Cowgirls Transcript
- [Norma Hapgood] Think of me? Well, I hope they just think I'm enjoying myself. and doing the work I like to do, I guess. If I thought I had to dress up and go to town every day, I, Ooh, I wouldn't like that at all. That just wouldn't be my life. I wasn't more than six years old with the first cow I ever milked and have milked one almost ever since. Very short time in my life that I didn't have a cow to milk. And I never did mind the milking That's one job you get to sit down to do. I was always up in the morning and had the milk bucket long and gone before the other kids ever got outta bed 'cause I was afraid I might have to cook or do the dishes. So you kind of took turns of doing different jobs and mine never was in the house for sure. But no girls--girls never worked in out like they do now.
- [Husband] Well, I get up every morning about a quarter to five and get breakfast, but I don't know how I got into that job. I just took it over and never could get rid of it. I like to--Norma she's better cow milker than I am, so that's the way we managed it. I thought she was kind of an outdoors person. Thought she ought to be anyhow. See that's why I picked on Norma here.
- Hey!
- Hey, get out the gate. Ho, ho, ho.
- Okay.
- I've heard of women that have worked out on ranches. I'm, I'm sure they rode and did jobs just the same as we do now. Maybe not as many 'cause I, I meant the whole world has changed that women have began to take men's places and far more than just on ranches. There's another lady I knew that she used to-- was a jockey, and my she could ride anything. And she, I guess was kind of my idol maybe when I was a little girl, 'cause she was always invited to brandings and she could rope right with any man years ago. She went to all the fairs and rodeos and she always raced and just simply had a blast. The husband, I think he made money in the store and he bought her the best. And then he passed away and I'm sure she was lonesome. You know she'd gotten older and didn't have her horses to ride anymore. And then she took to drinking. And people would kind of laugh, you know, and say there comes old Neva--drunk. But she shouldn't have ended that way. She didn't in my eyes anyway, I'll tell you. I wish I could be half as good as Neva. We just had this little old place here in Nevada when we first started out and not very many cattle and we put together a real nice little family ranch. It's the best life there is.
- Bonnie.
- What?
- Get out here at your job.
- Pull it back.
- Bonnie is our daughter. She grew up with this and she loves this life the same as we do. No, we wouldn't have what have we have today if it wasn't for Bonnie, I'll tell you.
- Are you sure there's one there?
- Yeah...on the back? I don't know. I just ran the bottom. Don finally got it on there. No I can't. I can't.
- Oh, that one? Still on the bottom.
- No, you can't.
- Well, I have to turn the motor on
- All right. I know. I know
- Bonnie. She just rode always. When her legs was so short they wouldn't hardly stick down on the side of a saddle. But now Jeff, I packed him many a mile right on the seat of my saddle. He probably was two. Come on now.
- I'd put a pillow in the seat here and he'd just lay in there just as happy as could be and I'd ride back here and hold him. And we could just gather cattle go just as far as anyone. I'd take his bottle along and his clean pants, but no, we made it great. Oh yeah. If you'd go fast, he'd really think that was fun. He'd just laugh and laugh.
- Oh yeah. There's lots of accidents happen on ranches and doing work like we do, but we've been pretty fortunate so far, you know. We've never had any really serious accidents.
- I was putting gas in the bus, and John and Dad came to the school where I was. But then I knew something was wrong soon as they pulled up there.
- She came in and she says, "Oh Mom, what did you do now?" But it only took one look. She knew what I had done. I did something very stupid. I had the chainsaw I cut down this way and then I cut back and when I cut back, it just kicked right back up and hit me right in the face here, came right down across my glasses and right down into my mouth and teeth. And that was unnecessary. But that really healed up. It's kinda like a face lift.
- All ready to go.
- We've really had a good life. We've done pretty much what we wanted to do or liked to do anyway. We've never overworked or we can always stop and play and we don't owe any anybody a dime.
- And that to me, that's all life is anyways just to enjoy what you're doing and we've sure enjoyed it, just working together and we'll never leave this world very rich but that never was my goal in life anyway. You can't take just good old everyday living away from anybody.
