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Danielle:—Danielle Maruna— Marci:—Marci Pronsolino— Morgan:—Morgan Brundahl-Smith— Sarah:—and Sarah Sorice…(silence and then giggling). Oh! I was completely lost where we were—student historians from the North Coast Rural Challenge Network’s Oral History Project in Anderson Valley. Dominic: We’re here today with Bud Johnson. Thank you, Mr. Johnson, for joining us. You know a lot about animals, especially horses, were you raised on a ranch? Mr. Johnson: Yeah, I was raised on a ranch, we—my dad was a—was a rancher, and he was raised that way, so we were raised that way. Morgan: Where was your dad a rancher? Mr. Johnson: My dad, he uh, he uh—he worked for an outfit down in south—southern California, and they had about 2,000 cows. And we just grew up there learning about cows…and horses, dogs and what have you. So, uh… Morgan: Is that where you grew up, though? Mr. Johnson: Yeah, in a—in a—in a Depression we were in, we were down there in the thirties trying to survive with the rest of the people. Sarah: How did the Depression affect you? Mr. Johnson: Well, money-wise, there was nothing you know, uh, you kinda had to hustle for what you even ate, you know. My mother went out and she had a little ol’ single shot .22 (laughs), shot shorts. Killed cottontail rabbits. We had fried rabbits and biscuits and gravy. Lucky to have it I guess, it was pretty good. Dominic: At one point you lived in Tennessee; how did you move from like Tennessee—or why did you move from Tennessee to California? Mr. Johnson: My dad was in the army, and he was in the army, and he got discharged out of the army in Fort Benning, Georgia. And he had met my mother in Knoxville, Tennessee, and he, uh, married her, and went home on a leave with a friend of his from the army, and my mother was this guy’s sister, and that’s how he got acquainted with her. And my grandfather had came out here already and he had a ranch in, uh, over in Sacramento Valley, and he, uh, harvested in the field with mules, he had two hundred mules or so and he pulled them big harvesters, and plows and what-have-you—whatever it took to make a living. And, uh, that was in like the twenties, and—along in there. Dominic: How old were you when you moved? Mr. Johnson: Oh, we were just little babies. I had one sister, and she was a year older than I, and, uh, we came out here, and my dad went right to work for a guy named Dobbins who had a couple thousand cows, and round cows in there, and he brought these cows down to Arizona, and they were long skinny ol’ boogers, and I mean, they hit the ground runnin’, there was lots of ridin’ keep up with, they ended up in three different counties around us. So, that’s about the story of that. In ’35 and ’36, they had a big snow. It snowed five feet right there in the Sacramento Valley. I don’t think it’s ever snowed there since probably, and they had to uh—pack strings of pack horses, they packed cotton seed out to keep those cows alive in the snow. And, it was a game of survival, you might say. Daniel: How did you get to Boonville? Mr. Johnson: Well, I was interested in riding bucking horses, because I had rode colts all my life, and two guys came by one day and they said they’s going to a rodeo, and they said, “C’mon, jump in the pick-up and go with us.”— Morgan:—and how old were you? Mr.
Johnson: I was about fourteen or fifteen, so, and I said, “Well,
you know, boss is coming up and we’re supposed to work a bunch of
cattle and do this and that. And I don’t know if I can go or not.”
But I made up my mind right then when I got off my horse and put him up
and said, “If that guy don’t show up here by seven, eight tonight,
I’m—I’m gonna go down to that rodeo.” So away I went.
