Neil Dudley: The Cowboy Perspective, well, it might be hard to define, but I guarantee if you think about it, you’ve got one in mind. Whether you’re building a legacy, an empire, or a fan base, I bet when your friends look at you, they see some cowboy in your face. Y’all come along, let’s talk about this or that. Maybe when we’re done, you’ll go away with another perspective to put under your hat.
Happy day, everybody, TCP Nation. Welcome to the Cowboy Perspective. I’m so glad you’re listening. I appreciate your attention. I know it doesn’t come without you sacrificing some other place to put your attention. So, really hope you enjoy today’s episode. I’m excited. I want to give a quick shout out to Lory and Glenda Albin for helping me get this one worked out today. The guest is a really huge part of what I think of when I think cowboy. His name’s Billy Albin. And I look forward to you hearing some of his thoughts on things, and I just enjoy putting it out here, stories of cowboys, mentors, men that have helped me along the way. So here we go. If you like it, share it. If you share it, tell me about it. Thank you.
Okay, everybody. Hey, it’s me again. I’m back. I’ve got a great guest for the show today. He’s a guy that’s really treated me nice throughout my life. And to be honest, I don’t really know why he’s even doing this because I know he doesn’t love to do it. His name is Billy Albin. He’s a cowboy mentor of mine, and luckily, I’ve got him pinned down. We’re going to talk a little bit today. So, Billy, thank you for having me. I want this to honor you as a cowboy that’s mentored me and a person I really look up to. I hope you accept it as that. And we’ll talk a little bit about stuff you want to talk about. Anything you don’t want to talk about, we won’t talk about it. So, start off telling everybody just a little bit about who you are, where you came from, what is important to you?
Billy Albin: Alright. Well, I was raised right here in Comanche County, about nine miles south of Comanche. Right now, we’re about maybe 2 or 300 yards from where I grew up. I grew up on a horsing ranch. My dad raised horses. He owned a renowned horse, Royal King. And he turned out to be an outstanding cutting horse and then an outstanding sire of brood mares, and most nearly every big name cutting horse today has Royal King somewhere back in the pedigree. And I grew up mostly just well working with horses.
Neil Dudley: I love that story. So, I just sit here and listen to it. And I’m sitting here thinking Royal King and how cool that is. How did your dad come across him? Did he raise him? Did he buy him? What happened?
Billy Albin: Well, he bought him as a two-year-old from Hankins Brothers down at Rocksprings. And he, well, my dad did all the training and most of the showing on him. He had some other people showing him, anybody could show him. And of course now, like, there are still a few Royal King bred horses in the country, like my sister Sue and brother-in-law Randy Major, they’re still carrying on the legacy of raising Royal King bred horses and doing a good job of it. And appreciate that they’re doing that. I never did really get into the breeding part. I was rather into the riding part.
Neil Dudley: I’ve always been curious about that. Because I love raising them. I like the idea of breeding them and raising them. I don’t know that I’d do a good job of it, but I like it. What do you think about that didn’t turn your clock?
Billy Albin: Well, I don’t like to look at a horse until they are two to maybe three years old. They change so much. From the time they’re babies until their material, well, maybe not even material, but talk a two- to three-year-old, they change so much you don’t ever know- I’m not, until I ride them for two or three months and they are three- or four-years-old, that’s when you go to telling what you got. It takes too long. I’d rather start with one I know might do something.
Neil Dudley: Would you say you might not be the gambling type? You don’t want to take that gamble ahead of time.
Billy Albin: I want to see what they’re going to be later on.
Neil Dudley: So, as we go along, I’m curious, you just had to be a cowboy because you were born into it, or did you see something? Who was somebody as a young kid that you looked up to?
Billy Albin: Oh, well of course, the only cowboy I was around was my dad. So, I guess that’s who I looked up to.
Neil Dudley: For me, that’s true. I tell the story, I’ve probably told it on the podcast many times, but as a little kid, I’d crawl into Mom and Dad’s bedroom and get beside Dad’s side of the bed hoping that when he got up, he’d step on me, and I could go with him. I didn’t want to miss going anywhere he went. So, I think for a lot of cowboys, that’s who they looked up to start with was their dad or maybe granddad and that’s what got them to saying, man, that’s what I want to be.
Billy Albin: When I was a kid, just a young kid, we’d get up before daylight. It’d be pitch black dark and there’d be about maybe three floodlights on out around the barn in the pens. And you could just barely see, and there’d be 50 head of mares standing out there, waiting to be fed. We’d go along opening gates and they’d all go to their certain little spot.
Neil Dudley: Oh really?
Billy Albin: Oh yeah, you didn’t have to separate them. They all went to their same spot and then we fed them and went back and ate our big breakfast and came back out and did whatever we had to do then.
Neil Dudley: What did you usually eat for breakfast? Being as I’m in the bacon making business, I’m curious, what do you think about bacon?
Billy Albin: Of course, my mother was the best cook in the world, and we had a full scrambled eggs, bacon, homemade biscuits, every breakfast, we all set down at the table to eat.
Neil Dudley: Yeah. See, that’s something we miss I think in our society today, even my family.
Billy Albin: Well yeah, see we don’t do it.
Neil Dudley: Yeah. You get real busy. Like pretty much, I get up, get ready quick as I can, grab a cup of coffee, and I’m out the door. And I’m missing things with my kids that I can’t ever get back now, and I’m not smart enough to slow down. Corona’s helped a little bit; we’ve slowed down a lot.
Billy Albin: Of course, my kids are grown, and I miss that part of it.
