Pour another cup for this rodeo tale
- Erin Stephenson
- Aug 13, 2021
- 11 min read
Updated: Mar 1, 2024
Who we are, how we define ourselves, what we chase, what we remember -- even what we like to eat -- just might take us by surprise: After all, there's corn in that peach pie!
My brother fancied himself a cowboy.
For a while, our whole family was defined by that.
We grew up in cities (such as they were in Colorado 50-some years ago) or big towns and only stepped foot on farms and ranches when we were visiting relatives in Nebraska or old friends in Colorado’s high country. But as children of the 1960s, my brothers dressed up in chaps and fringed vests to play “cowboys and Indians” in the backyard. (All cowboys, no Indians.) My parents put on cowboy-themed parties and let their sons play with cap guns that made a tiny pop and smelled like gunpowder when fired at imaginary enemies (with the warning, of course, to never point the toys at real people). In the summers, my mom always limited our television viewing to one show and then she shooed us outside to play. That show was always “Big Valley” (a good choice in a TV landscape of violent Westerns because of the strong female characters, although honestly, that had nothing to do with it). In the evenings, we got to watch “Bonanza” and “Alias Smith & Jones” and “Here Come the Brides.”
Louie was always an animal lover and would bring exotic creatures home or finagle our parents into letting him add to our menagerie. He had an iguana, some fish, a brindle Boxer, and he raised Siamese rabbits in a hutch in the backyard that he and my dad built for a 4-H project. One Christmas Eve, after doing some free labor for a pet shop near our house, he brought a puppy home, unannounced and unapproved. We already had two dogs and a cat at that point, so my mom made him return the puppy. She said it was her worst Christmas ever. I think Louie eventually forgave her.
(An interesting aside: The coffee shop where I am writing this post is at the same spot —
maybe even in the same building — as that pet shop.)
We moved to Colorado Springs when Louie was in seventh grade. I think it was a hard move for him, two months into junior high, just when he was beginning to find his independence and create who he was going to be. He decided about then to grow out of being a little boy in a “Brady Bunch”-striped T-shirt and become a cowboy. He bought the boots and the Wrangler jeans, invested in some Western shirts and a brown felt Stetson (or more accurately, my parents did because he was still just a kid), made friends with some tough boys in cowboy hats, put Buck Owens on the stereo, developed a maverick attitude.
Somehow he convinced my parents to buy him a horse. My grandfather raised Belgian horses on a farm in southern Indiana, and my dad spent the summers of his boyhood on that farm, eagerly helping with the horses and the haying and reveling in the all-day trips to livestock auctions with the hired hand. So I guess it probably wasn’t that hard of a sell — to my dad anyway; my mother, the more practical of my parents, always knew that a horse in the city that you had to pay to board and drive across town to feed wasn’t the smartest purchase, even for a family with a farm background and an animal-loving teen.
KC was a pretty quarter horse with a wild streak that satisfied Louie’s cowboy dreams for about two years. Louie used to spend his afternoons happily grooming that animal, mucking out the stall and riding around in a circle at the boarding stable about three miles from our home. Sometimes, at the end of a school day, he would ride KC across what may have been the busiest street in Colorado Springs, through some sleepy neighborhoods, to the playground of my grade school. He would pull me up on the saddle behind him and, with all my gobsmacked friends watching in amazement, we would ride that horse into the sunset — well, since it was 2:30, across a footbridge that spanned an irrigation ditch and then two, maybe three blocks home.
(Why my parents or the school administration didn’t put a stop to that, I still can‘t figure out.)
At some point, Louie decided riding a boarded horse was not the kind of cowboy he wanted to be. Instead he wanted to rodeo.
He was in Little Britches for a couple years, riding rough stock in rodeos on county fairgrounds across the state. Although my mother was always hesitant to sanction such a dangerous sport, both my parents agreed Little Britches rodeos were a wholesome environment for a young man adrift. Louie, however, always looking for more excitement and a bigger adrenaline rush, quickly grew bored.
Enter Swede’s, a place on the edge of town that ran rough stock on weekends for wannabe cowboys and rodeo competitors-in-training. Louie, of course, decided Swede’s might be his "Cheers" and then spent countless weekends burnishing his cowboy cred by crawling on the back of a bull, pushing his cowboy hat down over his eyes and saying, “Let ’im go, Swede!”
When he was 16, he started entering “pro-am” rodeos. To be a card-carrying professional cowboy, or a member of the PRCA (Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association), cowboys must be 18 years old (or of legal age) and must earn at least $1,000 in PRCA-sanctioned rodeos. Louie, of course, at 16, met neither criteria. So he competed as an amateur against professionals in a handful of rodeos near our home. I remember him having some success — occasionally hitting the 8-second mark, although never finishing in the money.
