It's 6:30 a.m., and the mesquite wood smoke is already swirling around the cooking area at the Chapman family ranch in Aledo. I'm late because - as usual - I missed the damned gate.
I'm concerned because Barney Chapman is a demanding taskmaster and doesn't abide lateness well. As a side business, he also organizes trips to Italy, where he once lived and maintains a tight schedule there as well. When the group is running late, he has this distinctive clap - clap-clap, clap-clap-clap - that he repeats until you show up. It doesn't take long to make you want to shoot him.
Before the day is out - actually by a little after noon - we'll have cooked and served more than 130 pounds of beef fajitas, 30 pounds of onions, many sacks of bell peppers, several cases of tortillas, 30 pounds of deer sausage and 20 pounds of regular sausage, 630 biscuits, multiple dozens of eggs and homemade pear, peach, grape and plum preserves and jellies. That doesn't count two Dutch ovens of corn bread and one of cherry cobbler.
It's the Calf Branding and Cowboy Cookout on the Ground put on by brothers John and Barney Chapman for a few hundred of their closest friends.
First, the equipment inventory: Hat, check. Comfortable boots (I'll be on my feet all day), check. Personalized red apron with the Chapman Family Ranches logo, check. Heavy leather gloves (easy to burn yourself cooking over a campfire), check.
There are two authentic chuck wagons there as well, with the cooks whipping up to-die-for desserts reminiscent of what might have been served to working cowboys back in the day. I guess they could have had Jack Daniel's sauce - for the bread pudding - around in the late 1800s since the U.S. government officially registered the whiskey in 1866. In addition, the cooks made four apple cobblers and one apricot/cherry cobbler and some biscuits and sausage.
But don't be fooled. This isn't about the dinner on the grounds for the tenderfoots. This is a working ranch experience, and everyone else is just there to get a glimpse of a form of life many seldom see or experience in person.
Cattle Drive
The reason behind the gathering is the roundup, where cowboys and wannabes bring their horses - and chaps - and actually drive the cattle from the pastures to holding pens where, in the words of the old Rawhide TV show theme, they "don't try to understand 'em, just rope and throw and brand 'em." They also perform, shall we say, a kind of surgery on the male calves.
I wouldn't know about any of that. I never worked cattle, and I haven't been on a horse since the late 1980s. I don't have any plans to change either soon.
What I am is a cook.
John Chapman is adamant that the equipment and the environment be as authentic as possible, and the cooking is all pretty authentic. I say "pretty" because the long-handled pan I use most is aluminum. But the nearby storage tent is canvas and reminiscent of the lodging tents you see at Civil War reenactments.
"But it's not reenactment, though," John says. "It is Old West. We just carried it right on through."
Why would that be?
"The heritage," he says, "and the cowboy. I don't use four-wheelers to round up cattle or dirt bikes. I just do it the way it's supposed to be done. And so do most of the big ranches like the Four Sixes and so forth. They still rope cattle and drag 'em to the fire."
He's talking about the legendary 6666 brand that now covers 275,000 acres near Guthrie and at the Dixon Creek Ranch near Panhandle, Texas, northeast of Amarillo. The ranching empire was started by Capt. Samuel "Burk" Burnett, whose name is lionized in Fort Worth, along with that of his granddaughter, Anne Valliant Burnett Tandy, and his great-granddaughter, Anne W. Marion.
The Chapman family can trace some branches back to land grants in 1844 in Texas. Barney and John's great-grandfather, Bill, came to Texas after serving in the Confederate cavalry during the Civil War. He bought ranches across the state, ending up in Deaf Smith County in the Panhandle.
Their father, I.B. Chapman Sr., lived on that ranch for 10 years - in a dugout.
"Ranch life in those days was a lot tougher than now," Barney Chapman says.
I.B. Sr. started Quality Meat & Provision Co. Inc. in 1933 and operated it until he died in 1961. At one time, he owned seven ranches.
"We, of course, as kids, worked on these ranches and lived on them in the summers and weekends," Barney Chapman said.
John is still doing things the way he did then. He supposes that gives him some satisfaction.
"But I've always done them that way," he said. "This is not something new that we just started. It's just totally carried right on through like my dad did."
Ranchers sometimes use what are called 's.queeze chutes" and "calf tables," devices that hold the cattle and calves in position for branding, doctoring and castrating rather than roping and throwing them.
"We never owned a squeeze chute," John Chapman said. "I'll bet I was 37 years old before I ever saw one. We doctored big cows for screwworm and pink eye, and we didn't have a squeeze chute for that either. We roped 'em and snubbed them up to a post. I didn't know there was any other way to do that."
Their frugal father wouldn't buy anything he didn't need.
"As long as he had two big strong boys to get knocked down and run over, well, he wasn't going to buy any kind of a squeeze chute," John said.
But there was a price to be paid - by the boys.
"My ribs, when I was a kid, use to stay skinned up so much that I didn't think they were ever going to get well," he said. "We had horned Herefords - great big horns - and their strike zone was right about where my ribs were. You get up there trying to doctor 'em, and if they'd get loose, boy, when they'd swing their heads, they'd hit me right in the ribs."
Cowboy Benefits
In the Old West, food and lodging - perhaps in a bunkhouse - was part of the compensation for cowboys.
"They didn't make much money, but everything was furnished for them. Whatever they did make was theirs," John Chapman says.
"Historically, all ranchers fed cowboys," Barney Chapman said. "Even my ranch now [up near Clarksville on the Red River], when they come to work for me a full day, I feed 'em lunch. The guys around that don't feed 'em lunch, they all talk about it and grumble about it. "You can go work at this place, but he won't give you anything to eat. You better take something." They feel like it's something they deserve for being there."