Neil Dudley: There’s just so many things I want to talk about and stories I hope we can relive. As in about 2002, we’re looking at the picture on the wall, you graciously invited me or took me along. I don’t know what it took for you to pull that off. I think probably not as much as I might perceive, but just bring in a greenhorn around on a crew is a risky thing, because I didn’t know a lot. I feel like I probably displayed some try. But I just had a lot to learn and never had a lot of experience being on big crews and stuff like that or riding big country. So, you took me, and I’m curious, why? Did my dad beg you to do that? Or what caused you to allow that?
Billy Albin: Well, I’ll tell you, of course, we went to Buster Welch’s, and I worked for Buster. I first went to work for Buster in about 1990. Worked full-time for a year and a half. And then after I left, I came back and day worked for him steady for another 10 or 12 years or more. And the reason I asked you is because it was hard to get a crew together to go to Buster’s.
Neil Dudley: Was that because of the work or the cowboys were disappearing?
Billy Albin: It was because of the work. Buster is a wonderful man, but he loves his work. He loves to work. And I that’s what I like to do, so that’s the reason I got along good with Buster. I like to work, too. But a lot of the cowboys thought it was a little too much.
Neil Dudley: As I can remember, it was like you were talking about, we were up way before the sun got up and we were saddling and riding. I can’t remember in my mind when we would quit, what time of the day, I don’t guess quit might be the wrong word, but just kind of go have dinner and get ready to rest for the next day.
Billy Albin: Well, now of course we didn’t rest after dinner. We never rested after dinner.
Neil Dudley: Well, when I say dinner, I mean third meal of the day – breakfast, lunch, dinner. I do that a lot. People are always like, man, I call that the wrong thing. Supper then.
Billy Albin: Yeah. It’s a lot of cowboys just couldn’t stand the work. The cowboys nowadays, well, they just don’t know what it’s like back when you were really cowboying. You know what I mean?
Neil Dudley: Well, I don’t think I know what you mean, but I can imagine it. I never really lived it other than a few times with you. And now, working with Dad, we did a lot of stuff, but well, that wasn’t kind of always cowboy work, sometimes that was plowing the fields and that kind of stuff, which I imagine every cowboy has got into a little bit, but I’d rather stay out of the tractors if I could.
Billy Albin: But the reason I wanted you to go was because I needed the help, and I knew you’d be good help. So that’s pretty nice you’d go.
Neil Dudley: Now, for my wedding gift, you gave me a coffee pot. Let’s tell everybody how I managed to get that coffee pot gift. Do you remember that story?
Billy Albin: Of course, we’d get up in the morning and have a cup of coffee first thing before breakfast, and I’d come and tell you to come get your coffee and you’d say you didn’t want any coffee. And I’d tell you well if you’re going to be a cowboy, you got to drink some coffee, and I had a little hard time getting you started on it. Then you wanted to put cream and sugar in it, and that’s not good either. A cowboy is supposed to drink it black, hot and black.
Neil Dudley: That’s right. Now how’d y’all make that coffee?
Billy Albin: Oh, of course, we boiled it in one of these old blue metal coffee pots, and that’s the only good kind of coffee, is boiled coffee.
Neil Dudley: Well, how do you keep from drinking the grinds?
Billy Albin: Well, you boil it and then you pour a cup or a half cup of cold water in it and that makes the grounds go to the bottom. Then you pour it off, and you might even kind of pour and waste the very first little portion, and then pour it and it’ll be fine. There might be a few grounds in it, but that just makes it a little better.
Neil Dudley: See everybody, that’s the story of my first introduction into real coffee drinking. And now I’m proud to say I’m a black coffee drinker. I like it hot and black. And I give all that credit to Mr. Billy Albin. Part of the story I like to tell that I remember to do with sugar and coffee and such, I mean, I appreciate the allowance for me to just be ignorant. I just didn’t know stuff. So, we’re at a chuckwagon, that’s my first time to ever be around a chuckwagon. And I just walk over there and start- I kind of think I knew it was going to be a real bad idea to ask for sugar and cream. So, I was going to try to just go get it myself and see what I could find. And I learned real quick that’s a bad idea, not abiding by the rules of the chuckwagon and all that.
Billy Albin: Yeah, there’s a real etiquette to being around a chuckwagon.
Neil Dudley: Yep. So, if you ever get out on a big crew and you’re with the chuckwagon, just keep in mind what you think you can do probably needs to be vetted with your closest friend in the group that knows what they’re doing before you to start walking around, trying to do stuff yourself.
Billy Albin: I’ve been on some outfits where they get into the chapping deal, and you’ll learn right quick, they won’t tell you what to do, but if you do the wrong thing and you get thrown down on the ground and get chapped. So, you learn pretty fast.
Neil Dudley: Yeah. So, for anybody that doesn’t know what chapping is, cowboys usually will have chaps they wear to protect them when they’re going through the brush and gathering cattle and such. Well, if you mess up, that’s your punishment – they wrestle you down and whip you with them chaps for a little while, and the worst thing you can do is not fight back. You got to try to hold your own. Now, that’s what I think, right?
Billy Albin: Yeah, you just get another chapping if you don’t fight back.
