Eve Ball and her mother, G.G., left Independence, Kansas and set off for the frontier after Eve’s stepfather died; people went west to survive, out of desperation, to reinvent themselves, to escape disappointing marriages, to perhaps achieve upward mobility, or to strike it rich. They escaped the social hierarchies and their histories; in the East, who one was related to often counted more than merit.
Those who were content with their lot stayed where they were. Eve’s husband, Harry, stayed; he remarried (or married - no marriage or divorce certificate has been found in any Kansas courthouse for Harry and Eve). Harry had a daughter with his new wife and lived happily ever after until he died in 1975 still living near his birthplace; he had been a salesman all his life.
Eve and G.G. traveled to Tucson and lived with family, then moved to Wink, Texas, then Hobbs, New Mexico. After G.G. passed and Eve moved to the Sacramento mountains, the autobiography she gave to those who lived around her was that she was raised on a ranch in Kansas and then on a ranch in Texas, that she was a widow, and that her mother had been the first female doctor in Kansas. It was probably easier to enhance a good story and leave out the struggle.
The term “BS” most certainly was invented in the West. BS translates into bunk, baloney, hogwash, hooey, poppycock, and malarkey. BS is synonymous with nonsense, deception, foolishness and trickery-talk. Before this technical Googley age, few would bother to check a hyperbolic lineage - and what did it matter?
In 1908, a man named Clarence Van Nostrand left St. Louis, Missouri and arrived in Roswell, New Mexico at the L.F.D. ranch to work as a ranch hand. He introduced himself as Tex Austin and said he had been raised on a cattle operation in Victoria, Texas.
When he later went north to work on the Vermejo Ranch near Raton, New Mexico, he claimed to have been employed by Don Luis Terrazas, the Chihuahuan cattle baron of the Creel-Terrazas family. Tex claimed he had been a captain under Pancho Villa’s revolutionary forces against Diaz - as had Tom Mix before he became a famous cowboy movie star in his fancy duds and Stetson ten-gallon felt white hat which featured a tall crown and a wide, flat brim.
Tex Austin, BS' er extraordinaire, produced his first rodeo in El Paso, Texas right after the Mexican Revolution ended. In Wichita, Kansas he promoted the first indoor rodeo in 1918; two years later Austin organized rodeos in Chicago Stadium, New York's Madison Square Garden and in Hollywood.
Tex Austin, aka the “King of Rodeo rode his promotional high horse through the Golden Age of Rodeo. In 1924, Austin took his newly created International Rodeo to Wembley Stadium in London, England to the massive British Empire Exhibition.
Nearly every former or present commonwealth nation participated in the British Empire Exhibition; one that blatantly did not participate was the newly established Irish Free State which did not give a fekkin’ flip about joining the bloody limey pom Brits' extravaganza.
At the time, the British Empire held sway over nearly 25% of the world’s population - 412 million people, and covered 13.7 million square miles - 24% of the Earth's total land area. The United Kingdom told the world that "the sun never sets on the British Empire.
The King sent a telegram that traveled around the world in one minute and 20 seconds before it was read back to him over the radio by a messenger boy.
Bob Crosby and his wife, Thelma, sailed across the Atlantic with his roping team of horses to perform in the International Rodeo. The rodeo featured ten events including bareback bronc riding, fancy roping, cowgirls' bronc riding, steer wrestling, cowgirls' trick riding, cowboys' bronc riding with saddle, cowboys' relay race, wild steer riding, cowboys' trick riding, and wild horse races. They performed twice a day.
Bob Crosby performed his roping skills before King George V and the Royal Family - and 27 million other people from around the world. Mystery writer Agatha Christie and her husband were among the observers as well as most celebrities of the day.
The U.K. post office issued commemorative postage stamps, envelopes, letter cards, postcards and the mint struck medals for the Exhibition;; a glut of many other souvenirs were produced as well, the most common being a tea towel. (If sold today it would probably say, "My grandmother went to the British Empire Exhibition depicting 400 years of British supremacy and all I got was this lousy tea towel").
At the end of October 1925 when the exhibition had its finale, even after receiving 27 million visitors in two years and grossing nearly 151 million dollars, Variety Magazine claimed that the Exhibition was the world's biggest outdoor failure; the UK Government was $90 million dollars in the hole.
The closing ceremony was presided over by the Spare, who eventually became King George VI, even though he was second in line to inherit the throne. His brother, whose full size figure the Canadians carved out of butter, decided to marry an American divorcee and had to abdicate.
The 2010 movie, The King's Speech, is based on the British public’s reaction following the then Duke of York’s radio broadcast on 31 October 1925. King George V had been the first Royal family member to utilize the newly invented radio when he gave the opening speech for the British Empire Exhibition. His son, the future King, (future King George VI) was an embarrassment and an abhorrence to the Royal Family when he gave the closing speech. It was the first time Britons realized a Prince - chosen by birth by the Divine - had a debilitating stammer and could barely stutter his way through a speech.
King George VI Coronation
The patience of some of the public in the British Empire was wearing thin for the expense of the pomp and circumstance of royalty. P.G. Wodehouse's fictional character, Bertie Wooster, that the Exhibition’s only and greatest accomplishment was the Green Swizzle, a frothy, crushed ice, citrusy rum and absinthe drink served in a frosted commemorative glass.