Sarah: At the Fairgrounds? Mr. Johnson: At the Fairgrounds, yeah. So, we came down here, I came down here, I got here in the middle of the night. I didn’t know where Boonville was, it seemed like I got to Ukiah OK, and after Ukiah it seemed like the old road was real crooked and rough. I thought, man, well, I might as well run out into the back pasture and gather cows than go to this place. But I finally made it here, it seemed like I never would, but I did make it here to Boonville. Dominic: Was 253 paved at that time? Mr. Johnson: No, it was a dirt road, and there were sheep sleeping in the middle of the road, and cows in the middle of the road. You’d come around there and there would be a bunch of animals sleeping in the middle of the road. Danielle: How old were you? Mr. Johnson: I was in my teens, around fifteen or sixteen. Dominic: Had you gone to school where you grew up, like, you were so young already. Did you have any education? Mr. Johnson: I went through grammar school, and I went through high school. That’s as far as I went. The rest of education I got, I guess, was behind the barn, I don’t know. (Laughs) Sarah: So where did you go to school? Mr. Johnson: I went to school at Fortuna High School, and Miranda both, South Fork, they call it. I started there, I was twelve years old when I started high school. I had a birthday November ninth, so I went two, three months while I was twelve years old, and when I finished my first year of high school I was thirteen. Because we had one-room classes and one teacher all through grammar school, one teacher taught all grades from the first through the eighth grade. I remember one time the schoolhouse caught afire; it was cold, snowing. We built the fire too hot I guess, and around the chimney caught afire. Me and this other kid, he was in the eighth grade, and I was about in fifth, we had to run to the spring. It was a quarter of a mile away from the schoolhouse, and get a bucket of water, to try and put that fire out. The kid says, “Let it burn, let it burn, then we won’t have to go to school.” (Everyone laughs). Lord, we got it put out, and then we had a coupla weeks off until they repaired the hole in the roof. So we did get a vacation out of it. Sarah: So in those days, how did you get to school—did people drive or—? Mr. Johnson: Well, us particularly, most of ’em walked, but we lived about ten or twelve miles on a different mountain. We had to go down across, it wasn’t a river, but, almost a river, so my sister and me rode horseback to school. Those other kids, they walked six or seven miles to school, that’s the only way they had to get to school. Their parents didn’t have enough money to buy gas, or anything, but everyone was happy, that’s the way we lived. We weren’t spoiled by being able to have our mother come by, and run us to the grocery store whenever we needed a candy bar or something, you know. It was real interesting, we had all the things we did. We played ball, had a field there, we batted the baseball around and what have you. But the only thing about it was, every year one or two graduated, you would run out of kids. If you didn’t have five kids, they wouldn’t hold school. So we had to move to another school. I had to move three times because the eighth-graders graduated, and uh, then I’d have to go to a different school. So sometimes it made it a little harder, little further ridin’—four different schools, when I come to think about it. And uh, but it worked out all right, and uh, it taught us all what life’s all about. Marci: So how old where you when you’d ride the horses to school? Mr. Johnson: We were uh, well, from the first, second grade up, we’d get up four o’clock in the mornin’, go feed the horses, come back in, my mother would have somethin’ cooked up for breakfast and she had us—she packed us a lunch in a flour sack and we had chaps and slickers that my dad provided for us and uh, snow, rain or blow, we were ridin’. Morgan: And you’d go out and rope and do stuff on the ranch? Mr. Johnson: Yeah, well, we had cattle to just work and I was thinkin’ about ever being—well, I wasn’t ever thinking about being—well, that’s not really true—I wanted to be a real good calf roper which I never was, I never roped cows in my life except if they’d run four or five hundred head in there to mark and brand and uh, in one brand and we’d haul cattle and drag ’em over to the branding part and they’d castrate ’em and brand ’em and ear mark ’em and stuff like that, never dreamin’ then, but we always was on a ride, we wanted to ride everything, you know. And uh, they had kind of a