THE INSTITUTE OF TEXAN CULTURES
Oral History Office
SUBJECT: Kokernot Ranch (Tape 1 of 3)
INTERVIEW WITH: See Below*
DATE: l8 February 2000
PLACE: Westin Inn, La Cantera Resort, San Antonio, Tx
INTERVIEWER: Sarah Massey
TAPE 1 of 3, SIDE 1
* MA - Mary Ann Kokernot Lacy - current owner of ranch
A - Ann Lacy Brown - daughter of current owner
B - Brandee Lacy - married to grandson of current owner
C - Chris Lacy - son of current owner/ ranch manager
L - Lance Lacy - grandson of current owner
M: My name is Sarah Massey, and I am with the Institute of Texan Cultures. Today is February 18, 2000, and we are at the Westin Inn, at the Caseda [Suites]. And we are here today to interview ranching families, and I have with me Mary Ann...
MA: Kokernot Lacy.
M: Okay. And how are you related to the Kokernot Ranch?
MA: I am the granddaughter of Herbert Lee Kokernot Sr., who was the original founder of our properties in far west Texas: Jeff Davis and Brewster Counties. And my father was Herbert Lee Kokernot Jr., who always, all his life, lived out on the ranch. And I was born on that ranch at the Kokernot 2
headquarters, on May 25, 1922, and have lived out there all MA: my growing-up years, and, of course, went away to school, married, and now live in Waco, Texas.
M: Well, I'm going to ask you about some of that. So you grew up on the ranch?
MA: Right. And I was home-schooled on the ranch also.
M: Who taught you?
MA: I had a...three different teachers, governesses, and through the eighth grade. And then we moved to town for the school term.
M: Where was town?
MA: Alpine, Texas.
M: Alpine.
MA: It's twenty-one miles, and it was just easier and more convenient to live in Alpine than it was to live on the ranch and finish high school.
M: And so what was it like growing up on the ranch back in the '20s?
MA: Oh, it was lovely. Of course I only remember the good things, and the snows and the weather and the rains in the summer - we always had good rains.
M: What's the elevation out there?
MA: It's high, it's a mile high. Our headquarters ranch is a little over a mile in altitude. And then we go up further, up back of us into the mountains about six thousandKokernot 3
feet.
M: So, you have really one of the only mountain ranches in M: Texas.
MA: True. True. Except maybe the Long X.
M: Uh-huh.
MA: The Reynolds. It's over in...[sounds like Kent], and that's a little bit higher.
M: Uh-huh. So you had a house in town, then? MA: Yes.
M: When you were going to school in Alpine?
MA: Yes. I went to high school and finished. And then in those days, you know, in the '20s, we only had eleven grades, so I was on my way to college at age sixteen.
M: And this would have been what? About 1938?
MA: '38.
M: '38.
MA: 1938.
M: And where did you go to college?
MA: I first went to Hockaday; Miss Hockaday School in Dallas.
M: Ah. ...[inaudible].
MA: Actually I took another year of high school there because of...I hadn't had any of the sciences. No biology or chemistry was taught in our little hometown school.
M: Okay.Kokernot 4
MA: So I did another year of high school. And then I went to junior college there two years. And then I went to Smith College in North Hampton, Massachusetts.
M: And you came back to Texas?
MA: I came back to Texas when the Second World War began. And getting to Massachusetts in those days was very difficult, so I came back to Baylor and finished in 1943.
M: And what were you majoring in?
MA: English and speech. But my speech, when I hear myself on...back on my recorder, it doesn't sound too good.
M: Did you ever work in a profession outside the ranching?
MA: Only during the war years, when I was married, right out of college. I did a little nursery school teaching.
M: Uh-huh.
MA: You know. And that was all.
M: What's your connection to the ranch then, after you grew up?
MA: After I grew up, my father, of course, and mother were there sixty-five years and stayed...were there their whole lives. And when both died - they're both buried at...on the ranch. And, of course, I moved away and married, but we still keep a very close, intimate watch on things. And our son, Chris Lacy, lives on the place. And now his son, Lance, and his wife, live on the place. And we have three daughters, and they're all very closely connected to the Kokernot 5
ranch and come as often as they can.
M: Uh-huh.
MA: And we go as often as we possibly can. Of course, living in Waco, Texas, and driving five hundred miles is not MA: an easy...
M: Unh-unh.
MA: ...chore.
M: Is the ranch a business corporation now? Or...?
MA: Yes. Yes.
M: Tell me about that.
MA: Well, it's incorporated. And, as I say, our son, Chris, is our ranch manager. And just recently - say in the last five years - I have turned over my property-ship, I'll call it, amongst the four children, my four children - three daughters: Elizabeth Gwen, in Baltimore, and Lacy Brown in Houston and Golda Lacy Brown in Waco, and, of course, to our son. So they're actually...
M: The owners now.
MA: The owners now.
M: Did you inherit directly from your parents then?
MA: Yes, I did. I'm an only child. So I inherited the property and all that goes with it.
M: And all the holdings.
MA: All the holdings.
M: At the time of your inheritance, what did you inherit? Kokernot 6
What was...?
MA: It's about a hundred thousand acres; and, really, that's all we dealt in. We are really in the business for livelihood, you know. We have no extra curricular real estate, oil or anything. We do...
M: So...
MA: ...[inaudible]
M: You don't have oil on your ranch?
MA: No, nothing.
M: Do you do racehorses or any of that?
MA: No, we don't do...
M: So you truly...
MA: We truly do cow/calf operations at the ranch. And that's been our livelihood all these years. We have depended on that.
M: Then I've...
MA: And it's been very good to us.
M: That's...it was my...from all my reading and everything it seems like nobody can survive in the ranching business today.
MA: It's gotten very difficult, because of the market. And it seems like every time we get...we only...we go on a schedule, you know. We have a cow/calf operation, so calves are born in the winter for sale, ready for sale in the fall. And we contract those calves, say in August, September, Kokernot 7
whenever we think the market's going to be strong. Well, sometimes the market isn't strong at that particular time, but we have to do that because we have to get rid of the calves to get ready for the next.
M: You don't try to hold the cattle over the winter then?
MA: No, no. We don't have the grass. And we try not to... M: And in my father's and grandfather's day no extra feeding was ever even thought of. I mean that was heresy almost. And...but now we do do a little extra – molasses, say, because we've had such droughty years.
M: Uh-huh.
MA: Between the drought and the market - that's what's made it so difficult in the last...
M: Uh-huh, uh-huh.
MA: ...ten years say.
M: Uh-huh.
MA: And we've had good rains last spring and, of course, that's helped a lot. But then we're still droughty. And it doesn't look like it's going to get any better. I think...I think...
M: Yeah.
MA: The way the systems are going, maybe we're pretty much desert. We're in the Chihuahuan Desert.
M: Uh-huh.
MA: ...which is creeping up on us. In my lifetime, cactus Kokernot 8
and century plants, and all of these kinds of things, have encroached on our property that weren't there when I was growing up.
M: So you've seen a major...
MA: ...change.
M: ...change, as well as...[inaudible]
MA: Major geological changes in grass, because we only fed MA: ...we only depended on the grass. And when it doesn't rain, you don't have the grass so you have to cull the... cull your herd to make do. But, as I say, we don't feed too much extra, you know, extra food. But some we do. Like we try to, you know, keep the bulls in good shape. And our horses...we have increased our horse population. We run our own remuda and breed our own mares and have our own colts that we train. But...
M: How many...about how many horses are you...
MA: Oh, in the remuda there are about a hundred and twenty-five.
M: So you're keeping those year...
MA: We keep those year-around and try to keep them...and try to breed them so that they are better quarter horses, better cow horses.
M: What's a quarter horse?
MA: A quarter horse, well, they...they're good with cattle. They lead and follow well, you know.Kokernot 9
M: Uh-huh.
MA: They...nothing special. We don't train them for special things, other than being in the round-ups.
M: So they're work...work horses?
MA: Yeah, work horses.
M: And then what type of...how many people are you maintaining on the ranch?
MA: Not too many.
M: ...Workers?
MA: We have...well, we have the headquarters where we stay always, which was my parents' home. And my grandson lives at another place, which we call The Willows. My son and his wife live at another place, which we call The Old...[sounds like Barenda], or Limpia Canyon Ranch. And then we have some out...out camps that we...
M: Uh-huh.
MA: When we do our fall and spring work, we camp at those places.
M: So you hire extra people then?
MA: We hire...when we have round-ups we hire at least, oh, at least twenty. It takes a crew of twenty to twenty-five people to round-up in the fall. That's when we do our rounding-up and shipping of the cows and calves.
M: Where do you ship from?
MA: From those different ranches. We have our...Kokernot 10
M: Okay.
MA: ...own pens and scales.
M: Okay.
MA: And then in the spring, we work the cattle and brand the new calves and count, you know.
M: Uh-huh.
MA: See what the...what the winter has brought.
M: What's an average size herd for a year?
MA: Uh, maybe fifteen. Right now it's pretty culled down – MA: maybe fifteen hundred mother cows.
M: And you’re culling because of the weather and the drought?
MA: Because of the drought.
M: And market?
MA: If you don't have grass to feed, you just can't do it.
M: Yeah, that's right.
MA: And the market prices.
M: How have you seen the ranch change during your lifetime?
MA: Well, not all that much, really. Mechanized; that part.
M: ...[inaudible].
MA: When I was growing up, our chuck wagon had a team of eight mules that pulled it. And my husband and I lived out on the ranch after the World War II for a number of years. Kokernot 11
And he'd go with, you know, to the round-ups. Of course, that was...everybody has to go.
M: Yeah.
MA: All the men have to go and all the women have to stay home and milk the cows. But, oh, I think we had one pickup. This was back in the '40s.
M: Uh-huh.
MA: One pickup that brought supplies to the chuck wagon at all these different places: the headquarters and all the different ranch spots. And then the camps - the outer
MA: camps. Well, now everybody has a pickup and you take...we have trailers that we carry...
M: The horses.
MA: Well, no, we...the horses have to go on foot to all these places. And back in my youth it took us, oh, maybe four to six weeks, sometimes, to do this round-up in the fall.
M: And now?
MA: Now, well, it's pretty long – what, three weeks?
A: About three weeks.
MA: Three good long weeks, maybe into four, where we round-up and do and ship and...from each of those ranches. And in the spring it's kind of mechanized down to, oh, maybe two and a half, three weeks, because there are certain duties that, you know, that we do at each place. But you would be Kokernot 12
surprised. It looks just like a fleet of pickups and a fleet of trailers and...
M: About how many men do you have to hire on for the fall round-up?
MA: About twenty extra.
M: Twenty extra.
MA: At the different places. Of course, Lance, that's my grandson, at The Willows, he does the work by himself, sometimes with the help. Our son has a man that helps him that lives on the place. At the headquarters we have two Spanish men, that live there. And, really...and then we
MA: have one at the 06. Well, I'd forgot; near town, we have...one of our other places is the 06 Flats, and we have a couple that live there. And then we have another man that lives in town, but he works certain parts near town of the ranch.
