November 28, 2008

Back-country cowboy turns acclaimed poet

By RODGER NICHOLS
of The Chronicle

     Editor’s Note: Waddie Mitchell performs Saturday night, Nov. 29, 2008 as part of the Cowboy Gathering at The Dalles Civic Auditorium. Performance starts at 7 p.m. The Chronicle’s Rodger Nichols visited with Mitchell by phone about his life as a working cowboy, and as a famed cowboy poet.

How did a working cowboy end up an internationally famous poet?
     I wish that I could tell you I plotted out and made some goals and decisions. The reality is that it all kind of started when a filming crew came out. They were doing a documentary on the last of the real cowboys, which has been going on for over 100 years now. I’m sure they thought that they’d get a motel; they didn’t realize just how remote I lived.
     They came out and we cooked with wood. Well you don’t cook in the house in the summertime at night because it gets the house so hot you can’t sleep, so we always cooked outside around the campfire. Just something I’d been doing, this poetry, just kind of came up around there, and I think each person on that crew came back and told somebody.
     Next thing I know, Life magazine and National Geographic and all these big magazines are out there takin’ pictures of me. I can’t hardly put a cow through a gate without somebody, you know, in the way. And Johnny Carson calls. Well, I don’t know who Johnny Carson is. I never had a TV. And I sure wouldn’t have been up that late at night anyway, because we started early.
     I told them ‘Thanks, but no thanks.’ I didn’t know who he was. Anyway, I got talked into going on his show. About that time, after 26 years punching cows, it’s a wonderful life, but it’s a little hard physically. My doctor told me my back was gone. I’d been beat up, maybe I ought to start thinkin’ about something else.      Well, when you’ve been a cowboy for 26 years, you get to thinking ‘Well, now what am I going to do?’ This poetry just happened. It was just given to me.
     I read that you worked for the cavalry. I didn’t realize they still had horse cavalry.
     I’ll be honest with you; neither did I. I was fresh back from Vietnam; showed up at Fort Carson. went out to the ranch, was invited out to this Turkey Crick Ranch, and thought, ‘My gosh, I had no idea.’ This cavalry was what they called the mounted color guard. So it was an army-sanctioned deal.

Did you see a lot of action in Vietnam?
     [pause] Yeah.

Are you still ranching at all?
     I’m living on my own ranch, believe it or not. We just moved up to a new home we built just a little over a year ago. Going through a bunch of old stuff like you do when you’re movin’ and I found an interview I did over 18 years ago now. And they said, ‘What do you hope to get from this poetry?’ I mentioned that I hoped to let people know that cowboys are still out there, you know, and contrary to popular belief, they are still human. I’d love to go broke on my own ranch someday, instead of helping somebody else do it all the time.’ I look back, and here I am.

Do you have a lot of stock?
     Actually, no. We let our neighbors use the ranch for their cattle, but I’m on the road 200 days a year, and that doesn’t mean you can do a good job doing anything else.

Do you get a chance to ride, anymore?
     Oh yeah. Yeah. You betcha. That’s like a guy that retires from golf sure as heck doesn’t quit playing golf.

When you’re on the road, who are you listening to on the tape deck or CD?
     You know, it’s a funny deal. I don’t do a lot of listening. We do have one of those satellite radios, but I really like to listen to books on tape; that’s kind of my deal. For a guy that loves to read, and doesn’t have that much time to be doin’ it anymore, books on CD is a wonderful, wonderful deal for us.

Do you end up incorporating some of the ideas and thoughts into your poetry?
     I would like to say, ‘Oh, Absolutely not; you know everything I do is original,’ but the reality is everything that happens in life does affect you. That’s the nice thing about being a writer. I think maybe you would understand more than most folks, but, as writers, we tend to maybe appreciate moments a little more because we’re looking for them. We’re looking for those things that make us move or make us agitated or tickle us. We’re more aware because we’re always looking for that, the next sentence that makes our career, you know.

You’re a performer, a recording artist, an author and an artist as well, illustrating your books. Any other hyphenations we should know about in the future?
     Grandpa’s the big deal in my life now.
     Thank you. Yeah, I think being a grandpa is our reward for puttin’ up with those damn teenagers.

Do you practice your performance or just get up and do it every time?
     I can’t say there’s not practicing done, there is goin’ over the poetry. But one of the things that I’ve found in this tradition of recitation is that you learn to make it new every single time, because you’ve got to live it.
     An audience can pick up on so much. But if you go out there to an audience, even if it’s a windy story, if you’re tellin’ it to them honestly, then they can listen to it and when you hear the truth or somebody’s up there without any pretense, then the stories can just enter the whole body, the whole soul. But if there’s any almost acting or any staged deal, then people start listening with their ears. And that means it goes into their brain and gets kind of tossed around; some of it gets thrown back out.

When people come who haven’t seen you before, how do they react?
     You know, it’s a funny deal. I’ve had so many guys come up to me that said, ‘You know, when my wife said I had to clean up tonight and go listen to this guy spew poetic, I thought ‘Oh, gosh. Now how am I going to sneak out of there?’’      But it moves ‘em.
     People forget this is ingrained in us. This is the oldest type of entertainment. This is what we started doing. If you look at domesticated man through the history, 99 percent of the time man’s been domesticated, that was their form of entertainment, kind of one on one. It’s just been recently, just this last couple of generations the electronic media has come into our homes and taken over that chore of entertaining us.
     It feels natural; it feels somehow good. Those of us who are older remember people talking to each other, and the younger people are going, ‘Wow, this feels good.’

Tell me about the mustache?
     You know, it’s a funny deal. I grew this thing years and years ago, when I was goin’ to town just four times a year, so I didn’t have to take care of it. So I’d just let it go and then a few times a year I’d clean it up and let it get out past my ears, and now that I’m a little older and I’m in the public a lot, I notice my mustache gets shorter and shorter every year. A few bad hair days, and away I want to take it.

You’ve done lots of interviews. Is there anything that they never ask you that you wish they would?
     You know, the one thing, maybe, is when someone a lot like you calls, and I’m excited to come to town is what I really want people to realize is that I would love to hear their stories after the show. I would love to hear how long they’ve been in that part of the world or what’s special about where I am right now.      Because if I visit some place and I don’t get those stories, I don’t remember that place. And so it’s those stories and those people that I meet when I’m there is my remembrance, my photographs or postcards of that place are those memories I take away.