Philmont Hand Finds Horizons
Expanding In Many Directions

By David Bowser

CIMARRON, N.M. — Rod Taylor spends most of his time riding the high range, doctoring sick cattle and taking care of his family, but it's a fictional barroom brawl for which he may become known outside his own circle.

Born and reared in Lubbock, Texas, Taylor got his first taste of ranch work on the less than glamorous end.

"I was in Boy Scouts there in Lubbock," Taylor says. "A real dear friend of mine in scouts had a family ranch out at Slaton. Mike (Lowery) and I used to go out there to the C Bar Ranch. We started out hunting and fishing and goofing off. Uncle Clark (Wood) decided we needed to do a little work, so we started cleaning the barn, fixing windmills and fixing fence."

After high school, Taylor and a buddy traveled a while.

"We decided we'd get more of an education doing that than going to school right away," Taylor says. "We made a big circle all over the West. We went up into Canada and down into Mexico. We just made a big circle until we ran out of money. We got back to Lubbock just about in time to start the spring semester there at Texas Tech. I went to school for a year or so, then decided I needed to get back into the mountains."

Through Boy Scouts, Taylor had come to the Philmont scout camp a number of times and liked it.

"Of course, being from West Texas and getting up here in the mountains, I really liked it — a bunch," he says.

He came back into this country and worked at Philmont.

"I worked on summer staff up here starting in 1974," he says. "One fall, rather than going back to school, I worked for the Vermejo Park Ranch. I really just hired on for the fall works and wound up staying through the winter."

He went back to Philmont the next summer.

"When the summer season was over, I found another ranch job somewhere else," Taylor says. "I ended up working for all these ranches around here at one time or another. I worked for the TO for about three years."

He had the Penix Camp at the TO at the foot of Tinaja and Eagle Tail mountains.

"The Penix is a great camp," he says. "It's a ways off out there in the middle of nowhere, but it's a good camp."

He worked for the UU Bar Ranch for a couple of years, "rode a bunch of colts for them," he says.

In 1978, he went to Montana for the winter.

"Tell me how much sense that makes," he says with a grin. "I had a buddy who was working for the Padlocks up there. I went up and stayed with him for a while in his camp on the Padlocks and looked for a job. I got a job on the Little Horn Ranch which is just across the Wyoming-Montana line, just north of Sheridan, Wyo."

He went to work there in September, living on the banks of the Little Bighorn River.

"I could danged near throw a fishing line from my back porch into the river," he says. "I tell you what, I thought I was in heaven — until it started snowing. Then I wondered what I was doing up there. If white is your favorite color, Montana is the place to be in the winter. I never saw so much snow in all my life. And cold? I learned how to rope and doctor those yearlings we had up there with mittens on. It was something."

But he learned a lot working on the big cattle operations in Wyoming and Montana.

"I was on a drive up there that had 12,000 steers," he recalls. "Those cattle were strung out for miles. You couldn't see the leaders in that rolling hill country. It was a bunch of danged cattle."

The ranch Taylor was on shipped most of their yearlings out, but there were still enough to give him something to do during the winter. They also had a cow-calf operation.

"You still had to ride and doctor what was left," he says. "I stayed and wintered there, then left along about the time everything started greening up and moved back down to this country."

He went to work at Philmont in February 1983.

The number one priority at Philmont, he says, is Boy Scouts. The 137,000 acre ranch is owned by the National Council of the Boy Scouts of America.

"It's the Boy Scouts’ premier high adventure base," Taylor says.

Camps scattered throughout the mountains provide various programs from rock climbing to shooting to interpretive camps.

"There are three different western lore camps where the kids will come, and they can take a horse ride and get some insight into the western ideas and ethics," Taylor says. "They ride, learn to rope. We hire 26 wranglers for the summer."

Bob Ricklefs is the ranch superintendent. Ben Vargas, the horse foremen, runs a band of brood mares.

"We've got about 350 head of cows," Taylor says. "That's my end of it, but we all help each other. There's just three of us in the livestock department."

Although the emphasis is on scouting, Philmont remains a working cattle ranch.

Oilman Waite Phillips, brother to Frank Phillips of Phillips 66 fame, had the Philmont and UU Bar ranches at Cimarron. He sold the UU Bar and gave Philmont to the Boy Scouts. It was his wish, however, that the place remain an active cattle ranch.

"He knew that boys would be coming to Philmont from all over the world, and he wanted them to see what ranching was like," Taylor says. "We try to stay pretty true to that."

The foundation herd was Hereford, but they've since been crossed with Salers and Simmental.

"We've got a darn good set of cows," Taylor says. "We start calving in February and wean in October. Those calves will weigh 650 pounds consistently."

While he admits that 350 head isn't a lot of cattle for as much country as they have, Taylor points out that they also have 250 head of horses and 100 head of burros for the Boy Scouts. They also maintain 100 head of buffalo along with a variety of wildlife such as elk and mule deer.

Throughout his cowboy days, the musical rumblings of his youth stayed with Taylor. It was deeply ingrained.

"Growing up there in Lubbock, between the church choirs and the choirs at school, I'd been singing forever," Taylor says.

He got his first guitar when he was in sixth grade. By the time he got to high school, he joined some friends and formed a local band.