Neil Dudley: So being a cowboy is quite an intricate, interesting thing that I love a whole lot, and I’m glad I got to experience some of it with Billy on that gathering. I remember back to that. And another thing I learned from you, or remember, is we were working the cows. Well see, my memory gets a little fuzzy, but I don’t know if it was cows or yearling calves or what, but you and I were kind of standing by the out gate and counting them and they’re coming by and some of them would kind of snort and looked like they might come over and get you. Every one of those, I’d jump up on the fence, like there’s a bucking bull fixing to come hook me. You just stood there like, meh, no big deal. I’m watching that, and I’m thinking what am I missing? So, I asked you, I said, “How come you’re not moving? They’re scaring me.” “Well, they’re not serious about it” is what you told me. Do you remember that at all?
Billy Albin: I don’t recall that at all.
Neil Dudley: And then, here in a little bit, one comes by, and you got on the fence. And I said, well, I thought you said they’re-, and you looked at me and said, “Well, that one was serious.” And it just tells me your eye for things and just experience. And I had such little experience at the time compared to what you had earned over so many years of being a cowboy, day working, and doing all those things that you could tell the difference. So, I thought that was a really cool thing and made me want to pay attention. That’s what I think a lot of people can, or I like to give this piece of advice is you can do a lot in life if you just pay attention a little bit. And I wonder how you think about that statement. How does just paying attention play in a cowboy’s life or in life in general?
Billy Albin: Well, you have to watch the leader and you don’t ask questions. You just pay attention and learn to stay in the right place. And by watching and observing, you don’t want to be asking questions.
Neil Dudley: And then you have a lot of people say there’s no bad question; ask a question if you have it. I think that’s one of the cowboy code things that helps me in my life today is I kind of live by that. I don’t want to have to ask because if I can figure it out, that’s a little bit of a feather in my hat. And I don’t know if it- you get on the right crew, it’s hard to tell. I mean, you could be watching really hard. If you don’t, let’s say, you’re probably rarely on a crew where you don’t understand what’s going on just because you’ve been so many different places and seen a lot of things. For me, we’re riding out and I’m watching the leader, but he’s thinking a lot of stuff, and I’m having to kind of guess just by if he looks this way or what. So, there’s a lot of stuff there that you got to learn, make the mistake. I think cowboys like you to make a mistake a little bit so you can get chapped, and then you never forget that. We’re standing here in your rawhide braiding shop and without getting into something that you don’t want to get into, tell us what got you into rawhide braiding or is that something you’re comfortable talking about?
Billy Albin: Oh yeah. I guess my first introduction was when I was about maybe 10, 12 years old watching a Mexican man that was working for my dad at the time. That’s back in the days of the vaquero program, where they came over from Mexico and stayed a couple of months and then went back. But there was a man named, I can remember his name, Ramon. He was a braider, and my dad let him do some braiding, made some quirts. I have a quirt hanging on the wall there he made. And I didn’t really learn anything from him, but I watched him and that kind of intrigued me right then. So, I thought, well, that’s interesting. But actually, I never did sit down and learn anything from him. But that’s what got me started to think I wanted to do that. Then from then on, it was just through the years picking up a little here and a little there, and every bit on my own. I never had any instructions, it was on my own. And that’s the way I like to learn.
Neil Dudley: I think that’s so special about you. It’s just you know what you like, you know what you like about life, you know what you like to do, you know what makes you feel good. I’m curious, when you make a piece of art, rawhide – well, I call it art, you might just call it working man’s necessities – what makes you proud of it? I mean, is it you just make it because you want to make it and then if other people like it, fine?
Billy Albin: Well no. Right now, this would be a good time to tell everybody that I quit taking orders. I have trouble getting that across.
Neil Dudley: Okay. So, for anybody that listens to the podcast and goes and Googles Billy, don’t try to get ahold of him. Don’t try to place an order. He’s not taking them. And if you would, please respect that.
Billy Albin: But no, I make things, and I’ve never made anything that I’ve called perfect yet. There’s always something that I wish I could’ve been a little bit better. And I made probably over 400 quirts, maybe 500. I’ve never made one yet that was just right. And one of these days, I’m going to.
Neil Dudley: Well, see I’m so- That’s a great thing to be striving for in anything you do is allow the imperfection, but also believe and strive for it on the next one.
Billy Albin: Yeah, there’s always something that you could improve on.
Neil Dudley: Yep. If you hadn’t of allowed the imperfection, you’d have never got one made. I mean, I guess you would have made one, but you’d never been able to sell it or let somebody else see it. Is that of what you enjoy making when it comes to rawhide? Do you like it all? Or is quirts the thing you like the most?
Billy Albin: Well, no, just anything, but one of the reasons I want to quit taking orders is because I think it holds me back. I want to increase my skill level. You know what I mean? And the things I want to make probably going to be, oh, maybe outpriced for a working cowboy or something.
Neil Dudley: That’s another thing I respect about you. You can tell me if this statement’s wrong, but I think you try to price your work in a realm that a working cowboy can’t afford.
Billy Albin: Well, I’m always, I know cowboys don’t have a lot of money. And I like to see my things used. I’d rather sell something to a good cowboy and take a little less money for it and see him use it then to sell it to a collector and have them hang on the wall. I like to see my things used.
Neil Dudley: Well, I think that’s a really respectable thing and just a different perspective. Like somebody might be doing it just to have it hanging in a gallery or something, but you’ve lived the life of a cowboy and used these tools that you make, and you want to make something somebody else can use and be proud to have and is functional. I like that thought and try to use that in my life in things that I do or we do as a company.
Billy Albin: And rawhiding was, 10, maybe 20 years ago, everybody was saying it was a lost art, but it’s making a real comeback. There’s a lot of people getting into it. They have like a rawhiders gathering. The main one started in Decatur about five years ago. Now they’re having several all over the Western United States and a lot of people are really getting into it now. So, it’s not a lost art anymore.
