Sometimes dreams do come true. They did for Joe Street, 87; just the thought of getting paid to ride horses was hard to fathom for him. When he was helping his grandfather with the plowing on his farm he would ride the plow horse back to the barn at the end of the day.
Born in Collinsville, Ala., where his dad was a sharecropper, he was primarily brought up by his grandfather. "I worked from sun-up to sun-down walkin' behind a plow," he said.
In those days, in that area, getting a high school diploma was not a high priority for everyone. So when Street finished the sixth grade that was it - he was finished with education. He said that his grandfather told him there were only two things he needed to learn: fear God and know how to work.
At 17 he managed to talk his grandfather into letting him join the Navy during World War II, allowing him to avoid being drafted into the Army. That's where he was when the United States dropped atom bombs on Japan, bringing the war to an end. "The atomic bomb saved my life. I was on my way to the front line when that bomb hit," Street said.
After he was discharged he went back to Alabama, but after while he decided to pursue his childhood dream of being a cowboy and headed for Breckenridge, Texas. "Right in the heart of cowboy country," he said.
After his bus arrived in Breckenridge he started looking for men with cowboy hats. "Do you know where I can get a job cowboying?" he would ask. With no prospects, the dejected cowboy-wannabe decided to return home when he saw a man in a bar with a cowboy hat and he decided to try one more time. That only got him several more laughs from the men in the bar, but as he was walking to the door a man gave him the name of a ranch saying "they'll hire anything."
"I cry every time I try ta tell this," Street said.
When he met the ranch manager, the latter was the only one that didn't laugh at him and ended up hiring him to work on the ranch ground crew, sending Street into the clouds.
His first look at real cowboys coming in from branding covered with blood and manure did not deter him, but only heightened his love for what was to become his career.
After six months on the ground crew, an opening for a cowboy came along and he was on his bumpy way to becoming one. But learning something new can be tough for anyone and learning horsemanship was no different. It got him bucked off, he fell off, was dragged through the dirt, saddle slipped under his horse's belly, raw and skinned up day after day, hangin' onto that saddle horn for dear life.
"I'm lucky I didn't get killed," he said.
But perseverance and pride teamed up to put him back in the saddle time after time until one day he found himself a real cowboy.
However, he wasn't totally ignorant of horses because when he was about 15 he had taken a horse training class, so when he began at the ranch the cowboys were a bit confused when it became evident that he knew about horses, but didn't know anything about riding. He had learned how to tell a horse's personality by the shape of the head from "professor" Jesse Beery. "To learn all this by readin' the head you had to do a lot a practice," Street said.
That hazardous beginning at the ranch was the start of over 30 years of living his dream, enabling him to tell the difference between a good outfit and a bad one. And he said the RO Ranch outside Clarendon, Texas was the best. "That was the nearest thing to real cowboying that I ever got hold of," he said. "They run that ranch just like they did in the old days."
Street spent most of his cowboying years in Texas and not much in Nevada as it was a little strange to him. "There's quite a bit of difference in a buckaroo and a cowboy," he said. "They dally. They don't tie hard and fast. That was a whole new thing to me. I couldn't dally at all. I almost lost some fingers trying to learn to dally!"
Street met his wife Evelyn on a blind date and that relationship lasted 56 years until his wife died a few years ago. Getting married made him eligible for a "cow camp," - a shack for married folk out on the range. That union produced two boys; David Street lives in Winnemucca and Kelley Street lives in Oregon. He also has four grandchildren with grandson Christopher Street living in Winnemucca.
All that cowboying, however, can take a toll on a body and so it was with Street that he could no longer handle the fun or bruises. "I'm lucky to be here. I had a lot of close calls. I almost got killed several different times, here and there," he said.
One day he had a stroke on the job in a drugstore and no one knew it when he fell to the floor. Eventually he got back up and cleaned up the mess he had made. Later, during an exam, the doctor told him he had had a stroke and that's how he eventually ended up at Harmony Manor.
"They feed you good," he said. "For caring for ya they're right on. You get a little somethin' wrong with ya, I mean they doctor ya and take care of ya and help ya!"[[In-content Ad]]