rule there that you didn’t bother the livestock unless you were workin’ so when everybody wasn’t around or we was out in the back range, we would gather up cattle and we’d run ’em up to a big ol’ corral, we knew where all the bosses was, we’d rope ’em and snub ’em up to a post and get on ’em and ride ’em and that’s where basically I learned to ride. Sarah: So, yeah, you’ve been riding for a long time, so how old were you when you actually started riding horses? Like when you were taught how to ride horses. Mr. Johnson: I was a year old, two, I guess, just from baby up. Sarah:—Wow— Mr. Johnson:—I had some pictures, I shoulda brought ’em. And I did the same to my children, I packed them horseback with me until they were a year or two old when I figured they could ride by themselves or hang on. And I always had an old horse that was pretty well broken. I’d throw one of ’em on it and that old horse would follow my horse wherever I went, and that’s basically the way they learned to ride. I remember ridin’ up and gathering a bunch of cattle and I had W.T. on my saddle in front of me. And I told him, I said, “Let’s get out of the wind here and in the sun and have a little lunch.” We had a couple of sandwiches and I set him down against a tree there and got him out a sandwich and pretty soon I seen that he threw the sandwich away and was eating an old cow plop (laughing) instead of a sandwich (laughing). I couldn’t get him away from that. Sarah : How old was he when he did that? Mr. Johnson: He was a year old maybe. Just a little shaver. But one day we rode out of this creek and there was berries—it was in the spring—berries was ripe—and uh, he just didn’t say two or three words then, you know, and we rode up then and stopped and he went over to this berry bush—he was about three years old, well, maybe, yeah, maybe not quite three—and he says ‘pissed’, and I said—well, I didn’t even know he even knew the word, I guess he had heard somebody say it, you know. I said, “What’s the matter with you?” He said, “No berries, the birds ate the berries.” He couldn’t find no berries and he was mad at that. (Laughing). Houston the same way, lots of times that I was ridin’ and ropin’ and he would sit on my horse with me and just go to sleep, bent over the saddle horn. So uh, they been ridin’ the same as I was ridin’ when I was a kid. Sarah: So do they do rodeo also like you? Mr. Johnson: Uh, W.T. does, he could be a world’s champion. He is a very, very accomplished roper. He can rope either end of the cow and very rarely ever misses. He has a very good hand. And I have some pictures of him here heading for me. (Shows pictures). Uhm, this is one of ’em and I don’t know if you saw ’em all or not, but he headed a steer—we went—my wife got—of course she was riding barrel horses so much and she wasn’t ropin’, so I shod her horse four or five times and she never did ride it so I said you know if she don’t ride that horse I’m not gonna put any shoes on him and she got ticked off at me and she, uh, she said, “I guess you’re gonna have to find you a different partner to rope with,” so W.T. went ropin’ with me and we won five rodeos in a row. We won five buckles, we won every one. He was headin’ steers and I was heeling them. He’s real good. He can go, without any practice today, to a big ropin’ and win a thousand dollars, no sweat. Sarah: That’s very impressive. Does he still—? Mr. Johnson:—He is not like me, you know I can’t do that. I have got to rope all the time or I get rusty. And there is not a day that I don’t rope, I rope and over-rope and rope and rope and rope and rope just to keep my hand in so that uh, when I get there and they turn a steer in front of me if they’re traveling thirty miles an hour or what and the steer’s upside down I can still catch it. I have a mechanical cow at home. I showed it to Mitch this morning, and uh, you can pull it with a four-wheeler or a pick-up or whatever and this cow, it runs just like a real cow and you can go and rope all day. And my little boy, Houston, he is ten, and he ropes very quickly so he can catch two feet pretty near every time—in a very short amount of time, that’s all he wants to do is heel cows. He’s learning on it. Him and I rope all the time, we’re pretty good buddies. Sarah: So can you tell some more of your stories? Mr.
Johnson: Well, I came into Boonville, in the middle of the night and everybody
was up at the bar, they was at Weise’s bar, and they were all drinkin’
and what have you. And somebody opened the gate and here come all the
buckin’ horses and bulls right up main street here in Boonville (laughs).