Neil Dudley: Yeah, well, that’s great in my mind because the things that you can make out of rawhide are durable, pretty. It brings to mind another conversation when we were at Busters. And that’s the other thing I love about that opportunity you gave me was just sitting around and listening to everybody talk about whatever it might’ve been – mules running off with the chuckwagon a time or two, or somebody knows you’re a good raw hide braider and showing you something they had done, and you looking at it and giving an honest opinion, and that’s so valuable. I think people don’t want to hear honest opinions a lot. They just want to hear, oh, that’s good.
Billy Albin: Well, yeah, that’s right. I don’t really want to hear it either, but it helps if you do.
Neil Dudley: Yeah. Well, you started talking a little bit about you wanting to improve your skills and try to do things different or try a different technique. What do you mean by that? You want to make a more complicated braid?
Billy Albin: Well, yes, more complicated, use finer, more narrow, finer strings. I’ve got to be good friends and know pretty well a fellow from Argentina by the name of Pablo Lozano who is probably the world’s greatest braider. And he does amazing work and I’ll never be able to match his, but there’s always, you see his, and you think I’ve got to try to do something similar.
Neil Dudley: And when you jump off on trying to do something like that, how long might that take? I mean, are you talking about who knows how long, a year or six months?
Billy Albin: Oh, you just have to kind of gradually get into it. So, I like to the experiment. I’d rather do that than anything else. I could sit out here all day, just trying something new. And 90% of the time, it doesn’t work. But I like to try it.
Neil Dudley: That’s how you know what all you know. I find in my own personal, I guess my personality, I want to be the best there is the first time I try it, and that holds me back a lot, a lot because I’ll end up just not giving it the time or giving myself the time to get good at it. And I think that’s what you’re saying.
Billy Albin: Well, I see a lot of people, like on Facebook and stuff, there’ll be somebody that comes along and says, I want to make a set of romel reins for myself. How do I get started? What do I start with? They need to start-
Neil Dudley: Start doing something a little different first?
Billy Albin: They are wanting to go to college before they go to kindergarten. So, they need to start at the bottom and work their way up.
Neil Dudley: That rings true for me and probably anybody listening, you can accomplish about anything. Billy’s made himself a really great braider and just cause he decided one day he wanted to. He started probably braiding three strands and then a plat and then all the way.
Billy Albin: And it took years to learn it.
Neil Dudley: That’s right.
Quick pause just to say I hope you know who Peterson Natural Farms is. If you don’t, go check them out: www.petersonsfarms.com. If you have any questions, hit me up. I’ve been working with Peterson’s and my best friend since kindergarten, his wife, my wife, and whole bunch of other really great people for about 20 years now, building a brand and a bunch of products that we think really add value to people’s healthy lifestyles. And I like to say the Cowboy Perspective podcast is a labor of love that I kind of do in my spare time, and I hope to just bring value, tell stories about people that affect me and give me the perspective I have. And I don’t want to steal that labor of love line from Mr. Douglas Burdett, the host of the Marketing Book Podcast without giving him some credit. There’s another something I’d tell you, if you are into building a brand or an entrepreneur of any sort, salesperson of any sort, go listen to the Marketing Book Podcast. He reviews great authors’ books about sales and marketing. So, Peterson Natural Farms, go check them out. Thank you for listening to the Cowboy Perspective.
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One other quick shout out, TCP Nation. I got to give a big thank you to Byron Hill Music. He provides all the background music for the podcast. He’s a member of the Nashville Songwriter Hall of Fame. I highly recommend you go check him out. Google it: B Y R O N H I L L. I’m sure you’ll be glad you did.
You strike me as a really humble kind of guy. What do you feel about that word or the role it might play in a person or cowboy?
Billy Albin: Well, how do you describe humility?
Neil Dudley: Humility’s just the idea that you’re great at something, but you’ll never say you’re great at it.
Billy Albin: Well, of course, just like I’ve been around some pretty good cowboys, some of these old timers, and you don’t ever hear an old timer brag on his horse. You can ask him, well, how’s that horse? – oh, he’s pretty nice, but that’s about as far as it will go. You just don’t hear them talk much about themselves. And they don’t have to. And you got to ride with Bob Byrd, I guess. That’s the best cowboy there is, has ever been, a good horseman, roper, cowman, and you never heard him brag on his horse, and he rode more good ranch horses than anybody. You ask him about Money, and he’d say, well, yeah, he’s a pretty nice horse, and that was about the end of it.
Neil Dudley: I think that’s a good illustration.
Billy Albin: And Buster’s the same way. Well, he never really bragged on his horse. He’d tell you it’s a good one, but he just didn’t elaborate on what you didn’t really want to hear.
Neil Dudley: I think you told me even something about Buster, you can correct me if this is wrong, that he could ride a horse and get them doing things and nobody watching could really tell what he was doing to get the horse to do that.
Billy Albin: That’s the way he was. His timing was so good that you didn’t see it. He knew what the horse was going to do before the horse did it. And some little subtle thing he did corrected that horse before the actual mistake was made. And that’s something that’s probably natural with him, but he worked at it too. His mind was so sharp. And no, I respect him in that matter. He can do more with the horse than anybody ever.
Neil Dudley: Yeah. Well, and his career showed it. He had a stellar career.
Billy Albin: Yeah, I loved watching somebody bring a horse out there that’s having trouble with cutting, doing something wrong, and they’d want him to work it for them, and he’d get on it. And about two or three trips across the pen, you could see a change and you really didn’t see him doing anything.
Neil Dudley: He just looked like he was on top of it.
Billy Albin: Yeah, it’d get better and better. And when he got through, it was just a different horse. And yet I never saw him get in a fight with a horse, never.
Neil Dudley: See, I’m ashamed to say, I can’t say that about myself. I’ve gotten in fights with them too many times. And they just don’t know, I mean, they are a horse, they really are just trying to do what I want them to, but what I’m doing has got them completely confused.
Billy Albin: There could be somebody riding a horse that’s antsy and jigging along, high headed, and he could get on it and it’d drop their head and walk off.
Neil Dudley: I mean, that’s not just that easy to do.
Billy Albin: Probably just something that he had that very, very few people ever have. And Bob was that way, too. I never saw him get in a fight with a horse.
Neil Dudley: What I remember about Bob was just in the dragging pen and you I guess gave me advice or tried to help me. I didn’t know how to ride into a herd, how to swing a rope, I mean, dragging calves, which I didn’t get to do a lot of, nor was I supposed to get into a lot of on the first time on the crew. But I was having so much fun. You could have had me flanking calves or over there picking up rocks, I wouldn’t have cared. But I saw Bob dragging calves and he just seemed like he went in the herd, came out with a calf every time. It was never a miss. Cattle were always calm.
Billy Albin: I’ve seen him to keep two sets of plankards busy and never have a break. And 75 hundred head of calves and never have a break.
Neil Dudley: And that’s a testament to his horse, too. It tells you that he’s probably riding a pretty good horse, too. Which I think a good cowboy can take a lot of times a horse that’s not really ready and keep them calm and use them in those situations.
Billy Albin: Well, I never was around any cowboys, really what you say cowboys until I got out of college, but you know, it was just horses. My dad, he didn’t really run any cows, it was just all horse deal. But until later on in life, then he started running sheep. But I wasn’t around any real cowboys till I got out of college. And I guess the main person I met then, and you might not know this, but that’s when I met Gerald Burns, and we went to working cattle all over this country. We worked and we didn’t know it’s supposed to be more than two men on a crew. We just went the two of us, we’d go to 200 cows and calves, and we’d work the whole mess all by ourselves and get it done all by ourselves and get it down real quick. And Gerald was a really good cowboy, still is a real good cowboy. He, I guess, he had two of the best horses that anybody would ever want, Old Tony and Brownie. And now there’s some good and they’re Hancock bred horses as good as ever walked.
Neil Dudley: Wow, see, I knew Gerald was a good cowboy. I’ve been around him a little bit, but I never heard that story before.
Billy Albin: Gerald is one of the best hands that can go catch a bull as anybody. And we roped a lot of them and a lot of cows all over this country. And actually, we never ever, I can’t remember one time we got in a wreck. A lot of these guys now, they go rope a bull, it’s going to be a wreck. But we never did. We just set things up to where we knew it’d worked. If we could see it wasn’t going to work, we’d do something until we saw it would work.
Neil Dudley: Yes. That’s another great thing that you remind me that you taught me, or cowboys have taught me over the years, but you’re certainly one of them. I can remember that exact statement is a good cowboy is going to set it up to where it’ll work. A good cowboy doesn’t just go flying in crazy and wild. Spend a little time setting it up.
Billy Albin: Yeah, make sure it’s going to work. Make sure you got the advantage. If the cow’s got the advantage, there’s no use trying it yet.
Neil Dudley: That’s a great thing to consider an almost anything.
Billy Albin: But nowadays, I’ll tell you something else about me, I don’t like- I like to work by myself. I’ve developed my style of working, and if like to go gather an old set of cows or something, I want to go by myself. If there’s anybody with me, I have my doubts that it will work. If I can go by myself, I know I can make it work. And that’s the reason I don’t like to work on a crew anymore because a crew can’t work like somebody working by themselves, and I always feel like I’m in the wrong spot. I can’t get to where I think we ought to be because somebody is right there. And I’ve gotten in trouble running a crew too by thinking how would I do it by myself and trying to get the crew to do that, and it don’t work.
Neil Dudley: It’s got to be a whole different mindset to have a crew doing it compared to what you do.
Billy Albin: And somebody like me that wants to do it by himself, you can’t get the crew to do it that way. If you go tell a crew where to get and how I do to do everything, they go to watching you, and then they won’t think on their own, they’ll always be in the wrong place. It’s like trying to tell a horse what to do all the time, you’re going to be in the wrong place.
Neil Dudley: Man, that’s so insightful. It really is. One thing that I have in common with Gerald is we won a ranch rodeo together one time. Yeah, we entered, me and Ty Cobb, Johnny Conan, and Gerald entered that Gulf White Ranch Rodeo and we won it. So, I still got the buckle and that’s one thing I think about every time I see Gerald is, man, I think he roped the cow. He’s a banker now, and so most people see him just sitting in there behind his desk. And if you don’t know him from some years ago, you wouldn’t know what kind of cowboy he really is.
Billy Albin: Well, we could ride into a pasture, and we wouldn’t have to say two words. We’d unload, get on the horses, we wouldn’t have to say two words. We’d know where- I’d know where he was going to be, and he’d know where I was going to be. And we’d wind up where we needed to be with the cows, and we didn’t have to do a lot of talking to make plans. We just, we knew what each other was going to do. We worked more cattle in this country. It was hard to believe.