"We played bluegrass music," he says. "We played rock and roll. We played country music. We played folk music."

Lubbock was always a big music town, he notes.

"There's been a lot of fine musicians come out of there," he says. "Joe Ely, Butch Hancock, Jimmy Dale Gilmore. Those are some of my real inspirations." (Lubbock also spawned such singer-songwriters as Don McLean, Mac Davis and a fellow by the name of Buddy Holly — Ed.)

His mother and father were also music lovers.

"My mother had a beautiful voice and she sang a lot in church," Taylor says. "My dad was a big country music fan. The first song I ever remember hearing was Wabash Cannonball."

Roy Acuff, Hank Williams and Bob Wills were a major part of his early influence and he still loves them today, he says.

"Being that I graduated in 1975, I had a lot of other influences musically as well, from the Beatles to Bob Dylan," he says. "We played a lot of music there in high school and some after high school when I was still in Lubbock."

After he moved to New Mexico, he put music on the back burner, but he had some friends who played in bands in Red River.

"I'd be out on the cow camp all week by myself, which suited me fine. I liked it, but come Friday or Saturday night, I was ready to go to town."

He'd usually go to Red River.

"That’s where all the girls were. They had a good bar, a good dance floor, a good band and pretty girls."

His friends would let him sit in with them for a few sets. It kept the musical fire burning.

"Every weekend, I'd go do two or three tunes with the band, whether it was in Red River or Taos or wherever," Taylor says. "So it always kept it going."

About eight or 10 years ago, he started taking it more seriously.

"I was trying to do some of these solo cowboy things, going to some of these cowboy poetry gatherings around the country," he says. "I had the good fortune to play several years in Lubbock at that National Cowboy Symposium, and I played the Cowboy Hall of Fame in Oklahoma City a couple of times. That was really a thrill for me."

He also played some of the smaller gatherings like nearby Nara Visa, N.M.

"It's probably the very best," Taylor says. "Of all the cowboy poetry gatherings, Elko to Oklahoma City, Nara Visa is my favorite. It's a small, low-key kind of a deal. It's good country. It's good folks. There's not all the hype and pretense that's associated with all those other gatherings. It's a lot of fun."

It was about this time that a friend from Lubbock moved to Albuquerque and they put a band together.

They have a bass player, Steve Lindsay, from California. Their drummer, Leroy Featherston, who has been with Michael Martin Murphy's band for 15 years, joins them when he's not on the road with Murphy. John Egenes plays mandolin, guitar and the keyboard, as well as sings.

A third generation Texas Panhandle cowpuncher named Rooster Morris from near Dalhart plays the fiddle.

"That boy can dang sure play the fiddle," Taylor says. "The thing that amazed me about Rooster is that because he is such a died-in-the-wool puncher, one would assume all he would savvy would be Bob Wills and country music, but he can play some real tasty licks to whatever it is. You tell him what key you're going to do it in and by golly, he's got a great ear. A lot of the music we play, we play a wide variety of music from Hank Williams to Little Feet, it's a real mix. I know Rooster hadn't heard three-fourths of the music we do, but he can darn sure play."

They named their band The Rounders, after the book by the same name written by a friend of Taylor's, Max Evans.

"It seemed appropriate," Taylor says, "being friends with Max for a number of years, and I'd always admired that old movie."

It was this tie that was to prove advantageous.

When Martin Scorsese began shooting the movie version of Evans' book, "The Hi Lo Country," around Santa Fe this fall, they needed a band to play in one of the scenes that erupts in a fight. In the middle of it all will be Taylor and The Rounders.

"I'm excited about the movie," Taylor admits. "I'm amazed. I just can't imagine being in a Martin Scorsese and Stephen Frears picture and the fact that Max wrote the book, and it's all coming together. I understand that Johnny Gimble is doing the sound track and is coming out here to play. Johnny Gimble played with Bob Wills. I can't imagine being on stage and playing with Johnny Gimble. That's incredible. I'm thrilled."

"The Hi Lo Country" won't be Taylor's first time before the cameras. He's appeared in a Public Television documentary on the St. James Hotel in Cimarron and has done several television commercials.

"I did a Toyota commercial, which was a hoot," he drawls. "How I ever ended up with that deal, I have no idea. But by golly it was a lot of fun, and they were all nice folks, and it sure paid better than cowboy wages."

Taylor has also appeared on the television series "The Lazarus Man".

"I had some lines. I had a scene actually with Robert Urich and the leading lady," he says. "That was pretty exciting."

Taylor also has two albums out with his music. One is western music; the other, folk music and campfire songs, was done for Philmont.

Taylor credits his good fortune in the music and movie world to his wife, Patty.

"Patty is indeed a very wonderful woman," Taylor says.

Originally from near Lawrence, Kan., she had come to Northern New Mexico to visit a friend, fell in love with the country and decided to stay.

"At that time of my life, I was perfectly content to sit in my rocking chair and read National Geographic," Taylor says. "Patty changed all that."

Today the couple has two sons, Ry and Mason, and live at Philmont.

"Patty has been my biggest supporter," Taylor says.

In more ways than one, Taylor claims he's struck gold in the hills of Northern New Mexico.