Word: rodeoing
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Like Remington and Russell, Leigh is crazy over horses. And he has a true Westerner's bias in favor of the working breed. "As for those tired old nags at the rodeo," says he, "they don't know the first thing about bucking." No one could say that about Leigh's recently painted range horse (opposite). "Like a bolt of lightning," as Leigh himself describes it, "the wily equine flies into the air with a volcanic suddenness-with a fantastic violence and rabid spleen that defy description...
Rancher Flynt (Square Top 3), who dabbles in oil, baseball (as president of the Midland Indians of the Texas Longhorn League) and rodeos (as president of the Midland Rodeo), is mighty proud of his horse with cow sense. He brags that he wouldn't sell her for all the oil in Texas...
...riding. "But I never could get enough." Tompkins recalls now. "At night I'd go out in the pasture to ride. I did that for four years." At 19, Tompkins rode his first wild bull ("They're not as squirmy as horses"), and entered his first rodeo in Springfield, Mass. Then an eight-second ride at Madison Square Garden earned him $310, and Tompkins decided that the wild & woolly sport of bull riding was an easy way to make money. Within a year, Tompkins was the best in the world, won bull-riding championships three years running...
Marriage did not slow down Tompkins' breakneck career. Wife Rosemary is the daughter of a rodeo producer and a topflight performer in her own right. Working in his spine-jarring sport where broken arms & legs are commonplace, Tompkins has only had one real injury: a pulled thigh ligament. The enforced month's layoff ("I knew I wouldn't be at my best") made nervous, gum-chewing Tompkins edgier than ever, kept him out of action just long enough to lose the bull-riding title...
Hustle & Bustle. In 1952, taking aim on the all-round title, Tompkins set out to top the other 2,500 members of the Rodeo Cowboys' Association. He set himself a backbreaking. hustling schedule around the rodeo circuit: 7,000 miles in his Cadillac, another 30,000 by air. At one time, chartering a plane with two other cowboys, he made five rodeos in four days. Another time, boarding commercial air liners for night flights ("It's cheaper than paying hotel bills"), Tompkins made overlapping shows in New York, Omaha, Denver. Boston and San Francisco. The hustle & bustle paid...