At the end of the summer, he entered the rodeo at the El Paso County Fair. My dad was the CSU Extension director of El Paso County so, as a family, we spent the whole week at the fair. That year and so many years before and after, the fair wasn’t just a highlight of the summer; it was a way of life. We spent every day competing in 4-H dog shows, showing handmade dresses and knitted scarves and photo albums, feeding animals, showing animals, selling animals, cruising the midway and the rodeo dances, singing along to the country music being piped into the buildings, hanging out behind the chutes of the rodeo arena, making friends, making memories.
Louie was supposed to ride Saturday night, after the 4-H Livestock Sale, the last night of the fair. My parents did not attend the rodeo, although they were just steps away from the action in the arena. My dad was working the sale and my mother, always worried about injury, chose not to watch. My sister and I were there, sitting through the whole rodeo (bulls are always the last event), watching the country-western act that took the stage half-way through, and then sitting there in the bleachers as Louie came out of the chute tied to the back of a 2,000-plus-pound bull named Tequila Sunrise. He bucked off at 2 or 3 seconds, hung up in the bucking rope and was thrown under the hooves of that behemoth.
Here’s what I remember about that night:
> Louie ate a corn dog for supper that night before the rodeo.
> Red Steagall played “Truck Drivin’ Man” from a stage in the arena. It was a radio hit that summer and what got him an invitation to the fair. (“Pour me another cup of coffee / for it is the best in the land / Put another quarter in the jukebox / And play the song of a truck drivin’ man.”)
> It was my dad’s birthday, July 31, 1976. He was 46 that year.
> It rained off and on all evening, but the grandstands were covered. About 150 miles away, the Big Thompson River flooded near Estes Park; 144 people lost their lives.
Although he was gravely injured, Louie walked out of the arena on his own. He collapsed when he got behind the chutes and the announcer called for an ambulance. I can still hear him: “Can we get an ambulance back here? Looks like this cowboy is hurt worse than we thought.”
Turns out “hurt” meant a hoof-shaped contusion on his chest and a ruptured stomach. He had surgery at a hospital in Colorado Springs that night and spent the next three weeks in a hospital bed, fed a newly approved liquid diet through an IV while his stomach healed. Although she had never really approved of the rodeo, our mother spent every minute of the liberal visiting hours of each of those 21 days at his bedside.
Doctors tried to wean him off the IV, insisting he couldn’t go home until he could eat solid food, but Louie wasn’t interested in the hospital food they tried to give him. He never did eat it. On Day 19, Louie asked our dad to get him a Whopper from Burger King. The doctor, at his wit’s end, said it was worth a try. Louie ate a few bites and drank a little bit of a watered down chocolate shake. On Day 20, he asked for a Big Mac. On Day 21, he went home.
The next summer, clinging to the old cowboy bromide that you gotta get back on that dern horse, Louie rode in a couple close-by amateur rodeos. But he was ready to move on.
He did so with conviction. By the time his sons were old enough to want to be cowboys, they dreamed about wearing a star on the side of a football helmet and meeting Troy Aikman.
Louie’s been gone a long time now. He died when he was 38, about a month after seeing his youngest son off to kindergarten. He died of cancer, which might or might not have been related to that long ago rodeo injury, maybe a complication of that just-past-experimental IV diet.
I miss him still and think about him every day. The memories are especially sweet at the end of the summer when vendors are selling corn dogs at county fairs, when bulls and broncs are kicking up dust and cowboys in tight Wranglers and brightly-colored shirts with pearlized snaps are making weekend plans in Cheyenne and Greeley, when I'm in a coffee shop and someone's singing a rodeo song on my iTunes and the waitress pours me another cup of coffee.
The Pie
Colorado County Fair Pie
The first time I saw this recipe I was intrigued because it had corn in it, and come on, really, who puts corn in a fruit pie? There may be nothing better than a good piece of corn on the cob at an August dinner table. Butter and salt slathered on a good ear of a corn turns it into a savory treat. But you know, if you get the right kind of corn -- Olathe Sweet sweet corn, for example -- it’s kind of fruit like, succulent and sugary.
The original recipe uses nectarines, instead of peaches, primarily I think because the recipe came from a bakery in Detroit where nectarines grow in abundance. I tried that once and it was good. However, peaches grow in abundance in Colorado in the late summer, so I decided to turn this dessert into an iconic Colorado summer pie. Nectarines have a softer, smoother skin than peaches so there’s no real reason to peel a nectarine if you choose to use them in the pie, but I would suggest peeling the peaches if you make that switch. Nectarines and peaches taste almost the same so there’s no reason to make any other changes to the recipe
I think this pie tastes like a county fair: the corn and peaches reminiscent of the produce that win blue ribbons; the tangy layer of cream cheese brings to mind the excitement of a livestock show; and the corm-meal based streusel is just a little sweeter than a midway corn dog.
