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My maternal Grandfather, Ralph Lee Barmore, called Poppy by his 11 grandchildren, was an inventor, an entrepreneur, a salesman and a highly regarded man throughout Kansas, Missouri, Oklahoma and Colorado.
He once had a job selling “Totalizers” to stockyards. A Totalizer displays the weights of livestock by flashing it up in lights up on panel about the size of the back of a station wagon. During the summers, when he was usually hauling a grandkid or two around with him in his Ford Country Squire station wagon on the back roads of any number of the above-mentioned states, he'd be visiting stockyards in the middle of nowhere.
We'd say “Poppy, where are we going?”
He'd reply, “I'm just following that old boy ahead of me; he looks like he knows where he's going!”
We'd usually have to stay in the car while he pitched his Totalizers, but he'd make dang sure we got an orange soda pop. Back in the car and on to the next stockyard we'd go. Another swig of his whiskey from under the front seat, our road games of “Jigger” and “I Spy,” resumed.
Poppy would drive from his home in Wichita to Grand Junction where he would meet up with Buck Sutherland. They'd sometimes meet at Ray Fiegel's place, Fiegel's Trading Post at 28 3/4 Road and North Avenue to have a drink and talk business. And, no, there wasn't a lounge per se at the Trading Post.
Buck was a legend in local stockyard history and as Frank Rupp tells me: “the Sutherland's, Buck and his wife Fannie, and their sons Steve and Casey were our next door neighbors on Bluegill Drive. Buck was nicknamed, ‘Diamond Jim' by the neighbors because he was a rather flamboyant cowboy. Buck was a big man who rode a big palomino horse, dressed to the nines, always gave away free rodeo tickets and paid the dinner tab for everybody after a big rodeo at Lincoln Park, much to Fannie's consternation.” Rupp continues: “My mom, (Maria Rupp) and Fannie remained close friends over the years.”
Frank and Karl Rupp remember their father and Buck Sutherland building prototypes of Totalizers and rodeo scoreboards using tin cans and light bulbs: “My dad helped Buck build the prototypes. Dad was an electronics person (trained in WWII) and worked for Red Crawford, who had an electronics repair store on Colorado Avenue between Fourth and Fifth streets. Buck and Dad worked on the scoreboard together lots of nights.”
Buck, too, was an electronics specialist by trade and his business eventually led him to create his dream, an electronic score board that was capable of handling rodeo scoring. The Totalizers evolved into a test model 20 years later; Buck drove it to Dallas in the back of his pick-up to make its debut at the very first National Finals Rodeo. Winston realized the value of such an invention and soon became a sponsor, then bought the scoreboard business from the Sutherland Family.
Why am I telling this story? All those years, watching my grandfather sell Totalizers, I had no idea that the people he was working with would soon be my family. I married Frank Rupp but I never got to know his electronic wizard dad, Dale Rupp. As I became part of the Rupp family and their circle of friends, I soon heard the rodeo scoreboard story and put two and two together. Isn't life funny that way in this Happy Valley? I don't really know what six degrees of separation means but I think this is it.
Some of the local stockyards that this oddly connected triad of cattlemen/inventors associated with were the Durham Stockyards and a variety of auction houses. As you drive down River Road, across the highway from Mesa Mall, you'll see a railroad box that says Durham. That's where the Durham Stockyards used to be at 2441 Highway 6 & 50. It was a massive, mysterious place with pens full of cows and manure. It was situated next to the railroad tracks to ship stock. Shults Sale Yard operated right next door and Howard Shults bragged his men could load a carload of cattle in five minutes.
The Grand Junction Livestock Auction with their Cowboy Café during the mid '60s was located down the highway from the Durham Stockyards at 2457 Highway 6 & 50. Another mile up the road, toward town was the Valley Livestock Auction at 2578 Highway 6 & 50, just west of First and North and owned by “Digger” Seedig. Beatrice Cecil ran the Café in its early days before Jessie Hawthorne took over to run it well into the 1980s.
Jessie called this Valley Livestock eatery the Cowboy Café, too. Jessie was known for her pies and when Valley Livestock shut down, Jessie took her pies across the tracks to Jessie's Kitchen on South Seventh Street. Valley Livestock Auction reopened on the Fruita Highway by Lanney Thomas. They had a heck of a café in that place as well.
A new era of livestock auctioning is taking place in Loma. Western Slope Cattlemen's Livestock Auction opened up two years ago by Jim Brach and Bill Martin. Cheryl Martin operates the Strayhorn Grill and once again, a livestock business has become the center of lower valley society. The Strayhorn serves “to die for” steaks and rib eyes at night and is open every day.
I wonder if they have pie? I better get out there and find out. It would take one hell of a piece of pie to beat Jessie Hawthorne's.