So everybody had to quit drinkin’ and go gather them up or they wouldn’t
had a rodeo the next day. So we were runnin’ back down there and
next mornin’ they were there and we had a rodeo—that’s
one story. Danielle: So what made you think to try roping professionally? Mr. Johnson: Well, I went, well, what happened was I didn’t know how good I was or nothing. I went to the first rodeos—that’s probably what made me do it but…I won. And I was working for forty dollars a month and board at that time, that was pretty good money. Sarah: When was this? Mr. Johnson: This was back in the ’40s, and because the foreman was only gettin’ sixty dollars a month. So they graduated me up to foreman and I got sixty dollars a month, man, I thought, “Boy, I’m doing pretty good.” But the main thing was I went to this rodeo and I got into bronc-riding, and bull-riding and bareback-riding and I won—I won the bronc-riding. Sarah: Can you explain what that is? Mr. Johnson: Well, that’s getting down on a horse like this, (demonstrates) you get a saddle and you got two stirrups and they cut the horn off your saddle so you just have the front end of your saddle. And you got one buck rein and you measure that rein just right, if you don’t get it too short, he’ll jerk you off over his head like that horse did to me right there. That was a great bucking horse right there, he belonged to the Christian brothers in Eugene, Oregon, and he didn’t only buck me off, he bucked lots of people off. But, ah, you had to take your rein right and you had to keep your ah—you had to keep the hole underneath the swells in the saddle with your knees and the rest of the part you were on your own. And, ah, people say, well, “Man! How could you get on them bucking horses?” I said, “Well, it’s just like getting in a new car seat, it takes you a jump or two to get used to it,” you know, new car. So, ah, that’s the way it was, but everybody was young, and on their fingertips, just like you kids don’t really realize how agile we really are, the things you can do now amaze me. I can’t believe some of the things people can do, they’re agile. I was in Oklahoma last summer, rodeo, rodeoed every night there, you could go to a rodeo every night of the week, except Sunday, Sunday was the Sabbath, nobody is stirring on Sunday. I tell you, some of them kids, I can’t believe how agile they are. Sarah: Are you still roping? Mr. Johnson: I am still roping. In fact I might go to a roping this week, I just got back from the national finals in the ACTRA team roping in Reno. It was a big indoor arena up there in Reno. I just got back from there the other day. And, ah, there was a thousand teams roping, so it’s kind of hard to win anything. Morgan: How’d you do? Mr. Johnson: Well, I did fine you know, I did all right, but I missed a steer or two I didn’t need to miss, the cattle weren’t good. And if I didn’t miss, maybe my header might miss, or something, I was roping with a lot of different guys from different parts of the world, but, ah, of our world, in America. Some there was from Hawaii and Alaska. But ah, in our western world there was a lot of people there. Roping was an honor, to be able to rope all year to get to go. Because only the top guys get to go. Sarah: So, it’s an honor to be invited to that, right? Mr. Johnson: Yeah, so I—I felt real good. They gave me a new shirt, and the last time I went over there I roped the steer. The first steer I roped I won a $1,000 just roping one steer. Lots of money there. They put up a lot of money and, and uh, so I’ll go next year and hopefully I’ll do a little better than I did this year. Danielle: Do you rope against the younger kids? Mr. Johnson: Yeah. Yeah, there ah, there’s people that are sixteen up, that’s really—and some fourteen-year-old kids that just ropin’ fire outta cattle. They’ve never had anything in their hand but a rope. Parents were ropers. They’ve made their kids rope dummies, and rope everything until they can just catch a steer in the air. And, uh, it’s, uh, it’s amazing. Dominic: How do you beat the younger kids? Mr. Johnson: Well, there is a lot of stuff involved with team roping because you have two horses and you have two men and you have a cow. And you have, ah, all that to contend with—your header comes out and he heads the cow, and if you don’t handle it pretty good, ah, you’ve lost two or three seconds and it’s a game of catching steers in four or five seconds. Sarah: Do you do the head or the other things? Mr. Johnson: I do the feet, and if you catch the steer before it gets to turned completely they’ll flag you out for cross-firing they call it. So, you’ve got to wait ’til your header turns the steer before you can rope it. And, uh, so it’s a game of chance, probably, but uh, if you’re real good you ah, just the main thing is to ah, don’t get excited, don’t get uptight or nothing just go roping cattle, pull ’em up somewhere. Rope them cattle and let those other guys try to beat you—if you rope