M: What do you...[inaudible]
MA: So we have, let's see, one, two, three, four, five, six - about six regular.
M: Do you have a full-time veterinarian?
MA: No, but he works for us practically full-time.
M: That's what I was going to say.
MA: No, his name is Ray Allen and he's in Alpine.
M: Uh-huh.
MA: And he has an assistant, Mary Dodson, and they're on Kokernot 13
call all the time. But not too much, really. They have to come, like in the fall, when we ship they have to...
M: Yeah.
MA: ...check the...have papers, you know, that we have to sign, to check the...be sure we vaccinated. And they do all that.
M: Have you had any...what I mean, one of the...have you had any problems with new laws, regulations, any of the grazing rights, lands, have you seen any change in any of that?
MA: Not in our place, no. Because it's all owned out-right, and we don't... Well, I say we don't lease any; we MA: do lease two or three spots, I'll say...
M: Uh-huh.
MA: ...to suit our needs. Or we trade out evenly with our neighbors in the lease arrangements.
M: Uh-huh.
MA: Just because of the way the territory is, or the fences are, the plateau - or something. But no, I don't see that we've...we haven't been bothered by any...
M: And did your parents inherit the ranch, the complete ranch?
MA: My father...
M: Yeah.
MA: ...did.Kokernot 14
M: Yeah, your father.
MA: Well, my father had a sister. One sister was...always lived here in San Antonio. The other sister died when she was, oh, soon after the First World War, and she had a daughter. So Margaret, my cousin Margaret, and I are the only first cousins in this family. So when my father was young he tended to all of the ranch, which were... It's now two parts, but it was one part and it was about two hundred sections - about two hundred thousand acres in those days. And when I got to be grown and married, and my cousin Margaret got to be grown and married, well, they divided the property. And her heirs have the other half which we call The Lower Half. And me and my heirs have The Upper Country
MA: - the mountainous country.
M: What do you see... See, one of the reasons that would seem like for your ranch is that because you're an only child, and because there was just a cousin, that you've been able to keep the family completely in the ranch and very few ...in the hands of very few people.
MA: Right.
M: Now you have three children...
MA: Four.
M: Four children. What do you see the future of the ranch?
MA: Well, it's...it's all in undivided property. So I see Kokernot 15
them...they're all very interested in it.
M: Yeah.
MA: You'd be surprised, all in different – married, you know, into different professions and all, but they're all very interested in this. And it is expensive to operate now...
M: Uh-huh.
MA: because we don't have those extra-curricular...
M: Yes. Yes.
MA: ...funds from other...elsewhere. But they're all very interested in it, and I see them as keeping on - keeping on. And we have another generation coming. As I say, my grandson already is living at the ranch, and he's completely committed to that.
M: What do you think makes them so committed to the ranch?
MA: I don't know. I think it's in our blood. I think we've always just felt like this is it, and we're going to do it or else. You know, we're going to make it do. We're going...
M: Yeah.
MA: We're going to make it work.
M: I mean, you really are amazing, in the sense that it's ...you're not diversified, and you are relying solely on ranching.
MA: Right.Kokernot 16
M: To make a business.
MA: To make a living. Now, to add another little squib of ...I'm married to a banker - he's a banker - so we have extras...
M: Uh-huh.
MA: Extra-curricular income. We're not dependent solely on income from the ranch.
M: Oh.
MA: And all of our daughters, likewise, and son.
M: Uh-huh.
MA: Have other incomes - like from my husband's family, so that makes it a wee bit easier.
M: Easier, yeah.
MA: Easier to do. [inaudible]. Thank you, Ann. ...[inaudible].
A: ...[inaudible].
M: So it's more than that the grandchildren are relying solely on the ranch.
MA: Uh, we all rely on it to a certain extent. Right now, with the drought and all the depleted cattle herds and all, sometimes we're all called upon to put in...
M: Yeah.
MA: ...to put extra amounts.
M: It is showing a profit?
MA: Uh, we're breaking about even, right now.Kokernot 17
M: Breaking about even.
MA: We're breaking about even. Which is not anything extra. You know, we're not getting any profit, but in past years we've had good profits. But this is the ranching business.
M: Uh-huh.
MA: You know, you'll go on...my grandfather always said well, for every seven years drought, you're going to get three or four good years, which we do. And then we catch up and make up and then we go into another drought. And there we are again.
M: Yeah.
MA: So...
M: Which influence do you feel like the ranch has had on the area?
MA: Very, I think, very much influence, because we're a
MA: pretty big operation. And we try to do all that we can - buying, selling - in our hometown. And we support the community things.
M: Uh-huh.
MA: And we...I think we're good for the area.
M: Uh-huh, uh-huh.
MA: We're cooperative, you know, we're not unto ourselves.
M: Uh-huh.
MA: Oh, and my father. Talk about extra-curricular! He Kokernot 18
was very interested in baseball.
M: Uh-huh.
MA: And in his later years, he built a baseball park. It's called Kokernot Field in Alpine. It's a very nice, small facility. And our college - we have a college in our town...
M: Yeah.
MA: It's called Sul Ross, state university. And they have it now. We...after my father died, several years after he died, we...it was in his will, I think, or maybe not. But we decided that the best - or maybe he did it before he died - I believe he did it before he died, Ann.
A: ...[inaudible].
MA: He gave it to - you know, for tax purposes - to the university. So they use it. The high school uses it. So, all right, if she wants me to say something about...[Paw Paw] - that's my father.
M: Yeah.
MA: He - for fifty-three years, fifty-five, sixty-five years, sixty-five years - was the county commissioner in Jeff Davis County.
M: Okay.
MA: You know...
M: Uh-huh.
MA: The whole...Kokernot 19
M: Yeah, yeah.
MA: The whole time was never an intermittent kind of a thing, he repre...so we do, in both towns - Fort Davis and Alpine...
M: Yeah.
MA: Which are in two different counties.
M: Yeah, I would say you've influenced the area if he was county commissioner for sixty-five years.
MA: In that precinct.
M: Yeah.
MA: Now that's changed...things...
M: Yeah.
MA: He's gone, and they don’t do things like that any more. We keep having...
M: Keep going.
MA: We have - I'm trying to think of - we supply water, too.
M: Oh.
MA: To, especially, to Alpine.
M: Uh-huh.
MA: We have some deep wells. And in recent years, they've tapped into our deep wells. I mean, I think my father saw to it that they, you know, this was made possible.
M: Yeah.
MA: And we must have a deep aquifer.Kokernot 20
M: Uh-huh.
MA: In those...under those mountains somewhere, because there seems to be plenty of water. So we do supply water. Not totally...
M: So...[inaudible]
MA: Not the total supply.
M: Yeah, yeah.
MA: But we do.
M: In terms of your...in terms of your cattle, though, it's been, when you go through a drought, it's just primarily the feed, the grass and not the water table.
MA: Not the water table. So far, it's been okay. It's sufficient. There may come a day, if we get more desert-like ...
M: Yeah.
MA: ...that we won't have it. But I think the water's pretty deep.
M: Did you, after you went away to school, live at the ranch, ever?
MA: Uh, not really, for long periods. I came back in summers, and when my husband went right into the Navy in 1939, 1940 - and he was a commissioned officer when he came out in '45 - and those years that he was gone...
M: Uh-huh.
MA: I did still live at the ranch.Kokernot 21
M: Uh-huh.
MA: And here in San Antonio. ‘Cause my grandparents, you see, were here always.
M: And then you established yourself in Waco?
MA: Yes. And when my husband came back from the service, well, we...his family is from Waco and they're the old banking family, so he went right into the bank. After World War II...
M: How did you meet your husband?
MA: Oh, I went to school at Hockaday with his sister.
M: Uh-huh.
MA: In Dallas. His sister was also a student there, so... And then, my very...a very good friend of mine was from Waco, and I would go with her home on holidays.
M: Uh-huh.
MA: Thanksgiving - it was too far to go to West Texas for one day of Thanksgiving.
M: Yeah.
MA: So I would go - we had an inter-urban that ran from Dallas to Waco.
M: Yeah.
MA: A very unique feature. So we'd go for Thanksgiving and for Easter and for things. I met him on a blind date, visiting my good friend. She got me a date with him to some little dinner party, and I met him in Waco, Texas - in Kokernot 22
August, of all times, to meet somebody, and we'd go to Waco, Texas...
M: Well, back to the ranch. Who makes the financial decisions, or the business decisions, about the ranch? You have a corporation?
MA: Well, I do. Yes, we have a board of directors and all - we all do, we all do. I used to, more than anybody, but I've sort of let my - the children - take over that end of it. And they do a good job.
M: How do you see the ranching industry changing in the future?
MA: Well, from our standpoint of view it's just staying the same.
M: Same.
MA: It hasn't changed, other than the mechanization of the work. But we still do things just like we always did.
M: Do you think it's going to be harder to show a profit?
MA: If the drought keeps up, you know...it just depends on the market.
M: Yeah.
MA: I don't think so. We are very conscious of our land-
MA: management, cattle-grazing lands.
M: Yeah.
MA: So we're very - we're very cautious about how we - we never have - we never over graze. And we - if we get good Kokernot 23
years, well then we keep more heifer calves to raise. And that management has always been in place and I don't see it changing.
M: Did you ever ride? Were you a rider?
MA: Oh, yes. Oh, yes.
M: Tell me about your riding.
MA: Oh, well, I was -
M: When did you start riding?
MA: Oh, about ten years - nine - ten years old. And I always did, always ....
M: Did you work with the cattle?
MA: When they were nearby. I didn't go camp with the chuck wagon, but I've worked with them, when they were around close by, everyday - morning, noon and night.
M: And then once you went away to college, did you have any involvement after that time?
MA: Well, when I'd come home.
M: Oh.
MA: Yes, when I'd come home, always. And we still are involved. You know, all of us.
M: Do you still ride?
MA: No, no, I don't ride anymore.
M: ...[inaudible]
MA: But we still are involved. We all go home - we call it home...Kokernot 24
M: Yes, yes, it's home.
MA: And I've lived in Waco, Texas, for fifty years or fifty ...see, I've been married fifty-six years. And graduated from Baylor fifty-six years ago.
M: Uh-huh.
MA: So...but we all call it going home. And we all work and go to the round-up. You know, when we're out there - we go in the fall always; we go in the spring always... We sometimes spend Christmas there. And we go in the summer - that's really the only time that all of can get together.
M: Uh-huh.
MA: And the children come and the grandchildren.
M: So it's really a place of family reunion...
MA: Family reunion.
M: And it keeps the family together.
MA: Right. Right.
M: With the round-ups.
MA: Yes. Definitely.
M: That's interesting.
MA: Definitely.
M: Uh, what do you see as...what's your husband's role at the ranch?
MA: Well, he's kind of bossy. He's always been kind of
MA: bossy. And he takes a great part - I said all the children do the financial decisions, but he takes a great Kokernot 25
part in that.
M: Yeah.
MA: Being the banker...
M: Yeah, I was going to say if he's a banker...
MA: He's very interested; he keeps right on top of it. Very definitely. And investing of any profits that we might have. Of course, we keep all of our extra monies invested.