The recipe
Streusel:
1 cup fine yellow cornmeal
½ cup flour
⅓ cup packed light brown sugar
½ teaspoon salt
7 tablespoons butter
Filling:
2 cups corn plus juice, straight off the cob and coarsely chopped
⅓ cup granulated sugar
2½ cups peaches, cut into ½-inch chunks (about 4 cups)
3 tablespoons lemon juice
¼ cup tapioca starch
¼ teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons cream cheese, at room temperature
One 9-inch spiced pie crust, blind baked and cooled (Tip for blind baking below.)
To make the streusel: Combine cornmeal, flour, brown sugar and salt in a large bowl. Mix well. Place the butter in the bowl and coat on all sides with the flour mixture. Cut the butter into ½-inch cubes directly in to the flour mixture in the bowl. Work to break up the butter with your hands until the cubes are lightly coated with the flour mixture. Using a pastry blender, cut in the butter while turning the bowl. Avoid cutting at the same place each time, Once most of the butter is incorporated, use your fingers to fully break down the butter until the streusel resembles wet sand. (The streusel can be made up to two days early and stored in the refrigerator until needed.)
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
To make the filling: Combine half the corn kernels with the sugar and blend it until it looks like slightly mushy creamed corn. (You can do this in a food processor or blender. I used a pastry cutter. Whichever method you choose to use, most of the corn should be broken down.) In a large bowl, gently combine the blended corn with the peaches, lemon juice and the rest of the corn. In a small bowl, mix together the tapioca starch and salt. Pour over the corn and peaches and toss (with your hands) until evenly distributed.
Once the cream cheese has come to room temperature, spread it evenly on the bottom of the pie shell. Layer the corn-peach mixture on top of the cream cheese. Do not mound in the center; rather smooth the mixture evenly in the pie crust. Carefully cover the fruit with the streusel, leaving a small hole in the center of the pie to act as a steam vent. If it closes up with baking, it can be reopened with a knife.
Place the pie on a baking sheet. Place in the oven and bake for 1½ to 2 hours, until the pie juices are beginning to bubble in the center and the streusel is a deep golden brown.
Remove from oven and allow to cool for 4 to 6 hours before serving.
Leftover pie can be stored, well wrapped in plastic wrap or under a pie dome, for up to 2 days.
TIP: To cut corn off the cob, stand a husked ear in a bowl or on a large plate, skinny side up. Use a sharp knife to slice down one side of the cob, removing the kernels as you go. Turn the ear and repeat until all the kernels have been removed from the cob. Then run the knife up the cob to release the milky residue.
SPICED PIE CRUST
3 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon ground nutmeg
1½ sticks (12 tablespoons) butter, cut into small pieces
¾ cup shortening or lard
1 tablespoon distilled vinegar
1 egg, lightly beaten
Mix flour, cinnamon, salt and nutmeg in bowl. Add butter and shortening. Work the butter into the flour mixture using a pastry cutter until it resembles tiny pebbles. Add the egg, vinegar and 5 tablespoons cold water and mix until well combined.
Form 2 equal-sized balls. Place in unsealed plastic bags or wrap with plastic wrap. Flatten each ball into a disk, and then seal bag. Place in freezer for 15 to 20 minutes to chill, or chill overnight in refrigerator.
Colorado County Fair Pie only requires a single crust, so you can halve the recipe or keep one disk in the freezer, tightly wrapped in plastic wrap and then placed in a storage container, for up to 3 months. This pie is also good with a simple, all-purpose crust.
TIP: Roll out your chilled dough and place it in a 9-inch pie plate. Trim the crust but allow an even overhang, approximately 1 inch. Fold the overhang under and crimp. Place in the freezer and freeze for at least 15 minutes. To blind bake the crust, preheat the oven to 450 with the rack in the lowest level. Remove the frozen crust from the freezer and line with a piece of aluminum foil, gently fitting it onto the crust. Fill the crust with pie weights. (You can buy pie weights and pie chains for this, but in my experience they don’t work very well because they are not heavy enough. Many people fill the crust with dried pinto beans. I have never used beans, but I’ve been told they work well. I typically use coins, filling the crust more than half-way up with pennies, nickels and quarters. The coins are heavy and work well.) Bake for 25 to 27 minutes until the crimps are a light golden brown. Remove the crust from the oven, place on a wire rack to cool. After about 6 minutes, remove the foil and the weights. You can fill the crust at this point.
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