a steer in six seconds they’ll try to speed up and they’ll try to beat you, especially young people they think man, that ol’ boy just walked it on I’ll have to really do somethin’ and they’ll turn around and they’ll flub up some way, so, you just use your head and go ahead and rope the cattle. Sarah: Be calm. Mr. Johnson: Be calm. Sarah: So, do you still do that for a living, like, go to rodeos? Mr. Johnson: I go to every, all the time, but ah, I wouldn’t say I make my living at it, it sure helps some in my living, I trade mostly, I trade a lot of horses. I buy horses in Louisiana and Texas and I bring them back up here and ride ’em. There is an abundance of horses down there in Texas, New Mexico, southern New Mexico, and Nebraska, and Colorado and I know everybody in that world pretty much because I rodeoed in that part of the world a lot ’specially in northern Texas up towards Oklahoma. I lived there for awhile and just rode my horse and roped and stuff. So it’s not hard to pick up some horses there for fairly decent money. You can buy horses there for $1,400 dollars and $800 dollars. I can bring out right here and sell ’em for five. I brought a load back and it cost me $7,000 dollars for a load and I sold them here for $47,000 dollars. So it helps me buy milk for Houston. (Laughs) Morgan: So you like working with horses? Mr. Johnson: Yeah, I ride them horses and I break horses steady. I’ve been riding three colts, but I sold one the other day, and so I’m riding two colts right now. I rode one last night, Dominic’s mother came down and she’s riding her horse and my wife’s riding her horse and I got one out and rode it. It’s a nice horse, it should—somebody would really love to have that horse, it’s really a nice horse. Morgan: What’s your secret— Mr. Johnson: You in the market? (Laughter). Morgan: Oh—uh, no. Actually, we have a couple horses, but we don’t ride that often. So what’s your secret for your success and the horses? Mr. Johnson: Well, I tell you what, horses is just, you know—you just don’t—you have to feel at ease around them, and I shod horses so many years, I learned to shoe them horses up on those big ranches, they’d—whether I wanted to or not—when I was a little kid, they had big blacksmiths up there and they had twenty-five or thirty guys in bunkhouses there, and when you weren’t out riding after cattle or whatever, you were shoeing horses. And they’d have me and a regular horse-shoer there and I’d have to go over there and work the forge for him. And he couldn’t read or write, but he could shoe horses. A lot of people in those days didn’t have any education other than that. Old tobacco chewin’ booger he is, get me to grind that forge and if I got it too hot he’d, boy, he’d cuss me out, and I’d just want to be somewhere else. I thought, man, if I only had my slingshot, I’d go shoot a bird or somethin’ you know? But in the meantime I learned to shoe horses and I shod horses all my life. Morgan: And you still do that? Mr. Johnson: I still do that. Morgan: And about how many times do you do that a day? Mr. Johnson: Well, I don’t—now that I’m older—don’t want to do any more than four horses a day. Morgan: That’s a lot. Mr. Johnson: But I used to do eight or ten or sometimes eighteen. But you’d go to those big dude ranches and I shod horses down on a racetrack. And I just worked there, in the mornings I would go down there and there would be four or five kids, other guys shoeing there. Them race horses are fun to shoe. They rear and they paw and they fall over and they pull away from you and they kick. Those kids—I’d shoe until I made five hundred bucks, and then when I made five hundred bucks I’d pack my tools and truck and drive out of there, which wasn’t bad for like two hours. You could make that in two hours. Morgan: That’s good. Mr. Johnson: But you learned all about how to keep those horses sound and keep them running and to the best of your ability. Those kids, they’d still be in all day jumping out there, jump around there and they’d shoe a horse and then they’d just, pretty soon they’re down sitting there smoking a cigarette. I’d have about five done and they had about two and they said, “You little booger, how did you do that?” And I said, “Well, I don’t run after my tools.” Whenever I had a little deal, wherever I worked, I had every tool I needed right there. I did that—put my tool back in the box. They’d do it with a tool, and throw it down on the ground and you have to bend over forty times without running after your tools. So, I tried to teach W.T. that and he’s getting now where he can slip right through a horse pretty quick. Sarah: So, have you ever been injured while shoeing horses? Mr. Johnson: Um, no just other than these scars you see on my hands from horses jerking away and running nails through my fingers, that’s all. Morgan: What about the story you have about your finger—about training a horse? Mr. Johnson: No, I was tradin’ horses— Morgan: Tradin’ a horse. Mr.