M: Yeah.
MA: And, you know, until such time as it’s needed. But we've always managed to keep ahead...
M: What...
MA: ...with any disaster.
M: What do you see the legacy of the ranch being? ...[inaudible].
MA: I hope...of course I'll never be here to see it, but I hope they'll keep it and keep it intact. Now I don't know that, because, you know, times change as families grow and separate and have different interests and live in different parts of the country. I don't know that they'll be that interested, you know, when you get down to grandchildren and grandchildren - I mean childrens' children. You know, they may not care at all about it. They may want to sell their part maybe, I don't know, ...[inaudible].
M: ...[inaudible] date of the origin of the ranch?
MA: My grandfather and his Uncle John, they were in the Kokernot 26
mercantile business; Uncle John Kokernot, in Gonzales, Texas, in the 1880s. And in 1883 they rode a freight train, with some horses aboard, out to that part of the country. Apparently land was for sale or they...it was being homesteaded, actually, in those days. And they jumped their horses off of the train - it was called Murphysville in those days. Very small population - probably mercantile store, you know, maybe a post office, but the trains all had to stop and water every twenty-five miles, so it was the watering station for the trains, Southern Pacific.
M: Yeah.
MA: And they jumped their horses off and went all over - or as far as they could on horseback in that area. Now where they got the notion, I don't...I'm not sure. I don't know that I ever heard my grandfather say what propelled them to go to that particular spot.
M: Uh-huh.
MA: But in those days, out from town was pretty close by. There were a lot of homesteaders. And they didn't particularly care for that, because you really couldn't get a feel of what - of who owned what and the homesteaders just sat. I guess that they sat a certain...I guess they had a time limit.
M: Squatter's rights.
MA: Squatter's rights or something. Kokernot 27
M: Yeah. Yeah.
MA: And then they owned whatever...and they always were around the waterholes.
M: Yeah. Yeah.
MA: And the wells. And all that stuff. So they didn't particularly like that. So they decided to go up around the Lubbock area. And where the Texas Tech campus is to this day, they leased some property up there - quite a considerable amount, of properties; I'm not sure I know the acreage - and stayed about twelve years up there. And it was so cold, though, and so...
M: Windy.
MA: ...windy, and not too close to Gonzales, Texas.
M: Yeah.
MA: And they decided, well, they'd make a try again down in the Big Bend. So they came back. And it happened that a family named Pruitt owned the ranchlands around where our headquarters ranch is - it's twenty-one miles north of Alpine, in Jeff Davis and Brewster [counties], but the headquarters is in Jeff Davis County. And this was 1912, by this time, and this Mr. Pruitt had, oh, numbers of children, maybe ten children. In fact their little family cemetery is right near our headquarters house. And he was having problems; his sons were...
END OF TAPE 1, SIDE 1Kokernot 28
SIDE 2
MA: ...This is the story, of course.
M: Okay.
MA: ...and so Mr. Pruitt just got upset with them all, and said, “I'll just sell it; not going to leave it to any of you.” So my grandfather was fortunate enough to be in the right place at the right time and with the right money’, I guess. And bought the place, bought where our headquarters ranch is, and I'm not sure of how many acres or how much...
M: Yeah.
MA: I'm sure that's documented someplace.
M: Yeah, that is, we have good history, yeah.
MA: But in the story we always worry that we hadn't gotten him with some oral history.
M: Uh-huh.
MA: My grandfather - to go for those details. Thank you. So he bought that. And then, in future years, he added to, he leased some, he bought some, some, and then he became - my grandfather - also became the banker in Alpine. And you know, with that you have many opportunities then...
M: Yeah. Yeah.
MA: ...to acquire...
M: Yeah.
MA: ...properties, for loans and so forth, and so forth. So he amassed this...these properties. And that was all in Kokernot 29
the early 1900s. And by that time, I think - my father was born in 1900. Actually, I need to backtrack a little,
MA: because in 1900, when my father was born in Alpine, they had a home in Alpine too. Maybe he was ranching in Lubbock but coming back...
M: Yeah. Yeah.
MA: ...to be in Alpine. He liked that country.
M: He liked the area.
MA: He loved that country, because my father was born there in Alpine, at home. And previous to that, he had two older sisters, and they were born in Gonzales. So I'm not sure of the dates when they moved out there.
M: Yeah.
MA: Probably in the late...
M: So your dad...
MA: ...1890s.
M: Did ranching...
MA: So he, from the get-go, he went to San Marcos Baptist Academy, and then he went to A & M. And the first World War broke out when he was at A & M, and he nearly died with the influenza. He said one night a boy on either side of him died with the flu. They just...everybody was just in barracks, just in beds and... But he didn't. He had the flu, but he didn't die of that terrible epidemic in that day. And then he really didn't care about school that much.Kokernot 30
He loved baseball, and he played a little baseball, but he didn't care for it. So he went immediately to the ranch and lived there with an old foreman for a good...for several
MA: years, and then met and married my mother. And they lived on the ranch then from then on, sixty-five years or longer.
M: Yeah. That's amazing.
MA: So it's just kind of bred into us, I think. I think we just have those genes...
M: Yeah.
MA: ...where we're...we're just tied to the land and the ...[inaudible]
M: Well, I've got to...
MA: ...[inaudible] of it.
M: I've got to ask the question about law and order in the West, since your dad was county commissioner, yeah. And all the tales I've heard of all the outlaws. Were there any... what was the relationship of...were there any outlaws or any problems with that when you were growing up?
MA: Oh, some rustlers, maybe.
M: Rustlers.
MA: A few rustlers. Always people sneaking and hunting.
M: Uh-huh.
MA: We have lovely black-tailed deer, and now we have feral hogs and Aoudads, which are kind of wild sheep. And lots ofKokernot 31
javelinas and all, and there were always poachers.
M: Uh-huh.
MA: In fact, back during, you know, hard times, back during the depression, say, there were - we knew who they were –
MA: but I think my grandfather and my father let them poach a little; they'd get some deer for deer meat.
M: Yeah.
MA: These were probably Mexican families...
M: Uh-huh.
MA: ...in and around the town that maybe needed the food, actually.
M: Yeah.
MA: Now when they got to the point where they were poaching and killing and selling, well, that's when you call the law.
M: Uh-huh.
MA: And, of course, we have specific law enforcement officers that tend to that kind of thing.
M: What are the hardest times you remember, in terms of the ranch.
MA: Well, my family says, during the depression.
M: Uh-huh.
MA: During the '30s. We had a terrible...well, and before that, we had a terrible black-leg outbreak - anthrax. And when you get an anthrax or black-leg outbreak, that means everything has to be done away with. And that is terrible Kokernot 32
when you're in an animal business because of all...well, I'm sure all of it.
M: Yeah.
MA: All of them, but in certain parts of the ranch. And my father - one of the saddest tales, and he never forgot it –
MA: they'd have to dig huge pits, huge ditches, kind of like you see during World War II when they buried all the peoples, you know, that were killed...
M: Yeah.
MA: ...concentration camps. They'd dig these terrible ditches and drive the cattle in them and shoot them. You know, stand up on the banks and have to do away with them. And he said he'll never forget it as long as he lives. It just nearly...it just made him ill.
M: Uh-huh.
MA: But now that kind of thing has happened only once, that I know of. And in the meantime, we've gotten vaccine for those...
M: Uh-huh.
MA: ...[inaudible].
M: ...[inaudible].
MA: Right. Right. So we don't have those tragic things anymore.
M: Uh-huh.
MA: But that was the worst time. I think probably those Kokernot 33
times. And then communications were so bad. You know, we didn't have phones. We had an old phone on the wall that you rang when you wanted to get the next ranch or something, to see if it'd rained. That's what we used them for. Called to the other places and see how much it'd rained. But no communications with the outside world. And maybe
MA: that's because we've kept as insulated as we have, so to speak, is because from way back they just...we'd communicate with ourselves and we'd tend to our business and we'd tend to ourselves. And maybe that's why it's as defined as it is.
M: Yeah. What's the biggest celebration, or what kinds of celebrations do you have at the ranch? Do you have celebrations there of any kind?
MA: Well, Christmas, and when we all get together a lot of birthdays in the summers, and we all get together and share birthdays.
M: Weddings?
MA: Uh, there haven't been any weddings. I wasn't even married there. I was married in San Francisco, California. And there has been no...now, my mother and father were married on the front porch.
M: Okay.
MA: We have a big U-shaped screened porch...
M: Uh-huh.Kokernot 34
MA: ...and they were married there, to begin their sixty-five or more years there.
M: Uh-huh.
MA: But that's the only wedding that I know of. And back, back, back when I was just a little child, we had big 4th of July celebrations.
M: Uh-huh.
MA: And big parades. And we'd put our chuck wagon in it and everybody'd have a shirt, a red shirt...
M: Now, would this be at the ranch or...?
MA: No, in town.
M: In Alpine, yeah.
MA: In town. And everybody'd wear a big...a red shirt with a white 06 on it, in the parade.
M: Uh-huh.
MA: On horseback, you know. And those went on for many years when I was growing...when I was young.
M: Describe to me a cowboy today. The people you have at your ranch. We know a lot about...there's been books written - jillions - about cowboys.
MA: There has been a distinct change in cowboys. Not from what they do or what they wear, but the ethnic side. When I was growing up, and even when my husband, when we lived on the ranch in the '40s, every cowboy we had at that period of time were Mexicans - Nationals.Kokernot 35
M: Uh-huh.
MA: And only the manager, Ted Grey, and my husband were the only two white men in the whole round-up, say.
M: Yeah.
MA: They'd go on these six week, you know...
M: Yeah.
MA: And now, well...and I think Ted's son helped us too, on weekends when he wasn't at school. He was a teenager. Now, MA: through the years it has evolved that all of our cowboys and all of the help that we generate to help us, are all white boys and men, who...and the reason they are is because they love to do what they do. They love to come back and do this. All of them, usually - a lot of them, not all of them, are in different professions.
M: Professions.
MA: Different places. We've even had some come out of California and out of, some... An elderly man, not too many years ago, came from Kentucky or Tennessee or someplace. He...they just love to do that. They're getting back to the old times, you know. But now, as far as the tack...
M: Maybe they should pay you. Maybe this is another way to...[inaudible].
MA: You're exactly right. That's a good idea. That's a good idea. But they're good at...they're good workers; theyKokernot 36
know what they're doing.
M: Uh-huh.
MA: And some of them have come back to us over and over again. We have several - five or six - that always come back. And some just come for a lark, you know.
M: Uh-huh.
MA: But they're good hands. And as far as the tack goes, they wear just what they always have worn. You know, high boots...
M: Yeah.
MA: ...and leather chaps and - 'cause they're riding horses all the time. And big hats and bandanas and two or three different kinds of shirts and rain gear...
M: Yeah.
MA: ...tied on the back of the saddle. Now, the only significance, the funny thing that I see at the end of the day, they all take off their boots and put on...
M: Sneakers.
MA: ...tennis shoes and fur-lined bedroom slippers, and that shows the age most of them are.
M: Uh-huh.
