Art of the Cowgirl, Betty Kunesh Award presented to Norma Hapgood
NORMA HAPGOOD
2022 Award Recipient
Norma Hapgood is not, make that NOT, a good little woman who likes to putter around the house.
Even at age 97, Hapgood is probably outside working in her garden, feeding cattle or helping out riding horseback. But some things have never come naturally. Riding and being outside is something that’s come naturally, something that started early.
“I always rode with my dad. I didn’t like inside stuff,” she explains with obvious pride. For more than 91 years — “I don’t know where that time went” — she’s lived in Modoc County’s Surprise Valley. Her parents, Roy and Vida Hanks, had a ranch outside Fort Bidwell.
“I am not a cook,” she emphasizes. “ ‘Bout the first breakfast I cooked was after Hilyard passed away,” she said, referring to her husband, who died in 1995. “No, no, being indoors, that’s not me. I avoided the house.”
“We had a little starve-out place,” she said of the family ranch, where they ran cattle and had milk cows. The fourth of seven children, she helped with all the chores, including milking cows and selling the cream — “I’ll tell you what. I know how to milk a cow” — and thrived spending time horseback. “I’m sure I rode more than a million miles. I’ve spent many an hour horseback and I’ve loved every minute of it. I always had a saddle horse. I didn’t always have a saddle,” she quips.
During good weather she and her sisters and brothers rode horseback to school. “That was the fun thing in my life, my horses. I’ve had some good horses. They were tough, tough horses.”
Life got tougher when Hapgood was 12 and her mother died. “Life changed after that I’ll tell you.”
Still, she enjoyed her growing-up years. Hapgood was part of the Fort Bidwell baseball town team, one that included boys and girls, and later played catcher for her fast ball pitching daughter Jeanne. Baseball is still a favored pastime. She watches San Francisco Giants games on television and admits to sometimes falling asleep. She is a loyal fan but, living so far from San Francisco, she has never attended a game.
More than baseball, Hapgood likes dancing. She found a dance partner after graduating in 1942 from Surprise Valley High School in Cedarville, the valley’s largest town. While working at the grocery store, she met Hilyard Hapgood, who made periodic town visits from his family ranch at Calcutta, 40 miles away on the present-day Sheldon National Wildlife Refuge in Nevada. She doesn’t remember the details, “but I’m sure it was at dances” where their romance blossomed. “Hilyard, he could dance,” she tells with a schoolgirl grin. They were married in 1944 and lived at Calcutta.
“We rode every place,” she said, recalling cattle drives and the winter they gathered 40 head of pinto horses for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, drove them from the Sheldon to Cedarville then, a day later, over the Warner Mountains to Alturas. “The snow was so deep it was at my stirrups. Talk about cold. We had icicles on our horses’ noses.”
Winters were spent at different places until 1949, when the Hapgoods bought the house that’s still her home and added neighboring ranches. During their peak years, she estimates the family owned about 2,000 acres, ran about 500 head of cattle and raised hay on 500 acres. Her “work-alcoholic” daughter and son-in-law, Bonnie and Joe Erquiaga, have taken over management of the ranch. Her grandson, Jeff, a veterinarian in Colorado, provides the family with Red Angus bulls for breeding. “We’re really proud of our cows,” said Hapgood, who’s also proud of her family. “Everybody knows how to work and everybody can do each other’s jobs.”
She’s been hobbled by two hip replacements and two shoulder surgeries — “I can’t throw a rope,” she moans — but still takes on chores. “I get up at 5 o’clock and get to work.” Asked if she still rides horseback she answers, “Oh heavens, yes,” although she confesses to needing help getting a horse saddled and steps on a bale of hay to climb aboard.
Hapgood, who wears a perpetual smile and is firecracker sparkly, has no complaints.
“Nobody had a better life than me. There’s no part of ranching and my life I don’t like. Made us a living. We worked hard. We were up early and worked late. Think of the fun times we had,” Hapgood reminisces. “I’ve really liked every day of it. I’d like to go back and do it again.”