Johnson: Yeah, this, you know I saw something on last night, it was telling
about this gal’s parents was S&H. These—remember you used
to buy things, well, you guys don’t probably remember, but every
time you’d buy some groceries or something in a store they’d
give you some green stamps and they were called S&H. Well, you got
so many of those green stamps and then you could go buy things with them.
And they were worth quite a bit of money. Well, this gal, her parents
was S&H. Morgan: So how come—did you ever get your finger put back on? Mr. Johnson: No, I was goin’ to. I told my wife to pick it up. And she wouldn’t—didn’t comprehend, you know? I said—she said, “What?!” I said, “Pick my finger up.” I said, “You know, I cut my finger off.” She said, “What?!” I said “Yeah, there it is, see it laying right there?” and she started to pick it up and dog grabbed it up and ate it, (everyone laughs). So that was the end of my finger right there. So, anyway, that’s how my finger disappeared. Marci: So living in Boonville, I know that sheep dog trials go on—were you ever involved in that? Mr. Johnson: Yeah. I used to belong to the Redwood Empire Sheepdog Association, and I had a picture me winnin’ the trials—it was a newspaper clipping, and I didn’t find it. Anyway, that is where I met Guido and everybody here. It was fun, we used to go have picnics, and dog trials at people’s ranches, the ram sale in Cloverdale. It was a fun thing, everybody got to visit and talk about what they’d been doing. That’s kind of the way it is with horse-shoeing, you go shoe someone’s horses—and about eight weeks, they call you back and say, “Hey, how are you? What have you been doin’?” Then you tell them, and they tell you how they have been, b.s. really more than anything. Marci: Do you use your dog for anything else, like on your ranch? Mr. Johnson: Yeah, I used them for cattle and sheep. I used all of them. I had six or seven. Danielle: You were a state trapper? Mr. Johnson: Yeah, I was for twenty years, I worked for the Predatory Animal Patrol, and I got a bunch of sheep and cattle together of my own and worked at that for awhile. Then the colonists came in here and took up all the ranches, and they didn’t even bring the covered wagons this time. They just came in here and bought everything there was, and now it’s a different world here than it once was. Sarah: Could you tell us a story about your trapping life? Mr.