MA: Well, and some of them are - Chris, our son, is fifty-two, will be fifty-two in March. And most...a lot of them are a little younger than he is, but a lot - some are older, some are older.Kokernot 37
M: Uh-huh.
MA: Which is very interesting to me.
M: Yeah.
MA: But they all know what they're doing.
M: Doing.
MA: And there are certain jobs...
M: Yeah.
MA: You know, every morning they all, before day, they're all going separately.
M: Yeah.
MA: Like you leave the chuck wagon after breakfast and...
M: Yeah.
MA: They'll go in different directions to bring the cattle in to the pens.
M: Yeah.
MA: For whatever...
M: Who coordinates the round-ups for you?
MA: Chris.
M: Chris.
MA: Uh-huh. Our son.
M: Yeah.
MA: However, he has two men, two underlings, who, you know, next in line...
M: Yeah.
MA: That he gives a good bit of responsibility too, 'cause Kokernot 38
he needs to do that.
M: Yeah.
MA: You know. He might need to be doing something else.
M: Yeah.
MA: Like on the phone. And see, all our pick-ups have phones.
M: Yeah.
MA: And we have cell phones, and whoever heard of such? You know, we used to hang the meat - butcher a beef for our beef and hang it - skin it out and hang it in gunny sacks on the side of the wagon.
M: Uh-huh.
MA: And just cut the meat - cut the steaks off or just cut it in a roast or whatever they were doing. And now, of course, we have all the ice chests and they have even a special built chuck wagon now, that's all... And it has a couple of ice boxes - not that you put ice in...
M: Uh-huh.
MA: ...load it where the cook can take his canned goods and put all his milk and his meat and the things... Why, everybody'd die...[inaudible]
M: So you have an old-fashioned ice box now on the chuck wagon?
MA: Well,...[inaudible].
M: With ice... Kokernot 39
MA: There's just ice...[inaudible]
M: Ice chests, okay.
MA: Ice chests. And probably one of them is an old butane something...
M: Yeah.
MA: ...that somebody discarded, and we've hooked it on to the chuck wagon.
M: Yeah.
MA: But everything is very...as much as we can.
M: Do you still butcher?
MA: No, no, no. We get it at the meat locker, or the Safeway stores, or Furr's, or wherever.
M: So you don't have your own...?
MA: No, we don't butcher any more.
M: ...butcher and all that?
MA: But I can remember that so well as growing up.
M: Yeah.
MA: They'd pick out a calf and maybe a dogie calf that didn't have a parent and kill it right there; skin it, have son-of-a-gun stew...
M: Yeah, yeah.
MA: Bury the head...
M: Yeah.
MA: ...and smoke it for a day or two and, of course, that's a big delicacy with the Mexicans.Kokernot 40
M: Yeah.
MA: In those days, as I said, all of our help was...were Mexican Nationals.
M: Yeah.
MA: And then, in those days too, because they were Mexican Nationals, we had at each of our ranches, we had three brothers and their children. And they each lived at one of those places...
M: Uh-huh.
MA: And then their children grew up and were workers and helpers. But soon after the World War II, that all just kind of...because they all began to go to bigger cities and go to Odessa and Midland and...
M: Uh-huh.
MA: ...El Paso and wherever to work, those...
M: Uh-huh.
MA: ...children and children. So that era kind of went.
M: Yeah.
MA: But now...no, we bring...in fact, that's one of my jobs. I'm a gofer - with a Suburban. I have to go to town to bring the ice and the meat and all the canned goods. And you know, when you bring...you bring a case of canned milk and a case of tomatoes and lettuce - oh, we have lettuce salads and...
M: Yeah. Who's the cook now, when you're...? Kokernot 41
MA: We are very lucky. We've had...in my lifetime we've had three cooks: the first was a man named...[first name] Romero, who all my growing up days, we called him Coci, for cocinero – cook. Until I was married and gone, he was our cook all those years - all those twenty, thirty years, I guess. And then he became too old and moved to California with his married children. Then we had a cook named Rosendo, who was just a...oh, he was the meanest thing. My husband tells this story: just for meanness, he'd set the alarm clock at 2:30 in the morning and get everybody up to eat breakfast and go. He was so bad. But he was a good cook, and he was with us for ten, fifteen, twenty years. So he became infirm and had to quit. Then we...now we have a cook named Marcus, and I had a...and he's from out of
MA: Mexico. Lives in a community - oh, it takes him fourteen hours by bus to get home to this community where he lives down in central Mexico. In fact, all three of our Mexican men that work for us - well, there used to be four - all came from Pueblo - was it Blanco? - well, anyway, it's in the central part of Mexico. And they just have such a hard time; they go home and help their families. Some of them...now, Marcus has brought him wife and they have papers. They all have...they work for us, these three... these four, those four, for twenty years, Ann? Twenty. At least. So they all have the proper papers.Kokernot 42
M: Are they there full-time? ...[inaudible].
MA: Now Marcus lives at Chris' place.
M: Okay.
MA: He has his own house. And he has a wife, and he has a son now in high school. And then his wife's brother is the one that lives at my place, at the headquarters. And he has a son that also is...they're beginning to be teenagers and they help, and we're hoping that they'll stay and - 'cause they're learning, you know.
M: Yeah, yeah.
MA: And they're going to be good hands if they don't get a call elsewhere for more money. Now one thing, rancher's wages are not all that great.
M: Um.
MA: You know.
M: Uh-huh, uh-huh.
MA: So...
M: Yeah. What would be the...what's your cook's salary?
MA: Well, he gets paid extra for cooking for the...[inaudible], but I think they get...he gets probably - before we have to withhold - probably eleven hundred dollars a month.
M: Eleven hundred a month, plus he gets his house and his lodging.
MA: Oh, he doesn't get groceries. He has to buy his own Kokernot 43
groceries. But he does get the house.
M: Utilities, house, phone, electricity and all that.
MA: Utilities. Right. Right. Maybe not the phone.
M: Yeah.
MA: But I know not groceries. Only two people that get groceries paid for at my place at the headquarters. The two men that are there, we buy their groceries. They live out in the bunkhouse.
M: Uh-huh. What makes these cooks unique?
MA: Well, they like what they do. They wouldn't do it, I don't think, if they didn't like it. And Marcus is teaching his son. Johnny is coming along. He's not only a good fence builder, but he's pretty good helper - cook's helper.
M: Uh-huh.
MA: When you go out and work, you have to have a cook and one of the men at my place is his helper. His name is
MA: Zarillo, and he goes along helping. You know, that's the potato peeler and the biscuit maker, maybe, and the whatever and the whatever. But they all like to do, apparently, or they wouldn't do it.
M: What...on an average round-up, and you've got the cook there, what's he cooking today, 20th century? The same thing they were cooking a hundred years ago?
MA: Well, it's a little more; it's a little more. ...[inaudible] salad - who ever heard? I remember back whenKokernot 44
my husband was...this is after the Second World War, and he'd go...of course, he was camping with the camp. In fact, I was expecting Chris at that time. This was in the fall. And all they had in those days was meat, which was strung up on the side of the chuck wagon, beans, potatoes, bread, coffee...
M: Uh-huh.
MA: ...water.
M: Yeah.
MA: And maybe a cobbler for...every once in a while they'd cook - 'cause we'd cook in these big Dutch ovens.
M: Yeah.
MA: It's a big heavy iron Dutch ovens with tops, over coals, or over the fire directly. And now we'll have a stew. We'll have canned green beans with mushrooms in them maybe, onions. Always beans though, always beans, always potatoes, maybe, in some form. But now they're either
MA: mashed or they're fried or boiled with the roast or a beef stew or something. Always a dessert. Marcus even cooks cake in a Dutch oven - he'll cook pineapple upside down cake or chocolate cake – box, usually.
M: Yeah, yeah.
MA: Always bread. They still do the old pan bread - what I call camp bread. They roll up a roll of it and pat it with a little flour and pop it in the heated Dutch oven and pat Kokernot 45
it down so it fills the pan. Put a top on it, put it over a little bunch of coals and it cooks brown on both sides; they put coals on top of the...on top of the...
M: Yeah.
MA: ...on top of the top. And then it comes out just a nice round big pancake of bread. But we always have bread. Always have beans. Always meat in some form.
M: With the family...with the family members now that you've got on the ranch, where do the kids - I'm talking about the grandchildren maybe, the younger children... What's their role in this now? Do they get...
MA: Oh, they get to play, ride the dune buggy.
M: They play.
MA: Oh, now we've gone to dune buggies - because they're much more time-saving to go to the furtherest reaches - than getting on a horse and riding over to - twenty miles, ten miles over there through rough country. So now we've invested...and each place has a dune buggy. And when the
MA: grandchildren come, they love to ride the dune buggies - and they'll ride horseback.
M: Yeah.
MA: We have a pool at the headquarters.
M: Yeah.
MA: They all stay at my place when they come, at the headquarters. And they swim, they hike, they go to town a Kokernot 46
lot when they get to driving, because they're all - I have ten - we have ten grandchildren - five girls and five boys. And they range in age - the oldest girl will be twenty-eight next month, and the youngest will be eight in June. So we have a vast spread there in ages.
M: What's the corporation or your board of - the business angle in terms of how...who sits on the board and who...if you've got ten great-grandchildren coming?
MA: Now we haven't faced this yet. ...[inaudible].
M: Okay, that's what I wondered.
MA: No, we haven't got quite that far. Actually, Chris and I make pretty much all the decisions...
M: The decisions at this point.
MA: ...and my husband, at this point. Even the girls, although they're included in all the conversations and have to be asked about everything, they really, I think... Chris and I and my husband probably make most of the decisions - major decisions...
M: Uh-huh, yeah.
MA: ...with the input of all the others.
M: Yeah. And you just haven't looked forward yet to see what's coming...
MA: Have not looked forward to that. Maybe we should. This might be a role that we're just kind of...
M: It's kind of hard to deal with, that's right.Kokernot 47
MA: It's hard because we've got... Now this oldest grand-daughter of ours lives in the East. She's been educated in the East, she's...she will probably never... However, hopefully she's planning to get married here soon, and her husband is a Texan. His parents live in Houston. And they may come back, but I don't see...I mean, we don't see that right now.
M: Yeah.
MA: That they might come back.
M: Yeah.
MA: Now my - our son's two children, and both of them are married, and the son, of course, lives on the ranch with his wife. And his daughter lives in Merrillton, which is an adjacent town and they're in other businesses. And, of course, they're on the scene.
M: Yeah.
MA: But I don't know...
M: ...[inaudible].
MA: ...[inaudible].
M: That's okay, I just was curious...
MA: We just haven't gone into that. And it's getting closer and closer, because several are in college. We have collegians.
M: Yeah. I mean, that's been the demise...the problem that other ranches have faced, in terms of numbers, I mean. Kokernot 48
MA: And interest - interest.
M: Yeah. Yeah.
MA: It's so important. You have to like this. It's just like these men that come back to work on these round-ups; they wouldn't come if they didn't like it. They just love it, to get out there and get all full of dust and dirty and hot and sweaty and...but they wouldn't do it if they didn't love it.
