Camp gives first-hand look at cowboy life

MILL CREEK, Okla. -- It's a picture of the West the way it used to be -- cowboys with dusty hats and chaps riding herd on horseback and dining on beans and cobbler from Dutch ovens before sitting around an open fire listening to the day's tales told through the verse of a cowboy poet.

It's not a picture bigger than life on the silver screen, but an up-close and personal look at a day in the life of a cowboy from the 1800s. This is the Legend of the Cowboy Cow Camp, where visitors are urged to "check your guns with the cook" and strap on authentic cowboy duds to live the life of their heroes for a week.

A group of about 90 visitors from across the state converged on the Gray Ranch near Mill Creek to see for themselves how life on the range was for the cowboys, courtesy of hosts Don McMeans and Keith Gray. In a natural setting beside a bubbling Pennington Creek, they experienced most everything except sleeping under the stars.

Maki Hanada had seen cowboys, of course, but seeing them surrounded by their natural habitat and performing their duties like they did when the country was young, Hanada learned some things aren't that different.

Watching cattle being herded into the corral, Hanada and her parents, Mat and Nori Hanada, pulled aside one of the cowboys and asked a seemingly endless stream of questions about the animals' ages, diet and how the cowboys care for them. Casey Runyan, who is part of the nearby 3 C Cattle Co., explained how still today they ride horseback covering 15 pastures to watch 700 head of cattle.

"On each ranch we help each other out whenever something needs to be done," he said. "It's cheaper than having to hire somebody." He also explained the concept of team roping as a skill cowboys used to doctor a calf with the others. "For most everything you see in a rodeo, there's a history behind what the cowboys used it for."

Teaching the public those skills is something McMeans and Gray hope to accomplish through their "City Slicker" -- type encampment.

"Several years ago, we got to thinking about the working cowboy and what he's meant to us and the impact he's had on our lives," McMeans said. "We thought, how great it would be to build a camp and bring people out here. All our efforts have been to bring back the type of camp they had 100 years ago. They will dress in old clothes from the late 1800s and participate in daily activities and team competitions."

Adding to the authenticity is the true cowboy "grub" rustled up by Brandon Reid of Fort Worth, who operates a chuckwagon catering business for such occasions.

To Reid, there's one main ingredient which defines cowboy cooking -- "a cantankerous cook." Other than that, it's natural all the way.

"I met an old cowboy and his wife that do it for a living around the Van Horn area and the Guadalupe," he said. "I started out learning how to make bread and cooking cobblers. It became a calling, I guess."

His dark eyes shining from underneath his wide-brimmed black cowboy hat and a smile turning up the corners of his handlebar moustache, Reid poked the fire underneath cast iron kettles hung over coals as he explained his craft.

"There's such an art to doing this," he said. "the main part of the art of it is making bread from scratch and the cobblers from scratch. When you start firing up those ovens with bread in it, people come running."

Gray said the camp is designed for the corporate market and for international tourists as a way to promote tourism into Oklahoma and help build leadership and teamwork in the business world. It's also an attempt to recapture some of the magic of the past so it will live on in the hearts of the people.

"This is the heart of the country and we have something to offer the rest of the world," he said. "This is as close as we can get to how it used to be and we're excited to share it with people."

Copyright 1996
Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved.