Cowboy Sequel

Freddy Johnson Jr. and Wife Ruby with Trigger, the brother of his buckskin mare, Ginger. Photo Courtesy of Ronnie Johnson.

“When I asked Janet Lagow what she remembered about the old cowboys on the ranch, she replied, “My earliest recollection, I’m about seven years old, starting to ride horses, was with Freddy Johnson, he is the main guy who was always there working on the Barrow Ranch.  We had Levi Braxton, Horace Lewis, Archie Humphrey, Roger Humphrey, “Little Ronnie" Johnson, those are just a handful of cowboys I can remember, Tee Melancon from Hamshire Fannet came in as a standby for Mr. Jim Richey, but my main one to always come back to is Freddy Johnson, he broke out a bunch of the horses. 

“Everything I learned about horses and cattle came from Mr. Richey and the black cowboys. How to saddle a horse, how to ride a horse, . . .  Freddy Johnson. One day Jean and I decided we were going to ride a horse, “Can we ride Linda?” That was Freddy’s horse, “Sure,” he said. So, we go climb on Linda and the next thing we know everybody’s waving and saying, “Get off that horse.” We didn’t have a saddle, so we were just riding bareback. So, they were flagging us down, “Get off that horse, get off that horse!” We asked why? They said, “That’s not Linda, we haven’t even broke that one out yet!” Jean named it Pretty Buck. Jim Meredith said, “I just got that from a sheriff in Houston. Sheriff Kern’s sold her to me for $500, She’s going to be a cuttin’ machine,” said Jim. Jean fell in love with it and said, “Can I buy it?” “It’s not even broke out.” Jim said. We told him, “You saw us ridin’ it, why can’t we buy it?” So, daddy worked on him, and we bought that horse for $500. That became the best horse in the 4-H horse club. Never bucked, EVER, when we broke it out. Jean won in nearly every event and even went to State, she was fast as lightening. “No one could ever beat Pretty Buck!  

“Mr. Kleberg, and my grandfather, they were characters, they raised good-blooded horses.  My grandfather would swap stud horses with Mr. Kleberg of the King Ranch era. There was a horse, very well known, Rey Jay. He was known for cutting and speed. That was exactly what my grandfather wanted for genetics in the horses he raised. So, King Ranch would send us Rey Jay and my grandfather would send some back to King Ranch.  They were very close-knit ranching families.   When my grandfather passed away in 1957, he had a gray horse named “Old Gray” how they thought of that name, I don’t know,” laughed Janet.  “That’s who I remember riding at a young age.  Doctor Northcutt was their veterinarian and he’s the one who suggested sending the horse to Mr. Barrow.  “Mr. Barrow, we’re going to send you one of the best horses, he’s up in years, but he can cut for you,” and that was “Old Gray.”   So, they swapped horses, then when Wesley Barrow took over, he started running Boyt horses, Cecil Boyt, everybody knows who he is.” Janet added. 

“I remember learning how to ride with Freddy Johnson, saddlin’ ‘em up and hoisting Jean and I up. He could talk faster than anybody I’d ever heard.  Kind of like a mixture of a Cajun and a black man.  You’d ask every other word, “What did you say?”  and everybody else would say, “that’s Freddy.”  That’s how we started learning how to identify cattle, how to read pairs, sortin’ and driving cattle.  Mr. Jim Richey and Freddy taught us how to recognize sore foot, pink eye, any other kind of problems we would have.  Freddy probably was our best hand that I can remember.  Another good cowboy was Horace Lewis who would help at times.  Freddy and Horace were so well liked by my grandfather that he actually let them run 30 to 40 head of cattle on the ranch.  They could run their cattle with the rest of our cattle and when we brought the cattle up they earmarked theirs and could keep or sell their calves.  That lasted for about ten years until their numbers got too large and they had to pull them out and relocate them.

 Roger Humphrey and Charles O. "Sweet Pea" Whittington.  Photo Courtesy of Virgina Mayes Loya.

“Roger Humphrey was everybody’s delight, that’s Archie Humphrey’s brother.  He was probably the best cowboy I’d ever seen ride, He could ride, rope, pop a whip, cut with precision, and do anything with perfection like I’d never seen before.  He worked for all the ranches, as no one ranch could keep Roger Humphrey,” said Janet. 