M: Love it, yeah, yeah.
MA: But I don't know about the role for the grandchildren. And, of course, I may not be here to decide. Now one of my grandsons - belongs to my Houston daughter - he's very good in language. In fact, he speaks Spanish fluently. And he's going...he's in college and he's doing international business, and it may be sometime he might be interested, because of his linguistic...
M: Linguistic. Uh-huh.
MA: ...stuff. But I don't know. You know. Who knows? That may carry him to the UN, instead of to the ranch.
M: Is there anything that I haven't asked that you'd like to tell me about?
MA: Oh, not anything, I don't think.
M: Anything that jumps to your mind or...
MA: Well, every time - one thing - every time I go and I get teary about it. Every time I go, I think - this may be Kokernot 49
my last visit, you know - since I don't live there and I've often thought, “Well, I'll go back, you know, and live there. Well, that's not realistic, because of the age my husband and I are, and with the...probably needing medical care, say, or hospitalization or whatever. That's not a realistic plan. And in the first place he would not like it because he likes...he's grown up in Waco.
M: Waco. Yeah.
MA: ...in the city, and he's got his routine and his interests. And, of course, you know I'm not going to separate that...
M: Yeah.
MA: Make him go out there.
M: Yeah.
MA: We tried it, and he...we were out there nearly four years after the Second World War. And he just didn't feel like that was his...he was qualified for that.
M: Yeah.
MA: He just didn't like that - the lone... You have to like it, you have to deal with the loneliness. And, luckily, I've got a daughter-in-law that's dealt with it; and my grandson's wife seems to be - they're newly-weds
MA: practically - but she seems to be...she's gotten interested in other things. She's got a masters in geology, and a masters in Spanish, and she's right now doing Kokernot 50
Elderhostel tours...
M: Uh-huh.
MA: In that part of the country, connected with our college. So she has found her some extra...
M: Uh-huh, uh-huh.
MA: ...things to keep the loneliness at bay, because it's bound to be terribly lonely.
M: Yeah. Yeah, you have to enjoy the beauty and the solitude or...
MA: You have to look at all the good things about it.
M: Yeah.
MA: ...and enjoy. And now me, it never occurred to me not to enjoy. I always have; I always have. And still do.
M: Uh-huh.
MA: And I don't mind that a bit, being lonely. But for some it takes a bit of doing, I would think, to get used to that.
M: But how far...yeah, you described certain sections of your ranch where people are living...
MA: Right.
M: How far apart are those?
MA: Well, we have places right out of Alpine that we call The Flats. That's kind of flatland.
M: And that's twenty-one miles from Alpine?
MA: No, this is just about - where Lance and Brandee live -Kokernot 51
it's just about fifteen.
M: Okay.
MA: Ten on the highway and five off into the space there.
M: Uh-huh.
MA: And that's called, that's Flatland. That's fifteen miles. And then you go on down the highway from their cutoff, say, fourteen miles or fifteen miles on through ...[Mystic?] Canyon and we turn off to the headquarters - seven miles on a dirt road, and it's rough. You know, those dirt roads, they're all right, but they're pretty rough. We try to keep them graded. But they...but that's twenty-one miles. And then you can go on up into the upper country, another ten, fifteen miles in any direction - up in to the mountains, we call it.
M: Uh.
MA: That's why we've gone to the dune buggies as much as we have. It saves times, and it takes a shorter time to get things done than it would be on horseback. And then you go on to Fort Davis on the highway, same highway. Go through Fort Davis and down Limpia Canyon five or six miles, and that's where my son and his wife live.
M: Okay.
MA: Another five miles down there, as the crow flies. Between headquarters and his place it's probably eight
MA: miles, by horse.Kokernot 52
?: ...[inaudible].
M: Yeah.
MA: Because he can come over by horseback, ten miles - I'm just guessing – eight, ten miles, as the crow flies, over the mountains. But around by the highway it's thirty-five.
M: Thirty-five, yeah.
A: But it's all in one piece.
M: Yeah.
A: Beginning at Alpine, Flat, but it's all in one... [inaudible].
M: Yeah. And that gives me a sense of how far apart the different people are living.
MA: Yes.
M: Uh...
MA: Brandee and Lance live down here in the Flats, and then we're off in another...twenty miles from her, over the mountain now. Again you could go by dune buggy or by horse and that's another ten miles over rough country.
M: Yeah. So the only place you run into other populated areas - Fort Davis.
MA: Fort Davis and Alpine.
M: Yeah.
MA: ...[inaudible].
M: Yeah, I gotcha.
MA: And then we kind of spread out - what she drew you on Kokernot 53
MA: the map. M: Yeah. Yeah.
MA: On the map.
M: That's helpful, in terms of understanding the loneliness and the isolation.
MA: Oh, oh, absolutely.
M: Because until you see the distances that you're talking about, you don't get a sense...
MA: You don't get the sense. And it is far apart. I mean it's a different world. It's absolutely a different world...
M: Yeah.
MA: ...As far as the spread-out part of it.
M: Well, it was delightful talking to you.
MA: Thank you. Well, thank you. It was delightful being interviewed. And I hope I brought some impact.
M: Oh, this is good information. And...
MA: You might want to talk to my daughter, Ann Lacy Brown, because she might have some different slants.
M: Okay.
MA: Because she's of a different generation.
M: Yeah, yeah. Okay. Thanks a lot.
A: My name is Ann Lacy Brown. I'm the granddaughter of Herbert Lee Kokernot Jr., great-granddaughter of Herbert LeeKokernot 54
Kokernot Sr., who founded the Kokernot 06 Ranch. I was just A: talking to Sarah and saying that ranching is a wonderful way of life, but it's a really hard living. And that comes home to us, because we are primarily cow/calf operators. We don't have any other income. We do do deer- hunting now, which brings in a little extra income and just a few other things. But primarily, we are tied to the land and we are tied to cattle. The last couple of years haven't been too good to us, because of the cow market, because of the drought. When you have a drought situation, it forces everyone, just like us, to sell cattle, which raises the supply and the demand has stayed the same and flood the market because we don't have OPEC or... 'cause we're all such independent cow people.
M: Yeah. Yeah.
A: And the price goes down for us. And so we are true capitalist slaves to the market place. So it's been tough. We don't...I don't receive any monetary...anything from this ranch, which is fine. I'm okay, you know. We're...I'm fortunate not to need it. But it just lets you know - here we are beginning a new millennium - how tough it's going to be for all of us. We really are having to think about diversifying. I thank goodness for the Internet, because it's like...it's going to give us a new avenue in which to communicate and to spread information about us and hopefullyKokernot 55
find...
END OF TAPE 1, SIDE 2.Kokernot 56
TAPE 2, SIDE 1
* MA - Mary Ann Kokernot Lacy - current owner of ranch
A - Ann Lacy Brown - daughter of current owner
B - Brandee Lacy - married to grandson of current owner
C - Chris Lacy - son of current owner/ranch manager
L - Lance Lacy - grandson of current owner
M: ...and everybody's perceptions of cattle ranching and what it's like; and talking with Ann, who sees it a little bit differently.
A: And I will say that, in Giant, they do have oil income. I'm a movie buff so that's why they have the great Riata house and Jett Rink next door that, you know, that wealthy crazy millionaire. But unfortunately, we don't have that yet, maybe some day there's some mineral out there that - 'cause we do own the mineral - or some rock that will give us another income; we have lots of rocks.
M: Rocks.
A: If we can...I know...and I live in Houston. I'm the middle daughter; I have an older sister, Elizabeth Gwen,
A: that lives in Baltimore. And my younger sister, Golda Lacy Brown, lives in Waco and we, along with our mother, Mary Ann Kokernot Lacy, and brother, Chris Lacy, own the Kokernot 06 Ranch. We're very fortunate. I cannot state that enough, because we're so lucky that we still have it, we still have it in one piece. We can enjoy it. Our...we Kokernot 57
get to get together out there - all the cousins get to get together. But it's going to be a real challenge in this new millennium, of trying just to hang on to it. I know you asked my mother a lot about what the legacy or what...
M: Yeah.
A: ...or what the future holds and, boy, I wish I knew; I wish I had a crystal ball.
M: Yeah.
A: We've always said - my brother and my two sisters and I - feel like it is up to us; we will hold it together and...
M: Yeah.
A: And it may literally come down to fingernails holding it together. Now, I cannot promise you or tell you what my kids will do, because I have three children. My older sister has three children. They all live in Houston. She lives in Baltimore together; sister Golda lives in Waco. Chris is fortunate - they live in Alpine. His kids live out there, but we're all inter-connected and inter-dependent upon each other to make this thing go.
M: To go.
A: Right. And like, I'll reiterate, we receive no monetary compensation, which most people...[inaudible] story talks about Giant - they just listen with their mouths open, because, you know, everybody's geared to making a living and making money and things cost. Just because the cattle Kokernot 58
market's gone down doesn't mean that the gas prices have, or the diesel prices, or the insurance. You've got to carry lots of liability. Or, you know, everything - food prices, electricity, everything else that affects this, has all steadily gone up while our market has gone down, you know. So it's going to be a true challenge. We talk about this all the time - about other income, other sources of income. You said something about charging those people that like to come out and...
M: ...[inaudible].
A: Kind of like City Slickers - another movie.
M: Yeah. Yeah.
A: Because I really like movies - we may do that.
M: Yeah.
A: Just to try it. And because it's low...we could do it with the low, with the low overhead. Just get the chuck wagon out...
M: Yeah.
A: Get some somebody. Get some guys that...I know there are many guys in Houston that ride horseback, that would love to ride on a hundred and thirty thousand acres without A: ...
M: Yeah.
A: You know, and get lost like I do and - even though I go out there all the time - because it is one of the most Kokernot 59
spectacular ranches on earth. It has been untouched, almost, by the human hand. The Indians were out there - there's still places where there are rocks piled up for Indian markers, where they used to run, where the Apaches used to run. It's basically a perimeter fence with few interior fences. Huge pastures, because we use the canyons and the creeks as natural divides, and it's basically just like it was, you know...
M: A hundred years ago.
A: Right. Right. Or more. Five hundred years ago.
M: Yeah.
A: Like I say, we're really lucky to have it. And every time we go out, we really enjoy it. We just sit on the porches sometimes, all day, and look at the ranch.
M: Yeah.
A: I mean, that's it.
M: Yeah.
A: My kids - it drives them nuts. They like to be doing something.
M: Yeah.
A: And I used to be like that, too. But now I know why my grandmother and my mother and my grandfather just enjoyed A: sitting on the porch.
M: Porch.
A: In the evening... Kokernot 60
M: Yeah.
A: It is beautiful...
M: So you're a commitment from your generation to keeping it together, at all costs.
A: Right.
M: And then what the future holds after that, you can't predict at this point.
A: Right.
M: Yeah.
A: I would like to say and I'd like to hope with the Internet. I have a son that's in college - he's a junior in international business - but there's no...right now there's ...he can do what he can on the Internet.
M: Yeah.
A: Or, you know, thank goodness we have that...they can always work with that to help the ranch. But as far as living out there...