Johnson: I’ll tell you I moved down here—me and a guy from Canada
we traveled together a lot. He wanted to go down to Oakville, California
to the first rodeo in California in the spring, in February. I was living,
breaking horses in the head of the Mad River at the time—at an old
coyote trapper’s place. He had a cabin there that he built especially
for me. They had some big corrals there, and I took in everybody’s
horses up and down the river. I had eight or ten horses at a time—ridin’
’em. His supervisor came up there. He told me they needed two trappers
in Mendocino County—two coyote trappers. So, I kinda was gettin’
to the point then—I was in my twenties and was thinking more or less
about trying to get something for when I got older, so I said, well, maybe
I can go to work there and I won’t have to travel to Texas, or I
won’t have to go to Idaho tomorrow. I could just rodeo right out
of this area. I figured out how many rodeos I could go to, ’cause
you only work on the week and you got your weekends to yourself. So, I
put an application in. I went on to Oakdale. When I got home up there,
here come a card in the mail, ‘report to work.’ So, (laughs)
I came back down here and they said, “Get your stuff and get down
here and find a place to live and you can go to work.” So that’s
just what I did and I’ve been here ever since. I thought to myself
that it was pretty abrupt. I didn’t expect to even get a response
from ’em. But they gave me an interview and evidently I passed it
’cause they sent for me to show up and I stayed here. I never thought
I’d stay here very long at all. I never had any plans of ever—I
just got more involved, and more involved, and here it is almost fifty
years later and I’m still here you know. I still wonder why I’m
here. By the time I pull outta here and go to Idaho—Boise, or up
Klamath Falls, or Eugene to a ropin,’ well, I make it fine ’cause
it’s freeway. But when I get down to Ukiah, I gotta come over that
hill—drag them horses over there. I gotta drag ’em in and I
gotta drag ’em out. Sarah: When you were trapping animals, how can you tell which animal is which trap—or if you see a dead animal, how can you tell what animal killed it? Mr. Johnson: Well, you can pretty much tell real quick because a coyote will grab a sheep right there (demonstrates) and grab his jugular vein and it won’t eat nothin’. It might open it up right here a little bit and get a little bit of the liver and that’s the end of it right there for the coyote. Bear, he’ll just grab a sheep and tear it all to pieces and skin it out. A lion would skin it out better than you or I could skin it. Each foot will be on the hide and the hide will be just as square and pretty it would just look like you just took a knife and opened it up and skinned it—won’t be a hole in the hide or anything. They always take the insides and just put em’ in a little pile over by themselves. And so it’s pretty—and they grab a deer or a sheep in the back of its head there and break its neck. So, it’s fairly easy to tell which killed what and if you can’t tell that way and the buzzards got to it and ate it and tore up things around there well, you can look around there and you see it’s tracks somewhere. Sarah: You can read tracks? Mr. Johnson: Yeah, you gotta be able to see tracks. You can see a bear track going down the road driving thirty miles an hour if you know how to look for it. Also you can see a coyote track going down the road ten, fifteen miles an hour. If you know how to look for ’em, it’s just like everything. You know where your paper is and you know where your pencil is and you can write on it, it’s the same way looking for tracks if you know where to look. I hope that answers your question there. Dominic: You played music all your life, can you tell us how you learned how to play? Mr.
Johnson: Well, yeah, my dad bought me a three-dollar guitar. At that time
it was a big amount of money for him. It was in the thirties. My mom found
a five-dollar bill one time on top of some gravel which was like finding
a fifty! (Laughs). I mean to tell you, we went and bought a sack of flour
with that dude! But he bought me a guitar. We were riding down there one
day and I saw two old people. They had guitars hangin’ there on the
wall. We were lookin’ for cattle. I was about five years old, I would
imagine. That stuck with me. He knew I wanted that guitar; he bought me
one for Christmas. Mail order—everything was mail order. If you got
a new pair of shoes, you had to order it out of a Montgomery Ward catalog.
They were the big thing in those days. I just learned to play it. I went—we
had battery radios—this old boy named Duke Martin, he come on and
played fifteen minutes every mornin’. He advertised sending out books.
