I debated over posting this story. I’m no lawyer and I don’t know anything about statute of limitations or current case law. I don’t want anyone coming to throw me in prison now that I’m almost ready to retire and raise livestock for a living. 

If you are currently in law enforcement, or think you may want to turn an old man in for reminiscing about his past, please just stop reading now or try some of my other stories.

But not the one about that party.

That may not be a good one for you either. 

I was reminded of this story because I wrote about Josey Ranch recently. I was looking up some of my old calf roping pictures and thinking about all those fun times. After all the summers at Josey’s ranch I started roping in high school rodeos. 

The year was 1983-84….ish. I was still driving that Yellow Ford that I loved so much. I was hanging out with a group of guys that have not been featured in any of my stories thus far. If I’m going down, I’m taking the guys with me. It was me, Tommy Wilson, Bud McCracken, John Carlisle, Paul Ray Storie, and Brett McClaren. 

Every Friday night we would load up our trucks and trailers and head out to a rodeo somewhere in East Texas.We really wanted to be able to practice whenever we wanted. What we were doing was paying an entry fee for one run a week. We talked to a man that had a ranch, a rodeo arena, and cattle. He gave us a verbal agreement that if we bought some calves and would take care of them, he would let them stay on his land, and we could use his arena. Basically it was a ‘you take care of things right, and you can use it as much as you wish’ situation. 

The next issue became, ‘how do we buy calves?’ 

None of us were really making any money at the time, but we knew what worked for other school organizations and clubs in the area. We would have a raffle. 

I won’t name the person that was most influential in running this raffle, but one person seemed to know everything that needed to be known. Looking back now, I think he may have been a genius. I had known him from first grade on, and I never knew he could run a business like this until it was required of him. 

The first meeting was to form a club, and give that club a name. We settled on the Silver Bullet Roping Club. Then we discussed what we could give away. We decided that giving away a half side of beef processed at the local packing plant was a perfect prize for what we needed the money for. Just imagine your local Youth Calf Roping Organization giving away a half side of beef to raise money to buy calves to rope. It seemed like the most natural thing ever.

The fact that we weren’t actually backed by any school organizations or clubs, and had zero adult supervision never really caused us pause. We immediately jumped into action.

The same person that negotiated the practice arena went all business in an instant. He researched/negotiated how much a half side of beef would cost at the packer. He went to the livestock auction and found out how much it would cost to buy a half dozen roping sized calves. He called a meeting and demanded enough money from us to get the tickets printed. We set a date for the drawing, prices for the tickets and gave him all of our cash. 

One day he just showed up with packets of tickets already split evenly into envelopes and told us to get to work. And get to work we did.

There was no question of ‘if you could sell that many tickets.’ They just had to be sold. It was required of you. If you weren’t out hustling raffle tickets then you could expect to be called on the carpet over it. All the research had been done. We sell out, and we obtain all our goals. If we don’t, we fall short and someone will have to make up the difference. 

We sold those tickets. We sold them to our family. We sold them to our friends. We sold them to people on the street, businesses…no one was safe. The amount of people willing to hand over wads of cash to a teen with a brown envelope filled with raffle tickets is pretty incredible.

In the end we piled that cash on the kitchen table, counted it all up and we had made our goals. We contacted the packing house and got our half side of beef ordered and told them when the drawing would be. The rest of the money would all go towards the calves and feed. 

The date of the drawing we gathered around a kitchen counter and made sure every single ticket sold was in a cardboard box. I still remember the excitement of the drawing…and then the anticlimactic name that was announced. 

We all looked at one another and the person doing the drawing said, ‘does anyone know this person?’ None of us did. 

Instantly he dropped that ticket and drove his arm back into the box up to his elbow. 

‘Anyone know this one?’ Shaking of heads.

‘How about this one?’ No. We sold to a LOT of strangers….

Back to the box….

‘Dick Haynes?’

‘YES!, that is one of mine!’ I shouted 

We got really excited that we actually knew the person that won. Never mind the fact that we were on our fourth draw before it happened.

I had a hard time convincing Dick that he actually had won, and that he was really and truly going to get a half side of beef for his investment.

He collected his beef.

We collected our calves.

We roped those things relentlessly. Sooooo many late nights out at that arena roping, tying, releasing. We roped them until they were bigger than we could throw. Then we started using them for chute dog practice. Later we even rode them. They didn’t really buck at all, but they would run like mad until they threw us on the ground. 

I’m not sure what happened to those calves. I don’t know if the property owner sold them later for a profit. Maybe the raffle director sold them. All I know is that we had such a great time out at that arena, and I have SUCH a distrust of raffle drawings now.