M: Yeah.
A: There's no...there's no monetary reward. There's...
M: Yeah.
A: You know, right now there isn't just a...the cattle, we have plenty of men to take care of the cattle. My brother, my nephew, run the day-to-day operation of the ranch. You A: know, we go out there and more or less get in the way during round-up.Kokernot 61
M: Yeah. So, I mean...but the only way the ranch impacts on your life is it's a wonderful place to go for holidays.
A: Right. Right. Unfortunately.
M: It's a beautiful...you have your own treasured beautiful spot.
A: Right.
M: But other than that, and making...and sitting on a board occasionally, making decisions and then worrying about ...
A: Right.
M: ...what's going to happen...
A: That's the part we've all got to work on - is the worry.
M: ...Yeah.
A: And there's always something coming up. You know. There's always decisions; we're having to make some decisions right now. So...but it's just, you know... Fortunately, we have telephones and fax machines and everything else...
M: Yeah. Yeah.
A: So we stay in pretty close contact. But yeah, actual running - we go out and help some, my boys go out and help...
M: Yeah.
A: ...and stay with Lance and help, but it's not, you Kokernot 62
know, that's not...it's not a full-time thing.
M: It's not your daily life or your daily commitment. Unh-huh.
A: It may be some day. Who knows? I may be out there running a bed and breakfast or something. I always say I'm going to get a card table on the side of the road and sell rocks off of it, you know. It may come down to that, which would be okay. I could think of a lot worse things.
M: Yeah.
A: But for right now, my family, we live in Houston and that's where my children's lives are right now, in school, and my husband's job. So that's, you know, that's where we are.
M: That's it. Okay.
A: But like I say, we just feel very fortunate, very fortunate, that we have this place. And we do...we gather there.
M: Uh-huh.
A: I mean, how many people have places where they can go to...
M: As a family.
A: As a family, and all stay together, and it never changes. It's sort of like, I don't know, you can go home again sometimes out there. My mother, she doesn't want - she was born out there... Kokernot 63
M: Yeah.
A: So nothing can change. So it really...I can sit here, in my mind I can walk through the halls of that headquarters house, and it still smells the same, it still looks the same, it still feels the same as when I was three or four years old. And not many people have that opportunity, and it is a wonderful place.
M: Opportunity.
A: So maybe we...maybe it being such a wonderful place, we'd be able to share that in someway.
M: Yeah. Yeah.
A: You know. And keep it together.
M: Okay, Ann.
MA: ...generation...
M: Let me go, yeah, let me stay with the girl, because I've given three women here.
A: Oh, okay.
MA: Sarah, this is my grandson Lance...
L: How do you do?
M: I'm going to hit the male side of this family, too.
MA: And this is Brandee. This is the new bride that I was talking about.
M: Oh, good. All right.
MA: We getting a whole another...
M: You're the third generation now, Brandee, and...I'm Kokernot 64
talking now to Brandee Lacy and - who's your mother?
B: My mother is Sandra Whiting. She lives in East Texas.
M: Okay. And your father?
B: David Whiting.
M: Okay. And did you...how did you come into this family?
B: I met Lance at college and we married, and then after we finished college we moved back out to the ranch, and we've been there for almost three years now. He grew up on the ranch, but I've only been there just since we've been married.
M: So you're new to this family then?
B: Yes, ma'am.
M: And had you been...had you been raised on a ranch?
B: No, ma'am. I was raised in East Texas. My parents are teachers and my dad's a football coach, and so it was a whole new life for me.
M: And tell me what your life is like...has been like there for the last three years, in terms of the ranching.
B: Well, it's been really great, really fun. Every day is different; it's just exciting. I help Lance and the men work cattle whenever they need help. And then I'm also there at the house to take care of whatever. If he's gone, I feed animals and take care of, you know, all the house chores and stuff like that. I help him fix fence and pipelines and, oh, work with colts and ride horses, and we Kokernot 65
show cutting horses. I've learned about competition sports since I met and married Lance...
M: Had you been on a horse before you met Lance?
B: When I was little I rode - you know, ponies and little things around the house. We had a farm, more or less, when I was growing up. And so I had to learn to ride, though; I was not a...
M: Uh-huh. So you've been riding for three years, then, basically.
B: Yes, ma'am.
M: And then tell me about this belt that you've got on.
B: Well, like I said, we show cutting horses.
M: Okay.
B: At this particular competition - it's not the rodeo type of sports that you see, usually they're separate. But I won this at the year-end award last year in my class. I was very excited. It's quite an honor to...for you to wear a buckle that you've won and...
M: And after three years I would say that's a major achievement.
B: Well, thank you, thank you. I've been very privileged to ride an excellent cutting horse that Chris trained and brought up - helped train and brought up along...and they've all ridden him in the past. And since I was the new and inexperienced one, I got the good horse so that he could Kokernot 66
teach me what I was supposed to learn. And now we work together and he's a really nice horse. I've been really happy to have had the chance.
M: Uh, the other two women in the family - well, Mary Ann specifically - was talking about the role of loneliness and the isolation out there.
B: You find that you become very tuned to nature, and your animals. I've always loved animals but they're like my family now. You know, I have pets like normal people have, like dogs and cats, but then I also get the dogie calves that are abandoned or orphaned or for whatever reason, and so I get to feed them bottles and everything and bring them up, so that they can turn the heifers back out so we have more cows. And then I help him halter-break colts, and I'm learning the processes of how he goes about breaking a horse to ride. When we wean them and then when they're almost a year, about a year, they halter break them. And then they turn them out and then they bring them back and then use the Ray Hunt method for breaking the horses to ride, which is different from what you see in the movies. It's not jump on and get bucked off and everything. There is some bucking at times, but it's a little bit more of a respectful relationship with the animals.
M: Uh-huh.
B: And so I'm learning that from Lance, and from his dad; Kokernot 67
and so I'm becoming a better rider and a better horse-woman, I suppose. And I'm learning how to work cattle. It's been really interesting. There are still places on the ranch I haven't been yet - haven't worked cattle in a particular
B: area. And so that's all...I mean I've been there three years and then I'm still seeing new places and new country and that's always exciting. And so you get to be really good...I'm real attached to my animals - they're like my friends. You know, I can go for a week or more out there, if I don't need to go to town to buy groceries or check the mail, you know, go into town and get the mail. If I don't have a reason to go to town, I could go all week with no one but Lance to visit with, or whatever, so... But I'm not a real socialite type person. I didn't grow up in a city, sorority and stuff in college, anything like that. And so I think that helps me adjust to the fact that we live out remotely. And so it's not been hard to adjust to that. So, anyway, it is an adjustment in some ways, but... And the biggest adjustment for me was being away from my family - growing up in a very close relationship with my sister and my parents, my grandmother, my grandparents, and so I still keep in close bond contact with them. And they're kind of like my friends and then I have a few friends, but when you join the ranching life it's just very different. And so you just... Kokernot 68
M: How would you define what's ranching? What's the ranching life?
B: Ranching life. Trying to manage your land well. Take care of the country that you have, and raise the cattle that you need in order to make a profit, in order to continue the
B: business. And that's just a hard question, because there are so many aspects to ranching. You know, there's just your whole personal life, and then there's your life with the ranch, and then what you do, as far as your relationships with the animals, and with the land itself. I mean, it's a very...people come out and ask us, “Well, how do you know what the weather's going to be like?” Once you live out there, you learn to read the animals and you learn to read just your environment to find your weather forecast, basically. It's hard for a lot of people to understand that part. But you just...one thing that I've learned or that I've realized: once you move out to a place like that your senses become so much more...
M: Tuned in?
B: ...attuned to your surroundings. I hear things better. I see things better. And you just notice little things that help you become part of that environment and help you co-exist in that.
M: Uh-huh.
B: And it's, you know, there's the really...you know, the Kokernot 69
real work side of it, where you're up early or late at night. Or you're riding all day and your rear-end is sore and you're tired and you want to get off and that kind of thing. And then it's really nice because you can just...some days you can relax in the afternoon and you can be outside with nothing but the birds around. You know, no noise, no B: cars, no driving down the road. So it's an extremely...extremely wonderful life.
M: Who's your...have you made any new friends since you've moved out there in three years?
B: Yes, ma'am. I have become friends with the family. His sister lives nearby, and so she's relatively close in age. And so we, you know, we do things together. And then I've made friends through church and also...
M: Where do you go to church?
B: We drive to Fort Davis for church. So it's about a forty-five minutes drive to church, and so that becomes an important part of life - the few things that you do have, that you do on a regular basis, that allow you, you know, social contact or, you know, get you out with other people. Parties - it's almost like you see in movies or read in books. Parties are a big deal, a real big deal out there, because they're very few and very far between, and you drive a long way to them, and so it's a big affair. Very much like you kind of envision from movies and books. You may Kokernot 70
have a close friend, and you don't talk to them but once every couple of months or something, but they're still a very close friend. And everybody adapts to that same sort of relationship as you do. Our “neighbors” - quote neighbors - you know, may be thirty minutes from you or something. But you still feel very close to those people, especially because they deal with the same thing everyday. B: They know, you know, we can't just go have lunch, you know, you have to plan to have lunch, plan to have lunch with someone, you know. So you don't just happen upon it, or whatever; it's a planned thing. And so it's a...you treasure those times, because you don't have those.. Those are just rare occurrences in some ways, and so you treasure them just in the way you treasure your remoteness, you know. One lets...one allows you to love the other more...
M: Um.
B: ...I guess, is a good way to put it. It's...the biggest part that I love, the most thing that I love the most are the animals. I've always...
M: What do you see in your future?
B: You mean the rest of my life? Raising a family, having children, hoping to instill the love of that life in them, so they can continue the same thing. Working to keep the ranch together as it exists today. The size and the scope and the business, you know, that it is, so that it can Kokernot 71
continue into the next generation. And my grandchildren and so forth. There is...it has so many opportunities there for yourself. It's not like an opportunity where you can go and just diversify your life and try something new you...there's just so...things you can learn. There are so many things that I have yet to learn. I mean an incredible number of things that I have yet to learn. And I hope that I am learning at a quick pace, because I have so many more
B: things, you know, to do. I mean, I've taken up a little bit more of gardening - flowers and things like that - because you just put more into what you have there around your home. And so I have begun to have a love for that. And then animals, of course. And I've started learning... trying to teach myself to sew - some things that I should have learned from my grandmother and my mother when I had the chance, but didn't. And so you...in some ways we have a very, very busy life, because the distances and because of the amount of country that we take care of, and the animals. It's easier to let a person take care of themselves. But you can't let animals take care of themselves, as much. So, you feel that responsibility - to make sure they have water, to make sure the cattle...if they have a leak in the pipeline you just don't let it sit there for a week or two. They may end up without water. So, it's easier to feel that a person in a city can figure out a way to take care of Kokernot 72
themself, but an animal couldn't. And so you feel an incredible responsibility. So it keeps you very, very busy. And then...but at the same time, in some cases you have a little down-time where you can just sit back - and I try to remind Lance of that - to enjoy what you're working so hard to keep, and what you're working so hard to protect. And you know, it's just really nice. It's a really wonderful life. It's very exciting. I always...I mean things like this that allow you an opportunity meet new people and come B: out; and so we get to take a little trip and stuff. And that makes you love the ranch all the more - you're ready to get back because you know you miss it so much. And so I think we feel like we have the best of both worlds. We have this awesome place to live and to work, but yet we still have the opportunity or the, you know, the...