I sent off for some of his books. They had chords in ’em to the songs
he sang—how to do it. I just never relented. I just got that guitar
until finally I leaned how to play it. Dominic: We have a Grand Ol’ Opry picture here which will be in the book and this was taken just recently. Could you tell us about that experience? Mr. Johnson: Yeah, I wrote a bunch of songs and they wanted me to come back to Nashville to their recording studio. I went back there and ended up—I got to go everywhere there. They had me down as one of the original writers of country music. So, I’m writin’ for ’em. I write every morning. That’s where ’ol Mitch caught me this morning. (Laughs). Sittin’ there writin’ songs and drinkin’ coffee (laughs). Danielle: Would you play a song for us? Mr. Johnson: Yeah, for writin’ songs it’s just an inspiration that comes up to the top your head. You can see some girl—there’s three things, or four things that you can write about. You can write about truck-drivin’ people, or you can write about girls, or you can write about love, or you can write about drinkin’, or whatever. Whatever comes to your mind. That’s about what it amounts to when it comes to writin’ songs, (strums guitar). These strings are so bad—I put ’em on last night, and they have a terrible ring to them that I don’t like, (strums guitar). But that’s neither here nor there, (strums guitar). Just like looking at you, I could write you a song right now, (strums guitar). And it goes something like this, I hope. (Makes up a song “I’ve Enjoyed as Much of This as I Can Stand” about the interview and Sarah sitting across the table). Sings: Mr. Mendosa: Why don’t you play something else that you already have written? Mr. Johnson: OK. (Strums guitar). This song—I wrote this one when I was playing music at a place four nights a week, and I was drinkin’ a lot and feeling kinda low. Goes somethin’ like this, I hope. Sings: Danielle: That’s very nice! (All applaud) Mr. Johnson: Those things just come to you…. Mr. Mendosa: How ’bout something that you’re working on now. What were you workin’ on this morning? Mr. Johnson: Well, I need another line for it, it goes something like this, I hope. Sings
“If That’s What Love’s About” Morgan: Are you writing that for a musician to sing? Mr. Johnson: Yeah, ah, I hope, I hope a good one gets it. Morgan: You don’t have anybody in mind right now? Mr.
Johnson: Well, I know that, you know Brian Wyant and Allen Jackson, those
guys all record right where these songs go, so maybe one of those guys
will grab it up. I don’t know (plays a riff on his guitar), but,
ah, that’s kind of the way it goes in writing, you just sit down,
and let it come. You know, and, ah, puttin’ it together you gotta
think of a make a tune that you know no one else has, so that isn’t
easy, because there is like three million tunes you know. (Improvises
another song). You can only write about girls or, new strings, just let
it go (laughs). Marci: So do you prefer the older type of country to the new? Mr. Johnson: Well, yeah, for myself, but I am realistic to know that those— have you heard that new song out that George Strait’s got, and Allen Jackson about them committing murder on Music Row, have you heard that song? Marci: No, I haven’t, but… Mr. Johnson: Well it’s a good one, it tells the real truth about what happened on Music Row, and ah, they murdered country music and started doing this other stuff, because I guess they could sell more. Money meant more to them than anything in the world. So whatever sells, I mean you have to face life, and, ah, I hope you folks realize that it is not all glitter and gold and stuff that—bein’ able to do something—what you have to do is be yourself, you know what I mean, and just get through life, and stop and realize that, ah, you might have to pay a big price for something you want more than anything in the world. (Laughs). It might really cost you, not money-wise, but life-wise, you know what I mean; and me, nothing can hurt me now, because I’ve got, ah, all I want is other people’s respect, and I don’t care about— money don’t mean too much to me, it means survivin’, and bein’ right, but your own self-esteem and what you think of yourself matters more than anything in the world—so that’s about all I can say about that. Danielle: I want to thank you for joining us today. Mr. Johnson: Thank you for having me, I really appreciate all the—I never realized that anybody else would really be interested in what I do, I’m so common or whatever, you know, but I do realize that other people haven’t really had—do the things I do, and my goal when I was riding buckin’ horses was to be the greatest, and come hell or high water, that is the way I wanted it, and, ah, if I was workin’—when I was trappin’, it was the same, I wanted to be as smart as the animal I was trappin’ (laughs) so it all amounts today to just doing the best you can! Sarah: Thank you very much. Mr. Johnson: You’re welcome. |