♪ I was tired from the road. ♪
♪ I put down my load in Montana, ♪
♪ at a tavern cafe. ♪
♪ Saw a young woman there, she had soft, wavy hair. ♪
♪ Pointed, looked like, to me, she did say: ♪
♪ I wanna tell you I'm a cowgirl, ♪
♪ Don't think I'm just a bar girl. ♪
♪ I worked in the saddle today. ♪
- [Grandmother of Melody] Well, I think this about Melody. It's a kind of work she's always liked. She went to Laramie College. She didn't like it. She quit. She went into a dentist office, had a wonderful job. She quit that. All she could see was a ranch, horses and cows. And if she isn't fitted to it then I can't say more than that. That must prove it. I'm her grandmother. But I can't see today yet how she has attained all the possibilities that she had, but she has. And if you would tell a stranger about her pulling calves about her doctoring stock and putting these feeders down their throat and everything, they wouldn't believe you. They wouldn't think a woman could do it, but she can.
- [Melody] I don't think about the work outside I do as being masculine. It's what I enjoy. It's a demanding thing for a woman to do because you're definitely not geared up for it as well as a man. But it's a challenge whether you can keep doing it day after day, the same old thing. No, we've had a hard time with our stackers. The guys are wimpy anymore. We've tried to go with two other guys. And the one went about 15 loads and said, that was it for him? And got sick to his stomach. And I think I might have crawled away if I were a man before I would've said, well, this is it. I'm not gonna do this. But, hopefully, now we've got a guy that, when he gets over the flu, he'll be back. Cause we're getting close to our fall cow work and I need to be doing that. But this is fun for a diversion, keeps you in shape. My grandparents had a ranch and I spent all my time especially with my grandfather. And that's just, I've tried a couple other things. And that's the only thing that I have been really happy and comfortable with and stuck with it.
- I have been working here for 15 years. I make $600 a month, room and board. And my horses are also boarded, which is a big consideration. Cow foreman is my position, but my situation is very different from, I think your average foreman job, in that parts of the year we don't have a crew. Parts of the year we do. And a lot of the work I do alone. People really frustrate me. I can take physical abuse much easier than I can the frustrations of people and mental anguish. I just don't deal with that very well. I think maybe I was born a hundred years too late. I really love all the animals that I deal with every day. I'm just very comfortable with them and there's an unspoken gratitude that they show me.
- Come back! I feel like in order to do a good job, you do it every day seven days a week. So your personal life suffers a bit and it really makes a personal relationship sometimes tender. Richard's pretty good about understanding that. Richard came to work here 12 years ago and worked here a year. And then he worked at a neighboring ranch and probably didn't start courting me until he started working at the neighboring ranch. Right now he is carpentry. All the other guys that were friends were probably more Western types. And they sort of had me stereotyped as their wife at home. Ya know? And I just wasn't interested in that. I was either interested in a partnership or just being able to do this. I didn't want my life set up and he respects what I do and I respect what he does. And that works out real well.
- [Rodeo Announcer] Hey, hey, rodeo fans. Listen to this: McGill, five points.
- [Rodeo Announcer] 5.75. Who's hittin' the top of the list here this afternoon.
- [Melody] Rodeo is probably my one recreation other than working. And it's also a chance to use the horse that I'm working with on the ranch as a recreational activity as well.
- [Rodeo Announcer] First stock, Kim Stevenson now, Hey, look at that old horse get him down right there.
- [Melody] I enjoy going and seeing local people and helping the local kids--that's fun-- to help them learn the fun that it can be the good sportsmanship and that winning isn't the big deal always. If you do well, you usually win, but mostly being aware of your horse and working as a team. Well, good luck. Yeah. Are you running barrels?
- Yeah, I'm go doing barrels, poles and
- Goat. Great. Do good.
- I will.
- Well, her grandpa had her on a horse when she was 15 months old. I went over to the crowd and I said, my God you're gonna get that kid killed. He said, well, I've had her on a horse before this. So she's been in the saddle a long time.
- [Rodeo Announcer] We'll move on to Melody Harding. A working cowgirl comes into the arena. She has to beat an 8.9 point. Little competitor. Two good turns down. She's gonna do it. It's gonna be close. We've gotta have two good turns down for the record. Melody Harding won in championship buckle. Give her a hand.
- [Melody] This way of life was very important to me. I've gotten up in the morning and felt really down and thought what in the hell am I doing here? What is the future? And I've gone out, you know, sort of dragging, got the cows in to milk. But by the time I was through with chores--all right. Now this is why I'm doing this. I like this. Hopefully, that won't change for me.