M: Who's taking care of it while you're here?
B: Well, we have a guy - a young man that's a college student, that we found, that comes out and feeds the animals there at the house, the saddle horses, the colts, the dogs, cats, fish, those kinds of things. But other than that everything takes care of itself in a sense. The cattle - we don't feed the cattle everyday. It's not like East Texas or Central Texas where you take a feed truck and shake the feed sacks, so they're pretty much fine. If we're going to be gone for more than three or four days, we have somebody comeKokernot 73
and drive around the country, real fast, to make sure the water lines are okay. But just a short trip like this, we just worry about the animals at the house. And so he takes care of that for us. And that allows us this opportunity, which is nice. Sometimes if we have to leave and his dad's there, his dad will check on it for us and vice versa. And so...
M: Okay. We'll stop right there, I think. Okay, now I've got to do some stuff...
END OF TAPE 2, SIDE 1.
SIDE 2. - BLANK.Kokernot 74
TAPE 3, SIDE 1
* MA - Mary Ann Kokernot Lacy - current owner of ranch
A - Ann Lacy Brown - daughter of current owner
B - Brandee Lacy - married to grandson of current owner
C - Chris Lacy - son of current owner / ranch manager
L - Lance Lacy - grandson of current owner
M: ...Texan Cultures. It's February 18, year 2000. We're at the Westin Inn, and we are interviewing ranchers of Texas, and the ranching families. This is the fourth part of the Kokernot Ranch. I have previously interviewed Mary Ann, who owns the ranch; her daughter Ann and a daughter-in-law, Brandee. And in that information we looked at the women's perspective of this ranch and its history. And I'd like to conclude this ranch history with an interview with the current, present ranch manager, Chris Lacy, who is also a member of the family. So Chris, tell me what your job and your role is, first of all.
C: I'm the manager of the 06 Ranch. I look after the holdings, cattle, horses, livestock. I take care of all the C: business for the ranch, and represent...and I do this for my family, my sisters and my mother.
M: What does that mean? What...when you get up in the morning what do you have to do there?
C: First of all I drink a cup of coffee. I just... whatever is needed done. It's a hard thing to ask a Kokernot 75
rancher, “What are you going to do today?” Because it may change fifteen times. Depends on what's the most important thing. It could be checking on some cattle that are needing some water in certain areas of the ranch. It may mean putting out the stallion with the mares. It may mean branding the cattle or calves from the round-up, going to the bank, going to the accountant's office, just whatever. You're a jack-of-all-trades.
M: I think one of the things that's important to this ranch, from your perspective: why did you make the decision to do this?
C: Well, it's in the family and I enjoy being outside and I enjoy...I really enjoy working on the ranch. Something I always wanted to do ever since I was young. And I just look forward to it and I'm just privileged to have the opportunity to...that my family would give me the opportunity to work out there, and represent them, and manage the ranch for them.
M: Were you born on the ranch?
C: No, I was not born on the ranch. I was born in Waco.
C: Then I moved out there when I got out of school and started working back on the ranch back in the early '70s.
M: Sog, and when did you officially move to the ranch?
C: In the...
M: Early '70s?Kokernot 76
C: Early '70s, yes. And I married my wife, Diane, who I met at school. She and I moved out there together, and we had two children, and they grew up on the ranch - son and daughter. And now they are married and they're...my son is helping on the ranch, doing a real good job.
M: Uh, when did you first ride a horse?
C: Well, way back there, when I was young. I would go out on the ranch in the summers when I wasn't going to school, or anytime I could go out there - ride horseback.
M: I guess what I'm getting at is that you were raised in Waco. How did the love for the ranch come about? When you really, in essence, are a city boy.
C: Right. I'm a city boy. Maybe I still am. I don't know - I just enjoyed it. There's a lot of people that grow up in the cities, now, that wish they could...
M: Oh, yeah, yeah.
C: Yeah.
M: But you've chosen to make it your life's work and represent the family.
C: And I just enjoyed it and I liked doing it. And I went to some summer camps that involved horseback riding and my
C: parents gave me every opportunity to learn as much as I could about ranching and riding. So I just went from there. I didn't know too much.
M: Did you ever compete in rodeos?Kokernot 77
C: Not until after I...not until after I got out on the ranch, started working on the ranch. I really didn't know a whole lot when I started. And I'm still learning.
M: Uh-huh.
C: So, that's the main thing: you're always learning about something. And there's nothing that nobody...you know, everybody needs to learn. I went to school, and all that, but I didn't really start learning about ranching until I actually got out there and started hands-on working on the ranch.
M: You're now - what? - the third or fourth generation on this ranch. Third at least.
C: Third generation, yeah.
M: Okay. How do you think you've changed the ranch?
C: Well, I hope I've improved the breed. We've...
M: How so?
C: By, you know, making the...putting the bulls out with the cows at a certain time, and having the calves at a certain time, so that they're more uniform. Improving the Hereford breed - we raise Hereford cattle - by buying better bulls, by culling cattle, you know. If there was an inferior cow or calf, by culling them and just keeping the
C: better ones and improving the breed that way, and making the weight of the cattle go up. We used to sell...way back there, you know, a four hundred pound calf Kokernot 78
was what we'd wean and sell. And now we're weaning and selling a six hundred pound calf. We're feeding a little bit more than they used to. We've got the cattle gentler than we used to have them. We handle them a lot more. You know, we're very careful how we handle our cattle, because we don't want to have a bunch of cattle to...
M: Tell me more about that. I haven't...I don't know anything about what you mean about handling the cattle gentler.
C: Well, I mean when you handle cattle you hold them up, you don't let them run off. You try not to let them get away from you because it teaches them bad...bad things, you know. It's just like you or I, you know. Here we are going towards this...these pens, and we know we're going to get choused around in the pens. And if I get away, then I'll try to get away next time. And, you know, we want them to all come in, all be present and accounted for. We don't... there's a certain amount of cattle that we miss, but it's not nothing that we actually see get away. It's something that maybe hides in the brush or hides in a mountain or a rough place that we ride by. We miss probably ten percent of what we gather. It doesn't make any difference how big the crew is.
M: Yeah.
C: There's just always something that's not going to come Kokernot 79
in. You know, you could gather everything up and ship everything and then you'd still have cattle on the ranch.
M: Ranch.
C: Because you miss 'em.
M: Let me ask you, is there anything...one of the things that I think is unique about your ranch is its location, and the fact that it’s a mountain ranch.
C: Yeah.
M: What unique problems do you think that you experience, that are faced as a result of the geographic terrain?
C: You have to have horses that are used to the rocks, and get in the mountains, and climb and go up and down without falling down the mountain. You've got to - we raise our own horses so they're acclimated. We have, you know, certain land barriers. We have to work certain pastures with the mountain, you know, to the north or south or a canyon in the middle. We gather that, and then we'll move over and overlap. We don't have many fences, so we have to overlap on our...[inaudible].
M: Uh-huh.
C: And we'll gather this group over here in this area, and then we'll overlap...area, gather next to them. That way, you know, hopefully, there's not too many cattle that move from one place to the other, which they don't; they usually C: stay in certain areas.Kokernot 80
M: Yeah.
C: They like...home.
M: Yeah. Yeah.
C: So we can always find that same cow, usually in the same area.
M: Uh-huh.
C: And that's some of the things, geographic. If you just had a pasture out there, with a trap or a big pasture, flat pasture which we do have some of, it's a lot easier to gather and you're going to get...you know, 'cause it's just flat you're not going to get...
M: Yeah.
C: ...anything where you can't see.
M: Yeah. Do you lose many cows?
C: Uh, as far as...you mean not gathering them or just...?
M: Yeah. Given that the ranch is so big and the terrain is so filled with different land features?
C: We do. We come out short on our count sometimes. Sometimes we come up long on our count. Oh, we didn't know we had that...
M: Didn't know we had that many?
C: We came in with ten more cows than we thought we had. Well, we must have missed these last year or something.
M: Uh-huh. How are you able to show a profit?
C: We show a profit, usually, when the market is better Kokernot 81
C: than it is now. And usually when it rains and we have more moisture than it is now. We haven't shown a profit, honestly, in a few years. We make a certain amount of money and hold on to that, and are very conservative with it on years that we're making money...
M: Uh-huh.
C: ...so that we'll have that money as a nest egg in the years that we're not making money.
M: Now did you learn that, or did you just automatically know that?
C: I learned it. I learned everything I've, you know, my grandfather taught me that. And my father. My father's a banker, and so he's going to, you know, he's always given me a lot of good advice about money matters.
M: Uh-huh. Uh, how did you go...well, what I've heard is that...how many cattle do you hold over a winter?
C: We usually try to stock two to three thousand cows at all times. We put about one cow to every forty acres. Try not to overgraze, so that we'll have all through the year, a level amount of cattle on that pasturage. About twenty cows to a section, and that's the way it is all year around. We cull those cows when they get old. We send them to market. M: Yeah.
C: We're always bringing up new cows, young cows, into the herd.Kokernot 82
M: Yeah.
C: Keep...trying to keep our cows as young as we can, because...I mean when it gets hard, it's hard on those old cows.
M: Yeah. Have you seen the escalation of costs in any way?
C: Oh, yeah. Yeah. It costs, you know, what we get for price per head for cattle it doesn't make any difference to those guys that are coming out and building a new home or a new barn or pens or fence. Their costs are always going up. Groceries don't go down. Costs of...you know, it costs to run a ranch, and it's always going up, and that's what we have to contend with.
M: Where do you see the greatest increase of prices?
C: Labor is...
M: Labor.
C: ...high and our feed costs are high. What we feed the cattle, that's always high. Fluctuates up and down a little bit. But the labor costs are pretty high. We try to get good labor. We've got good people, good cowboys, to help us.
M: And how many full-time people do you have on the ranch at all times?
C: We only carry about seven or eight people, doing different things. We can cover a lot of country in, you Kokernot 83
know, pickups, dune buggies, oh, horseback. We try to cover as much as we can, to oversee what's going on.
M: Yeah. And then how many people do you have for the seasonal work?
C: Twenty - sixteen to twenty extra hands come in to help us - from all over.
M: Uh-huh.
C: Sometimes some of them are local. A lot of them are local. Some of them come in from Montana, Wyoming, Texas, Canada.
M: See, another way that your ranch seems to be unique is the fact that it's never been supported by oil.
C: Right.
M: And that you have not diversified in any way.
C: No, but we may have to diversify. We...one way we've diversified - and we didn't have this for a while - is hunting.
M: Okay.
C: We're making a little extra money hunting.
M: Uh-huh.
C: It's not a whole lot, but we're...you know, we may have to diversify in other things, too, so we can utilize everything we've got.