Neil Dudley: And I get in on a few crews, work with Buddy Lane quite a bit, and I can always feel that little, even when I would go somewhere with you, I can feel a little bit of just tension in you or whoever’s leading, just like, man, I’m going to have to sit here and tell everybody this is how this pasture’s laid out, we’re going to go do this, where it’d be so much more fun for you or anybody that knows what they’re doing, like you said, to just get out of the trailer and go without making a big speech.
Billy Albin: Most cowboys don’t want too many instructions. They kind of like to think on their own. You go get in the lead on a crew and you stop and try to explain every little detail in the pasture and every little detail of what we’re going to do, they-
Neil Dudley: They pretty quick don’t come back or what?
Billy Albin: I went to the Shannon Ranch a lot with Arianne when Johnny Ferguson was running it, and Johnny’s an outstanding cowboy and crew leader. He’s not going to tell you anything. He might be riding along in a pasture you’ve never been in, and he’d holler your name out to drop off. You drop off and you don’t know where the pens are, what you’re after or anything. But that’s the way I kind of like it. That’s the way I want to be able to kind of think things out for myself. And you have to watch, you have to really pay attention.
Neil Dudley: So, in that scenario, how do you keep from just, I mean, I guess the guys are hollering back so you got at least that to keep your spacing?
Billy Albin: Now at Johnny’s, it was always dark when he dropped you off, pitch black. You might’ve already rode five miles, but it’s still dark. But you just, when you thought you could see a cow, he left, and then you just had to keep watching for the man next to you, and you might not have seen him for a long time. In some places, you holler back and some places you don’t.
Neil Dudley: Well, I’ve been just as a kid, I got lost a time or two out in the pasture. And I think that helped me actually. I was allowed to have to sit here and think, I don’t know, I don’t know which way is up, down, or otherwise, and what am I going to do now? Cause screaming and hollering daddy didn’t help. There’s nobody there to come save you. And that’s turned out to be a good experience for me. I thought, okay, figure this out. And I ultimately did. I didn’t die out there in that pasture. I could figure it out. So now stuff happens in life, I feel like, okay, I don’t have a blueprint, but I can figure it out. I think cowboys do that a lot, and that’s what you’re talking about. So, you mentioned until you were out of college or in college when you started getting around real cowboys. Well, you had a little success in college, didn’t you, in the rodeo arena?
Billy Albin: Well, we had a really good rodeo team. It was a good one. The first year we won, our team won the region in the Southern region, and we went to the national finals all four years and won the national championship in St. George, Utah, in ’68 I believe. But we just had a, well, just a really good team. We all knew each other, and we’d all been rodeoing together before we got to college.
Neil Dudley: Now you roped calves, or did you do anything else?
Billy Albin: Steer wrestling, bulldogging. Yeah, of course, they didn’t have team roping at the college rodeos then.
Neil Dudley: So, it was calf roping?
Billy Albin: Well, they had ribbon roping.
Neil Dudley: Oh really?
Billy Albin: Yeah. Calf roping tie down and ribbon roping.
Neil Dudley: How did the ribbon roping work? Were you running your own ribbon? Or did you have a teammate?
Billy Albin: You had a mugger. I mean, somebody to mug your calf and then the roper ran the ribbon himself.
Neil Dudley: A lot of people don’t even know what ribbon roping is. So that’s where you’d come out, rope your calf, somebody’d come hold the calf or mug the calf, and you’d grab a ribbon off his tail and run back across the line, and that’s how you got your time instead of tying their legs up. How’d you come across Gerald? That whole story is interesting to me. Did Gerald grow up around here?
Billy Albin: No, he grew up around, I believe, Crowley.
Neil Dudley: Well, yeah, I kind of want to say Vernon or something.
Billy Albin: Oh no, it’s around Fort Worth area, Benbrooke, in that area. And I really don’t know. I do know, but I can’t remember. But he married Brenda Burts and he moved down here. And I met him, and we just got to riding together and wound up doing a lot of day work. Well, that’s back in the days when the Goldilocks cafe was going and people like Sam Ram, Juicy Barrett, the MacDougal’s, and everybody would meet up at the cafe before daylight and drink coffee. Oh, it’d be a big crowd in there and we’d pull up there. We’d always have a job to do somewhere, go do something, and we’d pull up there with our horses. And we’d leave and go do a little job, and everybody would meet back at the cafe around 10, drank coffee. And there we’d go again. We would have another job. And we’d eat there. And there everybody would come back and be there at three o’clock. And there was lots of cow trading.
Neil Dudley: Right. That’s what I was going to say. That’s where you kept yourself probably in work.
Billy Albin: Well, it’s just like going to the office. Everybody, well, everybody that meant anything was there. But it gradually, some of those old timers kind of died off and it gradually changed.
Neil Dudley: Now it’s way different.
Billy Albin: Yeah, way different. We’d run a bunch of calves down a shoot and just walk down through there, cutting them, and ear marking them, and vaccinating them. Oh, we could work a lot of calves real fast.
Neil Dudley: Yeah. I love it. I wish I could have been there and just seen it. I think there would’ve been a lot for me to learn.
Billy Albin: Yeah, I never saw a calf dragged through the fire until I was 40 years old.
Neil Dudley: Really?
Neil Dudley: I went and helped Buster. He had the Tommy Houston ranch leased at Bluff Dale. And he called me and asked me to come help him there and that’s the first time I’d ever seen a calf dragged through the fire.
Neil Dudley: See, I would’ve missed that big time. I would have guessed-
Billy Albin: No, nobody in this country drug calves and Gerald and I worked just me and him together. And of course, we couldn’t, we [healed a lot of them with a foot in the lots] if we didn’t have a shoot. We’d just crowd them up in a little pen and heal them there and tail them down and work them. But yeah, as far as dragging them on horseback, we never did. And I never saw it done.
