.
I can now tell you, for example, that when a mule’s long ears are flopping as he trots along, that means he’s walked himself into a trance. (It’s OK; he’s got nothing else to do.) Otherwise, the ears would be pointed straight up, listening for commands from his driver or traffic sounds or another mule’s whinny.
I learned that, despite their reputation for mulishness, these hybrid creatures — offspring of a male donkey and a female horse — are smarter than horses. “Horses have a little bitty brain, but mules, they have a little bit bigger brain,” Sal Ramirez was telling me as we plodded along at a 4-mile-per-hour pace in a wagon behind Jill and Bell. “A mule’s not gonna hurt himself. A horse will.”
Those are a couple of things I learned in just one day on the trail, a 16-mile trek from Richmond to suburban Houston. I also was reminded that you see
a lot more at 4 mph than at 74, and I appreciated anew our frontier forebears who plodded along for weeks and weeks behind horses, mules and oxen.
Sal, who works for the city of Livingston, had a lot more time for observing and ruminating as he and his Los Vaqueros amigos headed for Houston. Several had been on the trail since Feb. 7, traveling 386 miles from Hidalgo in the Rio Grande Valley to Houston’s Memorial Park. It’s the longest trek of the 13 groups.
We plodded along in the police-protected right lane of Highway 90A, morning traffic into Houston whizzing by on our left, Jill’s traffic-side ear pointed skyward. True trail rider that I am, I rode shotgun in a lawn chair. Mules and moonshine
Sal got to telling me what happened to him last year. A stocky 54-year-old with a grizzled beard and a friendly way about him, he recalled how a neighbor called with the urgent news that the family home was on fire. “There I was in the wagon, in traffic, and I couldn’t move,” he said.
When he finally made it back to Livingston, northeast of Houston, he discovered that a water heater had exploded and that he and his wife had lost everything.
In the succeeding weeks, friends were generous with donations and his fellow trail riders organized a benefit, which helped the Ramirez family move into a threebedroom mobile home on the property. “Life doesn’t stop when you’re out here on the trail,” he said.
After a roadside pause to rest the mules, I switched wagons and discovered, coincidentally, that Jerry Tullos, a former ambulance driver, firefighter, prison guard, undertaker and sheriff’s deputy, had a fire tale, as well. He and his wife, Sharon — the couple got married on horseback five years ago — live on 76 acres near Trinity, north of Huntsville, where Jerry and his mother ran a funeral home for 42 years. Three years ago the home burned down, and since it was going to cost more than a million dollars to rebuild and he was already in his mid-60s (his mother was in her 80s), he decided two other funeral homes in town could tend to Trinity’s dead. These days, when he’s not on the trail, he works part-time as a private investigator.
“We stay on the trail as much as we can,” Jerry told me, as caramelcolored Judy and Jane steadily pulled us toward the city. “There’s always somebody having weekend rides or charities or school events. Or sometimes it’s just for the fun of it.” (I had one other trailriding insight while riding with the Tulloses: A little nip from Sharon’s homemade apple pie-flavored moonshine takes some of the chill out of the morning air.)
Sal Ramirez’s father, Larry, founded Los Vaqueros Rio Grande Trail Ride Association more than four decades ago. A dockworker at Sealand on the Houston Ship Channel back then, he inherited a horse in 1973 from a nephew who couldn’t handle her. After riding on weekends for a while, he got together with friends one evening at Ray’s Ice House and decided to start a trailriding club. Rodeo officials weren’t all that encouraging, even though there were no Hispanic clubs at the time and even though Mexicans were arguably the first cowboys. A little help from Congressman Mickey Leland smoothed over the difficulties, and Los Vaqueros began riding in 1974, initially from Reynosa, across the border from Hidalgo. ‘It’s a family tradition’
Larry, 79, and wife Susie, 77, married 61 years, are still on the trail, although Larry has relinquished trail-boss duties to son David. Susie prepares breakfast tacos for the group every morning.
“It’s a family tradition,” said Kay Kay Ramirez, David’s wife, a trail rider for 33 years.
Back in the wagon with Sal after another rest stop, I learned that not all trailride groups are quite so family friendly. “There’s a lot of drinking going on, husbands stealing wives, wives stealing husbands,” he told me. “I’ve seen so many divorces with trail rides you wouldn’t believe it. We just try to keep it a good family ride.”
Los Vaqueros also teams up with Horseshoes from the Heart, a volunteer association that helps physically and mentally challenged children become cowboys for a day. (Their wagons are handicap-accessible.) Yankee along for ride
Everyone who rides with Los Vaqueros is family, but not everyone’s blood kin. Tom Tilton, 70, whose accent hints at his “Taxachusetts” origins, moved to Houston 36 years ago to work in construction. Yankee Tom, as he’s known, learned about trail riding at an ice house he frequented and has been riding with Los Vaqueros for 22 years.
“The closest to a horse I’d been at that time was a TV set,” the tall occasional cowboy told me as he rested his steed in a Stafford church parking lot. “But then I bought property, and I’m still there, 25 horses later.”
Tilton, who loved the adrenalin thrill of driving KBR trucks in Iraq as a 60-year-old during the war, is semi-retired. His wife continues working as a nurse. “What makes it possible for me to do these longer rides,” he said, “is ATM. My wife puts the money in, and I draw it out.”