♪I love all the roar and the rattle. ♪
♪ The lure and the billow of cattle. ♪
♪ And I love to see the cowboy at the rodeo. ♪
♪ And I heard I can hear it singing. ♪
♪ And I can see lariat swinging. ♪
♪ And my heart is always happy at the rodeo. ♪
♪ I wanna be a real cowboy girl. ♪
♪ And wear all the buckles and straps. ♪
♪ And know how it feels to wear spurs on my heels. ♪
♪ And strut about in my chaps. ♪
- [Father Of Nondi And Cricket] We've got two distinctly different daughters. We've got an older daughter in Cricket that it's very compassionate, very caring kind of an individual. She has ambitions of being a nurse or a veterinarian. And we've got another daughter in Nondi that's much younger and definitely a free spirit. And right now she's betwixt in between being a rodeo clown, a bullfighter, or a Buckaroo somewhere out in the Nevada desert. I want the girls to enjoy the full gamut the ranch has to offer. I make it more of a game at this stage. I think they've got plenty of time, the rest of their adult life to work at it, but I don't want them crawling under a pickup and trying to repair something mechanical. If they wanna do that later. Great. Let them do it. But now it's working with the animals, feeding their calves feeding their colts and just general light ranch chores. I want them to experience the whole gamut of it.
- Here, you put it in there.
- Squeeze it.
- Then release it and then pull it out.
- Okay.
- Give it about a second to release it then pull it out.
- Okay.
- Okay.
- A lot of times I think I ask them to be maybe too grown up and not let them be little girls and squeal and giggle and things like that. And I'm sure that that's a fault of mine, maybe because you only have so much time to be a little girl and you have all your life to be grown up and responsible.
- Walk right up here and fold it right in. Right straight in.
- Right here? Yep. Fold it straight in.
- I like cutting cows and siding them.
- Yeah?
- Mmhmm.
- Do you like to ride all day
- Sort of.
- Yeah?
- What about this job?
- It's kind of good and kind of not. When you get cow manure in your face it's not very good. But when you don't, it's good.
- So when we come through the gate let's turn and then we'll go down there to that other gate. How's that?
- This one please.
- Okay? Okay. Girls push up a little bit. Take them, move them right up there. Yeah. Yeah. Easy. Quiet. Just be real quiet 'till they line up and know which way they're gonna go. Girls spread out there. Those cows don't need that one hole plugged. You can do both holes. Go ahead, Cricket, and take them on up there.
- Lead them right up there, Cricket, toward the gate.
- [Cricket] I hate getting yelled at the most. You're never in the right spot. You're always someplace wrong. And it ends up being a longer day than you figured. That's when most of the family gets yelled at. Mom, will you help me up?
- Go ahead. See what you can do. If you can't I'll help you.
- They yell at me a lot because I do things wrong because I'm little and Cricket. [Yells] Mom! I want to do what Cricket does and I used to be scared. But I used to be six and now I'm seven. I can do a lot of things now.
- Okay. Come on babe.
- [Mother] Basically. I did the same things that they're doing. I didn't feel a fear when I was doing it and I didn't feel that there was a lot of danger. They just don't react the same as if they're relaxed and confident about what they're doing.
- You gonna be my helper? You can't leave me.
- I don't wanna go down.
- He stomped on your toe? Did it get your big toe or your little toe? Did he get your big toe or your little toe?
- How's your toe Nondi?
- Fine.
- Doesn't hurt anymore, huh?
- No.
- I'm sure if he thought he was stepping on his little buddy he wouldn't have done it so hard.
- Yeah, but he doesn't have to stomp on it hard. That kinda hurts.
- You think it's gonna turn blue and purple and black and fall off?
- That's sick mom.
- Do you know what kind of birds those are, Nondi?
- Nope. Little chickadees
- Chickens.
- Chickadees.
- Can you say chickadees?
- Chickadees.
- We're supposed to do it first. The homework first. And then we can do our other jobs. Like mom says do your homework first and then you can do a lot of other fun things. You can.
- Did you get all your homework done?
- No.
- No.
- What's Mrs. Jordan gonna say?
- I don't wanna know.
- [Reading] "We can put this old cowboy--
- -cowboy hat on the snowman man, too," said Jack.
- Hit it harder.
- I'm stronger then any of the boys
- I think the boys, they like more of the town girls more than they do us. I think the town girls I think they're a little bit prettier. I don't know why but they have a little bit fancier things and more things.
- Actually all of my kids that are boys think girls can't work on ranches. I think that I can do better than boys on a ranch. What I wanna know, if you know, tell me. Why do we wear pants and dresses but boys can't wear dresses? We wear both and they don't. Do you know? Wonder why God didn't make both of us the same?