Neil Dudley: Until you were 40. Wow. Yep, I would’ve missed that one if it had been on a trivia question or test. I was thinking, do we want to mention Glenda any?
Billy Albin: Well, I was wanting to mention that. I’ve always done just what I wanted to do. If hadn’t had a, oh, maybe a couple of real jobs, but they’d always ranching and horses and cows. But I’ve always done just what I wanted to do, and you can’t do that unless you got a good supportive wife and family. And mine has been the best.
Neil Dudley: I think that’s certainly worth mentioning and I feel like I have the very same. And your wife was a teacher for me when I was in school. And I loved her. I think her personality is just beautiful, and she taught me a lot, and she didn’t put up with any crap.
Billy Albin She was tough.
Neil Dudley: And that was a good example. I’ve interviewed a lot, mostly cowboys for this podcast, but there’s a lot of cowgirls and women that have influenced me in a big way, too, by how they treated me and what they expected of me. I think a lot of what I learned or feel valuable was you expected me to perform, you expected me to do the right thing, to be a good cowboy, to be good help. And that was very valuable to me. I want people out there, if you’re listening and you have somebody and they’re going to give you what you expect most of the time. If you don’t expect much from them, you probably won’t get much. If you expect something, and I think Miss Albin, or Glenda did that for me in school. I had a tendency to horse around a little and she didn’t, she expected a little more than that.
Billy Albin: She said you were a good student. She mentioned that.
Neil Dudley: And I think I reflect my parents-
Billy Albin: All the Dudley kids were that way. I tell you, the horse I rode most of the time when Gerald and I was working was a Dudley Brother horse. Do you remember old Smoky?
Neil Dudley: No.
Billy Albin: He was a Ten.
Neil Dudley: I do remember the Ten brand. We had a mare called Blaze that Tom R road a lot and I think roped on, and Joe Henderson rode Blaze a lot when I was a little kid. She was a Ten branded horse. And then another Ten branded horse was out in Reynolds County at that ranch.
Billy Albin: And he was a bronc. He never was gentle. He had a reputation. You didn’t want to walk behind him, he’d kick you, even up in his old age. I rode him a long time. Never could- He was hard to shoe, couldn’t tie him up.
Neil Dudley: And that’s just some of them have a personality like that.
Billy Albin: Anyway, he was a good horse.
Neil Dudley: So yeah. You felt like you could take him and do about any job you needed to get done?
Billy Albin: I’ve always kind of been known to ride horses that wasn’t real gentle, and I could always get along with them.
Neil Dudley: Is there a reason for that? Or is that just turned out how it’s been?
Billy Albin: I don’t know. I can get a horse pretty up on his toes.
Neil Dudley: They need to be paying attention.
Billy Albin: Yeah. When I was day working all the time, I’d try to buy some older or unbroke horses, just to kind of keep trading on. And I rode a lot of horses that other people didn’t want. But I could always get along with them and get done what I wanted to do.
Neil Dudley: Yeah. There’s a lot of value in that. And I don’t know, it makes me wonder, did you eventually, or ultimately kind of get along with them just because you were trying to, you might not have had a bunch of money in your pocket, and those were some of the easiest ones to get your hands on.
Billy Albin: Yeah, they were cheaper, four or five, six year old gelding that hadn’t ever been rode was not worth a whole lot. And I bought a lot of them. And that’s the reason why I ended up with Old Smoky because he was broncing you.
Neil Dudley: Nobody wanted to ride him or mess with him. You bet. There’s a lot of stories I remember from a kid of just horses, like one they called Spook and nobody- Ray had to ride that one or something.
Billy Albin: See all those horses by that an old gray stud, I broke some of them.
Neil Dudley: Now, are you talking about King Bailey?
Billy Albin: Yeah, King Baily, that what he was by. And old Smoky, nearly all those horses are a little broncy.
Neil Dudley: Did you know Joe Henderson or Ward Driscoll much?
Billy Albin: I knew Joe good. I got ride with him few times. Yeah, he was a good cowboy.
Neil Dudley: What about Ward?
Billy Albin: I knew him well. I never got to ride with him.
Neil Dudley: Those are a couple of the old timer cowboys I would say that-
Billy Albin: There’s a cutoff there. Bob Byrd, Buster, Dick Hart. There’s a picture of him right up there. Well, those guys, most of them are gone and there’s nobody to take their place. It’s a whole, I’m right on the breaking point. I’m different than they are. And well, I think it’s how they grew up that made them the way they are. And when they’re gone- and James Boucher. Here’s another one. you remember James I bet.
Neil Dudley: I’ve heard the name a whole bunch, but I couldn’t tell you if you showed me a picture of him, I couldn’t tell you who he was.
Billy Albin: He was raised around the Gustine area, but he was a heck of a good cowboy. Another one. He had a big influence on me. We spent a lot of time together.
Neil Dudley: Yeah, I feel like I’ve heard his name in a lot of different kinds of conversations about horses and stuff and somebody mentioned-
Billy Albin: And I guess, now Dan Taylor got me started roping. Did you ever know Dan Taylor? He was one of the top calf ropers back in the-
Neil Dudley: Was that Randy’s dad?
Billy Albin: No, he was from Duel, Texas. And he was one of the top calf ropers back in the 1950s. So, he was down here riding some horses for my dad. And one day he just built a calf roping dummy. He didn’t even ask me if I wanted to learn to rope, he just built the dummy and said, well, come on, we are going to learn how to rope. And from then on, that’s all I wanted to do.