M: Yeah. One of the things I heard from Ann was the commitment by the four of you, as the brothers and sisters Kokernot 84
of the present owner, the commitment to keeping the land together and to keeping the ranch intact.
C: Um.
M: Where do you think that commitment came from? Where? What?
C: I think it's bred in us. I think we just have a loyalty to the ranch. Even though I'm the one that's out there all the time...
M: Yeah.
C: ...they visit. But they always have a place to come visit.
M: Yeah.
C: They all come out every summer. And whenever they can, my sisters and my parents and anybody all come out, and they all enjoy living out there and spending time and riding or going out in a pickup or going out in the country or doing whatever, they just enjoy having that.
M: Uh-huh.
C: And we allow for hardships that we've had.
M: Uh-huh. What's your involvement in...do you raise your own horses?
C: Yes, ma'am.
M: And do you train...you stuck with using them, though, as working stock. Right? Rather than racing or thoroughbreds or anything like that? Kokernot 85
C: The main reason we raise our horses so they're acclimated - we raise them, we put them in the remuda as working horses for the round-up, working cattle. And we also do some cutting and some roping and some of those
C: horses that are more outstanding individuals as a cutting horse or a roping horse. We put some horses in some sales sometimes, not a whole lot, we're not in actually the horse business, but if we get to accumulating some horses, we'll put some in a sale.
M: Okay. Your grandfather lived out there for sixty-five years. Married there. Died there.
C: Um.
M: How do you think your life and your working there on the ranch today is different than when he was there. How has it changed?
C: Well, we can go by the droughts that they've had out there. The '30s drought and the '50s drought, very hard on the ranchers - no rain, you know - just like we're having a drought now. We, nowadays, can move our cattle better than they could back then. Back in the '30s and the '50s you would go out and you would find cattle that just weren't making it. You couldn't get them in. They couldn't get them in. They could get them in, but they didn't have a place to go with them. We can get them in now in pretty good shape and get them trucked to a sale.Kokernot 86
M: Uh-huh.
C: Transportation back them was not as good, so they lost a lot of cattle. We find dead cattle, you know, in the pasture and we...they would send a wagon around and get the hide off those cows, and they'd get a certain amount of
C: money for those hides.
M: Hides.
C: It was kind of a tough deal...
M: Yeah.
C: ...back then.
M: Yeah.
C: The...you know, we have wells with pumps, submersible pumps, and generators. They went more on what was...what was rain or...and rock-headers and, of course, when it dried, when they had a drought, all those things dried up and you had a little bit of permanent water - some windmills back in '50s, '30s maybe not. Now we're...you know, we can move those cattle if we have to. We may not have any place to go with them but...
M: Yeah, yeah.
C: ...but we'll try to move them to where there is some water and where we can feed them. They have round bales now that come from this part of the country - from San Antonio, from Central Texas, from East Texas. And you can put some, you can put some round bales out - you know, the big ones.Kokernot 87
M: Uh-huh. Yeah, yeah, the big hay bales.
C: Yeah. And feed, we can feed...we feed...it's a little easier now than they used to. It's a little...we just got some modern conveniences that we use.
M: Yeah, I was going to say it sounds like it's more efficient, in one way. And you're not losing as many
M: cattle, therefore you...the cattle that you have, you can sell – show that they're moneymakers, one way or the other.
C: Sell them before they get too poor to...
M: Yeah.
C: Yeah. And, of course, back then they didn't have the overhead we have now.
M: Yeah.
C: It didn't cost them as much to ranch back then - when the good times were good they were really good back then; it was a heyday back then.
M: Yeah. It also sounds like that. Though in terms of feeding the cattle, did they feed cattle back then?
C: They fed some - started in '40s and '50s - fed some; they didn't really like to feed. It was hard, because all they had was team and wagon and they didn't have many pickups.
M: Yeah.
C: Didn't have a feeder that they could pull behind the Kokernot 88
pickup and, you know, didn't have liquid feed and things like that.
M: Yeah. What do you think the future of the ranching industry is?
C: I think we're going to stay in there and we're going to tough it out. It's going to get better. It's going to rain.
M: It's going to rain.
C: Going to. You know, if it ever rains - it's a domino effect - if it'll rain all over the country, people will have grass growing in their smaller pastures. They will be wanting cattle. The market will go up. It'll help us; it'll help everybody down the line.
M: Yeah.
C: You know, I'm optimistic about ranching. You know, a lot of people don't get too optimistic about it, but I have to stay optimistic because I'm out there living with it all the time. And I just think rain's right around the corner, and maybe we'll be out of this drought this year. And I think there's a possibility we can go on in the ranch business.
M: What do you see as the legacy of the Kokernot Ranch to the history of the community and Alpine and Fort Davis?
C: As far as the ranch...[inaudible] ranch, I think, and I'm not sure what your question is. Kokernot 89
M: It's like this ranch has been there for a hundred years now - over a hundred years now. It's been within the control of one family through four to five generations. That area has not been a populated area, or a heavily economic boom area - other than the Big Bend's there - and I'm just wondering; it would seem like there would be some impact from your family as a result of having historically been...these people have been there for all these years, how M: is it different because they've been there?
C: It hasn't been developed.
M: Yeah. That sounds...
C: The government hasn't come in and taken it away from us.
M: Yeah.
C: The Nature Conservancy hasn't come in and worked some kind of deal and put stipulations on the land. And we have those problems facing us all the time.
M: Yeah. Yeah.
C: The government, they'd love to make a park out there, and we've had problems with that. We're trying to keep their hands out of it. And, you know, a lot of people think, “Oh, well, the government's going to come out here; there's going to be job opportunities for everybody.” Well, not really. They can't keep up with what they've got.
M: Uh-huh, uh-huh.Kokernot 90
C: You know, so, you know, we'll break down and sell some property near town for a hospital, or something like that.
M: Uh-huh.
C: And we just want to keep it. The thing is, it's quiet out there. People move out there for a reason. There are some developments out there, and people are moving out there. But as long as we're out there, it's going to pretty much stay like it has been.
M: Yeah. I mean, it would seem to me that you have
M: preserved a natural heritage; you have untouched land that virtually has had nobody on it but cows and cowboys coming and going. That's rare in this whole country today, to have the acreage that you have, that has been literally untouched by other kinds of mechanization and tin cans and vast pollution, and oil machines and that; that you're sitting on a unique heritage in this country. In the sense that it's not that much different than when the Native Americans and Indians roamed that area out there, from listening to the four of you. That you have...it's like you are your own historical preservation natural trust. You may not feel about it that way, but from my perspective as an outsider I see native land that has been pretty much untouched by others.
C: Well, you know, I don't even like power lines over it.
M: That's what I mean - power lines, yeah, telephone Kokernot 91
lines.
C: Yeah, I mean, that's just modern. You don't want to be out there riding on the range and see a dadgum three phase power - electric line - going across the...
M: Yeah. Generators.
C: Yeah, yeah. We, you know, we're very...my grandfather had a little different perspective, because it was the modernization; it was helping people down ten miles from here to get electricity to a home. I can see that.
M: Yeah.
C: It would help them. But now it's different. I mean, you've got solar, you've got generators, you've got all kinds of stuff; you don't have to have that power line.
M: Are you using solar at all?
C: No, we don't use solar much. We haven't used it that much. We use wind power, windmills for water and generators and we do use some electricity - if the line’s already there...
M: Yeah, yeah.
C: We'll run a...if there's a windmill close or something sometimes we'll put a submersible, and run it...
M: Yeah.
C: ...by electricity
M: Have you had any problem with cattle disease?
C: Not really out there. It's a high, dry area, not a Kokernot 92
whole lot of disease. When you get into a muddier area like San Antonio or Waco or Dallas, and closer, you know; with cattle closer, then you get a little bit more disease involved, you know. We have our problems, you know, with cows getting...with calves getting sick when we wean them off the bottles, you know, and we're trying to wean them and they get, you know, types and stuff. But other than that, we don't have, you know, we don't have any major problems.
M: Yeah. What's the worse thing you've had to face since you've been there?
C: Drought.
M: The drought.
C: And trying to figure out what to do. It's easy to ranch when it's raining. It's easy. But when you have a drought and you don't have any grass and don't have any water, and you've got to figure out...we've got to hold on to these cattle, because if we don't, we sell everything, we're not going to have anything when it does rain. You have to figure out, through the process of elimination, sell your dry cow - the late cows, they're, you know... You have an area that you're just having to pump water, pump water, haul water to...that's a horrible thing to do. You just... [inaudible] tough; it's a tough deal.
M: Okay. Thank you very much, Chris, for talking with me.
C: I appreciate it.Kokernot 93
M: ...Sorry to miss the bull story. Gee! One bull drinks five hundred gallons of water, Gee!
C: ...I'm exaggerating there, but it seems like it. I mean, you try to haul water and it is...a cow walks up there, she hasn't had a drink in two days. She's going to drink that sucker dry, you know.
..: ...[inaudible].
C: Ask my son. He knows about water, because he's fixing water leaks all the time.
M: Yeah, that's what Brandee was telling me - like riding out and checking the water leaks. So I thought...you know, they've got water troubles out there. You know. Mary Ann
M: says that they've got wells and are supplying Alpine, you know.
C: We've got some water, you know; we got a little help here and there, but we try to get...because water's a very important thing.
M: Oh yeah. If you're a cow, you'd better believe it.
C: And everybody has a water problems. It's like San Antonio has water problems with Edwards Aquifer, and El Paso is looking for water and, you know, these bigger populations they are going to come to us if we...
M: There's your...
C: Water.
M: There's your diversification - find more water and...Kokernot 94
C: ...sell it.
M: Sell it to the cities. That would at least keep the land untouched, except for the water table. [inaudible]... Yeah. Hopis deal with that...with the Black Mesa Coal Mining came in, they did...they slurry all the coal, so they were already into dryland farming and stuff, and it took all their water. The water table went down...[whistle sound]... last twenty years.
C: We got things like tomato farms out there; we've got a pansy farm, we got...
M: Oh, that's neat.
C: This and that, but they're taking a lot of water from us.
M: Oh, oh.
[Background explanation of water and pansy farming]
C: They're there in the...Aquifer. There are several aquifers around Fort Davis, Alpine area...
M: Yeah.
C: You know, they were afraid the static lines were going to go down. The water level was going to go down. And it hasn't yet, but you know...
M: Well, you could try - what's the one? - poinsettia farming, and they use a drip - a drip thing - a drip system and it takes...
B: Hydroponics.Kokernot 95
M: Yeah.
C: Something like that.
B: They do it with the tomato plants.
M: Yeah. Well, start you on cactus. Take ten acres and start a cactus - what is it? - saguaro cactus in Arizona that they're all dying because of the diesel smoke and all that? Start to raise cactus.
C: We've got some cactus. We don't have to raise it. We've got...
M: Get on the...
B: The guy on the Internet...
M: I was going to say, get on the Internet and see if you can sell it to the folks in Arizona for landscaping. Well, you guys have been great to talk to.
END OF TAPE 3. SIDE 1.
SIDE 2. - BLANK