That's how this event got started - food for the hired hands.
"We started this when I had a place up at Rhome. But I don't know what year that was," John Chapman said. "Back then, all we did was make a great big pot of beans and served beans and barbeque and cornbread."
The brothers consult and decide that was more than 30 years ago.
The cookout and roundup just grew.
"This never was done for the people. It was a ranch working event that people started coming to," John said. "It just got bigger and bigger."
Finally, he started sending out invitations.
Last year, there were around 300 people there at one time or another, including 10 or 15 graduates of Valley Mills High School who were in school with John and Barney.
"Considering how small the school was, this is a large percentage of the high school," Barney says. "It has become an annual event for them."
Some locals bring their horses to help with the cattle drive, and they are welcome to do so.
Let the Pros Do It
Inside the branding corral, however, it's all business. This is the ranch's roundup and branding, and everything else is just a courtesy to friends and guests. They may watch, but only working cowboys and cowgirls are welcome to do the real work.
"I'm just afraid they're going to get hurt," John Chapman said. "As long as you got something on the end of a rope and it's running around, you've got to really watch or you'll get the horse tangled up in it."
Barney's youngest daughter, Livia, works the ear tags - orange for steers and yellow for heifers and careful to tag the correct ear. Sons Trey and Roscoe are true ranch hands and do the heavy lifting in the corral.
"Roscoe is one of the few that John trusts to do the job with the Bloodless Castrator. It is so easy to make a mistake and if this happens, it is really a problem for the rancher," says Barney.
Daughters Giulia and Flaminia often fly in from Rome, where they live, to participate.
Barney got into the DQ business in 1963, and since then has been involved in some way in the development and construction of more than 250 Dairy Queens in four states and five foreign countries.
He once owned the Dairy Queen in Shamrock, my Panhandle hometown, and even tried to set up a Dairy Queen on Piazza di Santa Marta in Vatican City just south of St. Peter's. Apparently, the Pope was not amused.
"I love rounding up the cattle, working with the cowboys, and carrying on a family tradition," says Trey. "I truly like to watch all the people enjoy themselves and learn about cowboying and branding. It's fun to discuss the old ways of ranching."
Trey's in ranching full time now with his dad and with, as he says, "my uncle, the man, the legend John Chapman. As you know, we have been ranching for over 166 years and seven generations of Texans. How could anyone not get excited about cowboyin", riding horses, working cattle, ranchin" and living the Texas dream?"
An integral person in the event is Karen Monez, John's long-time companion. In her other life, she's an award-winning competitive shooter and coach of the 2010 NCAA-champion TCU Women's Rifle Team. On round-up day, she's all over the place.
"It has been personally rewarding to help John with the branding over the years," Monez said. "Each year he looks forward to inviting family and friends to the branding so that they can experience the cowboy Old West traditions of working cattle."
At the Campfire
But I'm not a cowhand. My job is at the campfire, where the cooking will continue at a frantic pace until well after noon.
I'm all sausages and eggs early in the day, switching to fajitas as soon as the breakfast rush is over.
Joe and Stephanie Usher are generally in charge of the vegetables for the fajitas. Brothers Rickey and Brad Brown handle the Dutch ovens for biscuits and keep the fires stoked. In 2012, James Badgett will serve as coffee master.
In past years, we cooked the vegetables in wok-like utensils made from plow disks with tripod legs welded on. It was slow and inefficient. Last year, we switched to cooking on the adjustable grill - faster but with a fair amount of waste.
But the fajita beef is done only directly on the grill and cooked at the pace of serving so it is always fresh and hot.
David Rubinson, now in the oil and gas business but one-time soccer coach at TCU, is the knife man. He slices the fajitas as they come hot off the grill. He won't sit down until early afternoon.
Barney is the biscuit man. He's got the mixings spread out on the work table and the Dutch ovens lined up on the ground. There's a separate fire pit to generate the coals the cooks will pile on the ground under the ovens and on the lids to bake the biscuits.
One thing: Barney doesn't use lard. He uses olive oil. I suppose you could have imported olive oil to the Old West if you had wanted. But he's a freak on controlling cholesterol. He won't use butter, either.
As I arrive, cowboy coffee is already boiling from a cooking tripod over a fire pit. It'll be replenished throughout the day, and by day's end will be strong enough to use on scrapes, scratches and other wounds.
The heart of the operation is an iron cooking grill designed after one cookout a couple of years ago during a meeting at the Old Neighborhood Grill. We'd had a particularly difficult time that year making everything come out right.
We drew the plans on a piece of paper, and then Barney commissioned Regan Holderman, a Mennonite neighbor and friend up near the Red River, to fabricate it. It straddles the cooking trench - which for some reason the Chapmans always locate a long way from the wood pile - and can be raised or lowered with a sprocket wheel mechanism, depending on the height of the fire and the wind across the trench.
For Love of the Tradition
The people show up for food in waves - and the last one includes the cowboys who have been working long and hard to handle the roundup and branding duties.
They are professionals who work at various ranches but sign on for the day because they believe in doing it the way the Chapmans do it.
"If you'll look, most of them are dressed the way they're supposed to be dressed," says Barney.
"They don't have a baseball cap turned backward," says John.
It's a hard to make a living wage as a cowboy, they say.
"The cowboy is the lowest paid skilled laborer in the world," says John. "And he's very skilled, but they just don't make much money and that's probably just the way it has always been.
"They never have made much money because the ranchers never did make a whole lot of money, and they were afraid to raise the pay scale because then if cattle went back down, well, you can't ever lower it," he said. "They probably make more now than they ever have."
And they get to be cowboys.