Neil Dudley: Yeah, no, I really loved it. Tom R’s the guy that made me want to rope.
Billy Albin: Tom R. is a heck of a roper.
Neil Dudley: And I never saw him rope in the arena. Maybe once or something, but this was after I’d kind of already started roping myself. He might run one or two in the practice pen, but I never saw him when he was really roping, rodeoing. But I looked up to him. Tom R’s an uncle that I’ve always had just a connection with. I look up to him. He’s pretty quiet.
Billy Albin: Tom R’s a good cowboy too.
Neil Dudley: Aside from Dad, then I had pretty good uncles real quick to be people I look up to. I just was really blessed in that way. I’ve always had really good people to look up to and learn from.
Billy Albin: Well, the Dudleys have always been a good family. I always looked up to them, all of them.
Neil Dudley: My granddad, he, I don’t know, I think he had a cowboy spirit, but he wasn’t a cowboy for a living, day in and day out like what a lot of guys did, but there was a lot of- He loved horses.
Billy Albin: You are talking about Eltos? Of course, every time I ever talked to Eltos, we talked horses. We’d always talk horses and I enjoyed visiting with him.
Neil Dudley: Yup. I remember just riding around with him, looking at the mares and the colts and asking a million questions and him trying to survive that. It was like, look, quit asking questions, just look at these horses with me. I’m like, well, what do you like about that one? Well, what makes a good horse? So, a lot of what I think comes from him. He gave me his perspectives anyways. Okay, I really appreciate your time and all the things you’ve done for me and helped me along the way and gave me some experiences I couldn’t have gotten any other way. Billy, I appreciate that so much. The couple of questions I ask everybody is what’s the value of a dollar? What’s the value of a dollar to you? How would you answer that question?
Billy Albin: Well, I don’t really put much value in a dollar. I put more value in if I’m doing what I like and what I want to do. If I’ve got enough money to do that, that’s enough as far as-
Neil Dudley: A paper dollar bill doesn’t make much difference.
Billy Albin: Doesn’t make that much difference to me. I want to be doing what I want to do. And it don’t take much money to stay here at home.
Neil Dudley: Alright. I think that’s a great perspective and people could have a lot happier lives a lot of times if they can hear that and think about it and see how it might play in their lives.
Billy Albin: And I don’t, if anybody wants, if that’s what they want to do, that’s fine.
Neil Dudley: That’s for you. You’re answering the question from your perspective. Okay. Now then here’s one I’m really excited to hear your answer to. Tell me about books you’ve read that you’ve really liked or podcasts you’ve listened to.
Billy Albin: Of course, I’ve never listened to a podcast. Books, I don’t read much; I don’t have time. I work seven days a week. People in town probably wonder what I do. But I work seven days a week.
Neil Dudley: That’s another thing that’s an example for me that I see in you is you’re not punching a clock, nobody’s on you, but you get up and you work.
Billy Albin: Yeah, I’ll put in more hours than anybody with a job, but I’m doing what I want to do.
Neil Dudley: That’s right. That’s the other thing, if you do what you want to do, you’re doing it all the time.
Billy Albin: But I learned all my braiding out of books. There’s more books than you think. I’ve probably got a dozen books on braiding, and some of them are in Spanish.
Neil Dudley: Really? So, do you read Spanish?
Billy Albin: No, but I can look at pictures and kind of-
Neil Dudley: I think a picture’s worth a thousand words.
Billy Albin: I can follow the pictures better than I can in the words anyway. And I like to read the old cowboy, the old west trail driving books.
Neil Dudley: Biographical or documentary type things?
Billy Albin: I don’t like fiction. I don’t even like to go to a movie or watch a movie because I know it’s not true.
Neil Dudley: Kind of like watching TV or the news or any of that.
Billy Albin: And that’s like Facebook, it’ll keep you busy wondering what’s real and what’s not. But no, I like those old trail driving books. I think I was reading one just the other day about driving a heard from south Texas to Kansas or somewhere and all what they went through to getting up there.
Neil Dudley: Did you ever go on a long trail drive similar, something like that?
Billy Albin: No, no, I think not over just a day long drive is all.
Neil Dudley: Yeah. I can remember as a kid, we must have only had a couple of sets of pens on the ranch, and we’d drive cattle from what felt like to me forever, probably would have been half a day or something. But there’s a lot of value- I think there’s quite a bit of value in that time spent on your horse, just kind of taking cattle somewhere. Okay. Well, that’s the end of the podcast. I thank you for talking through all the stuff. Is there any other thing you want to mention before I stop and quit doing this, just out of curiosity?
Billy Albin: Oh no, I think we about covered it.
Neil Dudley: Yeah, I enjoyed it.
Here we are at the end of another podcast episode in my series I have named Cowboy Mentors, or just trying to get some conversations had with people that have been really important in giving me the perspective I have. Billy has certainly played a big role in that. I think by now you’ve realized he’s a pretty private kind of guy. So, getting him on the podcast has been a real honor for me. And I know it wasn’t decided on by him to do in a light manner. So, I hope you enjoyed it. I hope you’ve taken some value away and had a thought or two that said, I might want to think about things in that way. That’s the goal and to really just give insight into people that I really look up to. So, thanks for listening and I hope you enjoyed that conversation in the rawhide shop with Billy Albin. Until next time, thank you so much.
The Cowboy Perspective is produced by Neil Dudley and Straight Up Podcasts. Graphics are done by Root & Roam Creative Studio, and the music is by Byron Hill Music.