What is one of your funniest memories from the rodeo road?
A friend of mine, Dee Pickett [PRCA Hall of Fame/All-Around Cowboy], tied a rope around a porta toilet with my friend Bill Parker inside and dumped it over. Bill was starched down from head to toe, ready for slack at Walla Walla that morning. I got there late, and all I heard was the fighting and it was a three-week ordeal with him trying to get even. He came out with—what would you say—not appropriate stuff on him for slack that morning.
And let me tell you one more. We were at a rodeo at Redding, California. There were people everywhere. A friend of mine, Tony Reina, was deathly afraid of snakes. I took a dead snake and put it in his rope can and put it around the rope and through the eye. Tony was a good lookin’ kid; he always matched, too. If he wore a green shirt, he would put green boots on his horse. Anyway, I told all my buddies to watch this. Tony opened his rope can, pulled his rope out and the snake came with it. He threw that rope in the air and squealed like a little girl! That scared his horse, his horse set back, Tony had his arm through the reins, so his horse jerked him down and dragged him around the back side of the arena. The snake was still comin’ too, because Tony still had ahold of part of the rope! He was screamin’ and kickin’. Let me tell ya—when 10 of your peers are on the ground laughin’, it was a bit of a setback for Tony. I had to build him back up for the next couple of weeks! I really thought I scared him so much I had hurt him; I didn’t know he was that scared of snakes!
What’s the scariest moment you can remember?
Well—there’s a couple. About 2001 I think it was, Brody [Joe’s young son] and I were asleep in the back seat of the Freightliner when Jenna [Joe’s wife] was drivin’. A drunk pulled out in front of us and she hit him. The impact turned us sideways and laid us down on the highway. Our trailer ran up on top of the flatbed and shoved us down the road into a bar ditch. It’s amazing we’ve lived through some of this!
Then one year some of us guys were flying from Red Lodge, Montana to Prescott, Arizona, and the wings iced up on our plane and we started droppin’. When that happens you just have to keep droppin’ until it’s warm enough to melt the ice so you can gain altitude again. It was me and Jeff Chapman and Blair Burke [fellow competitors/cowboys] and I don’t remember who else. Anyway, I’ll tell ya—that will wake you up out of a deep sleep!
Any hotel horror stories? Or, the scariest place you have ever slept?
Yeah. Back when I was an amateur kid, I was probably 16, there was a guy named David that helped me at first. He was a top roper. I traveled with him, and he was a straight runnin’ outlaw tough guy. We were at San Antone, probably a part we shouldn’t have been in, and we stayed at this seedy hotel. About 4 a.m. these gangsters kicked the door in. David always slept with a pistol under the pillow, and I had one in my bag. He pulled that pistol and ran them back out the door and some of them went through the window. That was one time in a hotel room I never forgot. To this day, if it’s not a really good motel, I prop a chair under the doorknob! People always ask why I do that and I just say…I have a reason!