“PaPa, (Ralph James Barrow) and the next generation; Wesley Barrow, and Jim Meredith would put a bet of a hundred dollars on each bull to be paid to whomever could get it in the pens. That was big money back then,” said Janet.  “Papa said, “They keep duckin’ in the woods and I’ve gotta get ‘em in the pens. All right boys, go get ‘em.”  And off they’d go. I remember Freddy and Roger got the first one in and they were so excited. The looked back at each other and they were grinning from ear to ear. The next thing you know, that bull took two laps around the pen and jumped over and crushed the gate. Out he went back into the trees and their fine found money was gone and never materialized. Jim and my grandpa were laughing and said, “It doesn’t count unless he stays.  Another time when there was another hundred dollar prize to be had for penning a bull, Freddy got his rope out and made a loop and took off on Cat. Roger was on his beautiful blaze-faced sorrel, best ropin’ horse in the whole wide county. I’m just a kid about 14-years-old, and I see Freddy comin’ from the left and Roger’s comin’ from the right. They’re both keepin’ their focus on that bull to see who can rope it first. They ran right into each other, and Roger and his horse went down broke his leg! I couldn’t believe it, I thought, “Oh, my gosh!” It was no big deal to Roger, he said, “Oh, my Gosh, I broke my leg again!” Then I remember another time when Donnie and Freddy had a contest going on. They were after a cow and Donnie ran smack dab into me and nearly knocked me and my horse down, and I was on a horse standing still. You had to watch’em, once they put a hundred-dollar bill on something you were in dangerous territory, cause if that bull comes back your way you’re in the line of fire. I guess that’s about the time I started learning how to read cattle and fast roping cowboys.

Virginia Loya said of Roger, “Roger was undoubtedly one of the best cowboys I ever saw. He never headed steers like today’s team ropers, but he could sling a rope after a cow further than anyone . . . and catch! He ran with my daddy, George Clinton “Goonie” Mayes from the time he was in T-Ball. He broke horses and trained them, such a hand with a horse. At one cow working at Booster Stephenson’s, he was running after a cow that needed roping. When he roped the cow, she went on one side of a tree, and he went on the other. Roger broke his leg and my Daddy stayed at the hospital with him until he could go home. Roger was like a brother to my brother, George Mayes, and I. He was always with us, he was one of a kind. I know the Montie Humphrey cowboy bloodline ran deep in Roger.” Virginia said softly.

“Sweet Pea Whittington was another great guy who could rope cows and ride horses. Once we were loading cattle through the hall of the barn into an 18-wheeler to take them to Tommy McMullen and Frank Green in Devers. There was a bad cow Sweet Pea went in to get turned around and she decided she was going to eat Sweet Pea. We thought sure she was going to get him. He opened the slide door and got on the other side at lightning speed before we could blink an eye! It was an impressive feat of athleticism. 

Photo Courtesy of Bill White

Janet Lagow said, “We were fortunate to have Archie Jr. as one of our foremen when I was about seven years old. He and his wife, Dolly raised their kids out there.  After Archie left, we were very blessed to get Mr. Jim Richey, Wesley Richey’s grandpa. He stayed with us for around twenty years.  He came to us from the Cecil Boyt ranch, when Cecil’s family started splitting up their ranch.  The Boyt’s had maybe 30,000 acres, they were the biggest ranchers in the fifties.  They had big grey Brahman cattle on both sides of the road by Cottonwood all the way to Devers.  We were always so amazed and impressed with what he had.  Jim and his wife stayed on the Barrow homestead until he moved to the Lagow Ranch when the Barrow Ranch started splitting up.

 Jim Richey on his favorite horse “Tilly” in front of his home on the Lagow Ranch.  Photo Courtesy of Wesley Richey.

“They were always so knowledgeable and could teach you stuff. If you got a bee sting, they’d say, “Come on over here sis, let me show you, we’ll put a little tobacca’, a little baking soda, and vinegar, and look, it went away, it’s good.” If I had a calf scouring, Freddy would come up and say, “Let me show you what you do. Just straddle that calf, and you go get some chicken eggs.” “Yes sir.” “Now I’m gonna hold its mouth open, you crack that egg in there, put that shell in there too!” “He’s gonna eat the shell?” “Oh yeah, oh yeah.” Then we’d have pink eyed calves and Mr. Richey’d say, “Come on over here, let me show you what to do.” “But his eye’s all blue,” I’d say. “Go get you some Pet evaporated milk and open it with a can opener like you’re going to pour it out and bring it on out here. We’re going to do this for three days.,” he’d say. “Splash that up in his eye, I don’t know what it is, that amino acid or whatever it is, but that calf’s going to be able to see in a few days.” Concluded Mr. Richey. I had Arlette Hankamer ask me just the other day if I could go out and look at her calf that had blue eyes and I said, “Sure, but go get me some Pet Evaporated milk,” laughed Janet. “So, all these things that these cowboys would teach me still help me today on the ranch. I mean they really worked, and it’s been handed down from one person to another. 

 Ed Whittington.  Photo Courtesy of Ed Whittington.

“Horace Lewis stayed here until the day he died, so did Freddy, and Roger. There was no replacement for all these folks, there were no young kids of theirs following in their footsteps. Their kids for some reason didn’t want to stay on the ranch, as these older cowboys got older and older, we could see they were getting ready to be replaced by a new group of cowboys working for the Lagow crew, that I’ll tell you about a little later on” laughed Janet. 

“There wasn’t any other cowboy you could count on when Freddy got too old, and boy, could he raise some awesome cutting horses. He had a horse that was named Kennedy Jr. that was out of Gold Cash Thomas, owned by Roy Dawson. I had never seen a palomino so pretty in my life. I don’t know where he bought it, but he entered halter classes like the Houston Livestock Show, San Antonio, and Fort Worth, where he would win Grand Champion every time. You could rope and cut off him and people from far off came to breed to him. Freddy Johnson worked for Roy Dawson at times. He worked out a deal with Mr. Dawson to get his mare bred working many days’ worth of wages to pay the stud fee. That’s how he got Kennedy Jr. who looked just like Gold Cash Thomas. Freddy made a whole lot of money on stud fees from that beautiful buckskin stallion. 

“Now, let’s talk about the new Lagow cowboy crew. When I started working at Anahuac teaching fourth grade, I recruited my own kids, Ed Whittington, Wesley Richey, Dion Humphrey, Harry Raymond, “Coop”, Dwayne Cooper, I could go on and on. We just got through working cows a couple of days ago. All I have to do is pick up the phone and say, “Hey Ed, we’ve got to move some cows.” “What time, I’ll be there,” he’d say.   All these kids I taught in the fourth grade, who started working cattle at that early age, are still with me today. I wouldn’t replace them for anything, they’re the best cowboys anyone could ever have.

Justin Humphrey.  Photo Courtesy of Justin Humphrey.

Many of the Humphrey boys worked for Janet on the ranch. “After Hurricane Harvey, Kelley’s Bayou went over its banks,” recalls Janet, “and the cows were cut off from getting to higher ground. I didn’t think it was going to rise any higher, but I still worried about them. I called the Humphrey boys; Justin, Joseph, Dion, and Jacolby and they came to lend me a hand. I said, “Hey guys, can you swim across, ‘cause my little 14.2 hand horse is too short and y’all have taller horses, I can call them over? 

“I knew where the road was, they were coming through Kelly’s Bayou, which is a tributary off of Double Bayou, and that area has a shell road crossing over the bayou. The road was under water at that time. All the boys are coming my way as I called the cows.  The cows knew where the road was, however, Justin and Jacolby did not. They branched off to the right of the cows, fell off the road, and both horses and riders went under. Janet said Chip watched Jacolby’s horse bob once then twice, and could see the saddle was turning. When he came up the third time the saddle was nowhere to be seen. Jacolby was hanging on around his horse’s neck like a monkey. (Justin said the horse was named “Cooney.”) “I was on the other side wondering what was taking so long,” said Janet, “I rode back and asked what was wrong and Jacolby said, “We’re trying to find the saddle, it came off in the water and that’s my dad’s saddle. He’s gonna get me but good.” Jacolby added with emphasis, “It’s a family heirloom!”  Justin Humphrey said, “We had a good time, doing what we love!” Janet said every time that area dries up they still look for that saddle. 

Roberta Humphrey, Vic Humphrey’s daughter was another pretty good wrangler, in Janet’s estimation. “I remember Roberta riding a palomino with Roger Humphrey one day,” Janet said. They were both after a cow that was on the road. Riding side-by-side, Roger roped it once and said to Roberta, “Sling another one.” She slung one on it, jerked it and jumped off her horse. Roger pulled real had and down it went. Roberta wrapped that cow’s legs up and I said, “Now, that’s a cowgirl!”

Janet and Jean Lagow.  Photo Courtesy of Chip Lewis and Janet Lagow.

“I have a lot of neat memories that Jean and I shared of raising livestock and showing horses.  We have introduced genetics from different breeds of cattle to improve the herd on the ranch. I recently introduced Beefmasters to the ranch herd, as that was a dream Jean and I once talked about. It was very successful and has proven to be an outstanding cross, which I call the Lagow Legacy, named for my sister, Jean, whom I miss dearly. I think of Jean often when I see these awesome replacement Beefmaster calves. The Beefmaster cattle have surpassed all my expectations, not only by improving the cattle on the ranch, but also winning in major livestock shows and selling well internationally. I can’t say I haven’t lived my dream, ‘cause I really have. I give God the full credit for it, ‘cause He’s the one who blesses me with the resources, the knowledge, and ability to do it. It’s a legacy you hope to pass on.” She humbly concluded.