I hoped you liked this little tale. Let me know. You can also read my past columns by going to www.gjfreepress.com, click on Opinions then go to Blogs. You'll find me there.
He once had a job selling “Totalizers” to stockyards. A Totalizer displays the weights of livestock by flashing it up in lights up on panel about the size of the back of a station wagon. During the summers, when he was usually hauling a grandkid or two around with him in his Ford Country Squire station wagon on the back roads of any number of the above-mentioned states, he'd be visiting stockyards in the middle of nowhere.
We'd say “Poppy, where are we going?”
He'd reply, “I'm just following that old boy ahead of me; he looks like he knows where he's going!”
We'd usually have to stay in the car while he pitched his Totalizers, but he'd make dang sure we got an orange soda pop. Back in the car and on to the next stockyard we'd go. Another swig of his whiskey from under the front seat, our road games of “Jigger” and “I Spy,” resumed.
Poppy would drive from his home in Wichita to Grand Junction where he would meet up with Buck Sutherland. They'd sometimes meet at Ray Fiegel's place, Fiegel's Trading Post at 28 3/4 Road and North Avenue to have a drink and talk business. And, no, there wasn't a lounge per se at the Trading Post.
Buck was a legend in local stockyard history and as Frank Rupp tells me: “the Sutherland's, Buck and his wife Fannie, and their sons Steve and Casey were our next door neighbors on Bluegill Drive. Buck was nicknamed, ‘Diamond Jim' by the neighbors because he was a rather flamboyant cowboy. Buck was a big man who rode a big palomino horse, dressed to the nines, always gave away free rodeo tickets and paid the dinner tab for everybody after a big rodeo at Lincoln Park, much to Fannie's consternation.” Rupp continues: “My mom, (Maria Rupp) and Fannie remained close friends over the years.”
Frank and Karl Rupp remember their father and Buck Sutherland building prototypes of Totalizers and rodeo scoreboards using tin cans and light bulbs: “My dad helped Buck build the prototypes. Dad was an electronics person (trained in WWII) and worked for Red Crawford, who had an electronics repair store on Colorado Avenue between Fourth and Fifth streets. Buck and Dad worked on the scoreboard together lots of nights.”
Buck, too, was an electronics specialist by trade and his business eventually led him to create his dream, an electronic score board that was capable of handling rodeo scoring. The Totalizers evolved into a test model 20 years later; Buck drove it to Dallas in the back of his pick-up to make its debut at the very first National Finals Rodeo. Winston realized the value of such an invention and soon became a sponsor, then bought the scoreboard business from the Sutherland Family.
Why am I telling this story? All those years, watching my grandfather sell Totalizers, I had no idea that the people he was working with would soon be my family. I married Frank Rupp but I never got to know his electronic wizard dad, Dale Rupp. As I became part of the Rupp family and their circle of friends, I soon heard the rodeo scoreboard story and put two and two together. Isn't life funny that way in this Happy Valley? I don't really know what six degrees of separation means but I think this is it.
Some of the local stockyards that this oddly connected triad of cattlemen/inventors associated with were the Durham Stockyards and a variety of auction houses. As you drive down River Road, across the highway from Mesa Mall, you'll see a railroad box that says Durham. That's where the Durham Stockyards used to be at 2441 Highway 6 & 50. It was a massive, mysterious place with pens full of cows and manure. It was situated next to the railroad tracks to ship stock. Shults Sale Yard operated right next door and Howard Shults bragged his men could load a carload of cattle in five minutes.
The Grand Junction Livestock Auction with their Cowboy Café during the mid '60s was located down the highway from the Durham Stockyards at 2457 Highway 6 & 50. Another mile up the road, toward town was the Valley Livestock Auction at 2578 Highway 6 & 50, just west of First and North and owned by “Digger” Seedig. Beatrice Cecil ran the Café in its early days before Jessie Hawthorne took over to run it well into the 1980s.
Jessie called this Valley Livestock eatery the Cowboy Café, too. Jessie was known for her pies and when Valley Livestock shut down, Jessie took her pies across the tracks to Jessie's Kitchen on South Seventh Street. Valley Livestock Auction reopened on the Fruita Highway by Lanney Thomas. They had a heck of a café in that place as well.
A new era of livestock auctioning is taking place in Loma. Western Slope Cattlemen's Livestock Auction opened up two years ago by Jim Brach and Bill Martin. Cheryl Martin operates the Strayhorn Grill and once again, a livestock business has become the center of lower valley society. The Strayhorn serves “to die for” steaks and rib eyes at night and is open every day.
I wonder if they have pie? I better get out there and find out. It would take one hell of a piece of pie to beat Jessie Hawthorne's.
I hoped you liked this little tale. Let me know. You can also read my past columns by going to www.gjfreepress.com, click on Opinions then go to Blogs. You'll find me there.