Musician and conductor Edward Elgar said the self-importance of the Royal Family’s exhibition was "vulgar" and overdone. Writer Virginia Woolf was unimpressed; she called it "an outmoded piece of antiquated fiction." The Daily Herald wrote, "to this debased spirit we owe many unnecessary wars, the loss of much valuable blood,” after the reporter witnessed huge military bands, historical reenactments of battles, and a simulation of an air attack on London by firing blank ammunition into the stadium and dropping pyrotechnics from aeroplanes to simulate shrapnel from guns on the ground.
However, the genuine International Rodeo was the top event at the Exhibition. The cowboy and cowgirl bronc riders, fancy ropers, steer wrestlers, trick riders, wild steer riders, and wild horse racers caused quite a sensation in civilized Great Britain, but no good deed goes unpunished.
The rodeo was not popular with animal rights activists who attempted to get a court order to stop the event on the grounds of animal cruelty. Public and parliamentary debate followed for ten years after the rodeo arrived in Merry Old England and ultimately caused the passage of the Protection of Animals Act in 1934 which banned rodeo events deemed cruel.
Bob Crosby arrived home from England and became the three-time World’s All-Around Champion (1925, 1927 & 1928) and permanent holder of the Roosevelt Trophy (on display at the National Cowboy Hall of Fame) in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. He did so at the peril of breaking every bone in his body except his left leg and spine. His right leg was little more than an atrophied shank that he strapped into a specially made boot.
Bob Crosby, painting by Peter Hurd
"Half the fun of being a cowboy is the stories you can tell later in life." a veteran cowboy once said. Wild Horse Bob, King of the Cowboys, had his share. He told a reporter he was born riding. He said his mother was being chased on a pregnant mare by the Comanches just before he was born. They got far enough ahead to stop for a minute; the colt foaled, and Bob’s mom birthed him at the same time. He said he got on the colt and they all rushed away to safety.
Crosby said his mother was a schoolmarm and he told the tale of his father winning her in a poker match. The winner of the game would have the opportunity to propose to the schoolmarm - apparently she accepted. Their son Robert was an abstemious man - he did not chew, smoke, drink hard liquor, gamble or curse. He attended church and was known for his courage and physical fortitude.
In 1930, a horse fell on Bob at the Phoenix Rodeo and tore his knee from the socket. A month later, a steer ran a horn through his thigh. He stuck his thumb in the puncture which was bleeding profusely and went to his camp wagon and poured coal oil into the wound. The next day he returned to the rodeo and won first place prize money.
A few weeks later he got in a fight with five cowboys at a rodeo in Fort Worth, Texas. They broke his nose and his cheekbone so badly that his wife did not recognize him when he got home, but he had won the calf roping prize right after the beating.
Three weeks later Bob was flanking a steer and was kicked in the eye. He needed 17 stitches in his eyelid and he could not see out of it for several months. When he recovered his eyesight, he entered a rodeo in Prescott, Arizona where his right leg was broken for the fifth time. Gangrene set in because of a cast that was too tight. He was shipped to Mayo clinic where he was set to have his leg amputated.
Crosby was being wheeled to surgery when he suddenly sat up, said he was homesick and was going home. He got off the gurney and went to his brother’s house in Roswell, New Mexico. He told Harold to find the worst doctor in town; the physician came to his house and sliced Bob’s leg open from his knee to his ankle. They both took pocketknives, heated them, dipped them in alcohol, and scraped the gangrene out down to the bone.
Bob Crosby's leg after gangrene
The infection appeared again in Bob’s big toe a few weeks later so he took his wife’s sewing scissors and snipped off the toe. Gangrene appeared one more time; he cut up an old tire inner tube, slipped it over his leg and filled it with cow manure - the red centipedes of blood poisoning disappeared after a few days of poulticing. A couple of months later he won $2700 in a steer cutting competition in Winslow, Arizona (about $52,000 today).
The "King of the Cowboys" was interviewed by Life magazine because he was among the best and most colorful steer ropers and rodeo contestants and held three world championships. A multi-talented performer, Bob also founded the Cross B Band and the musical group sometimes performed at dances with Ray Reed from Maypearl, Texas. Bob always put on a good show at whatever he did or whoever he talked to. At the age of 49, nationally and internationally recognized Bob Crosby retired and settled into ranch life.
Bob's old friend and promoter, Tex Austin, bought the 5,500-acre Forked Lightning Ranch near Pecos, New Mexico after his financially successful International Rodeo ended in England. Tex turned his new spread into a dude ranch offering wealthy and famous guests riding parties, picnics, tennis, golf, croquet, horseshoes, polo, motor trips to nearby attractions, and polo. He held cattle drives between his ranch and Las Vegas, New Mexico, and in Tom Sawyer fashion, had wealthy customers pay him to drive his cattle to the railhead.
Bob Crosby died at the scene of the accident on October 20, 1947 several months after Eve Ball’s mother passed away. Nearly twenty years later Eve and Bob’s wife, Thelma, would publish a book about his life: "Bob Crosby: World Champion Cowboy;" published by Wild Horse Press.
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