FOUR-SCORE YEARS and then some have passed since Snooks Sparks was born on the Matador Ranch, and during those decades he’s cowboyed on most of the bigger Texas outfits as well as a stint in Arizona. He’s outlived two wives and many old friends, but he still carries their memories with him.

Snooks Sparks Made A Hand
For Several Large Outfits

By David Bowser

CLARENDON, Texas — Now in his eighth decade, A.M. "Snooks" Sparks laughs as he refers to his "bachelor's camp," a small stucco house on McClelland Street here in Clarendon, near where he started his career as a cowboy.

Sparks was 16 years old when he and his father, Frank Sparks, drove from Midland to the JA Ranch in 1931, looking for work.

The teenager wasn't a stranger to ranching. He grew up on the Matador Ranch, near Roaring Springs.

"My dad worked for the Matadors for about 20 years," Sparks says.

His father had also worked for the legendary XIT before the turn of the century.

Sparks and his younger sister were both born on the Matadors at the Dutchman Camp. The doctor drove out to the line camp in a buggy to deliver Sparks.

"He ate dinner and supper with us and charged us seven dollars for the delivery," Sparks says.

When his sister came along three years later, a doctor from Roaring Springs charged $10.

"Momma went right straight up," Sparks says. "She thought things were getting too high over there."

It was when his younger sister was born that Sparks was tagged with the nickname that would stick with him for the rest of his life.

"When my younger sister was born," Sparks says, "Dad hired a woman to help out around the house. I was about two or three years old. I'd crawl around. Sometimes I'd sneak into the kitchen. This woman couldn't think of my name, so she'd say, 'Snookums, I'm going to grease your head with butter and swallow you if you don't get out of here.'"

Eventually, Sparks' father moved to Turtle Hole Camp, then went out on his own.

"We lived on Pease River," Sparks says. "I started school down there in a little old school called Lambert School. It had one room. Dad farmed and ranched down there for five or six years."

In 1928, the family, which now included four brothers and two sisters, moved to Midland.

"That used to be a cowboy's paradise," Sparks says. "There were lots of ranches. They were smaller ranches, 40 or 50 sections. There was one ranch over by Odessa that was pretty good sized. It had over 100 sections."

In 1931, with the county in the midst of the Depression and West Texas facing severe drouth, Sparks and his father left Midland and headed north.

"I quit school," Sparks says. "We were trying to educate my sister who was younger than me. That was a pretty hard time back in 1931. But the JA had written Dad a letter, wanting him to cook at the wagon. When we got the letter, he asked me if I wanted to go with him. I said, 'Yeah!'"

Cooks were the highest paid men at the wagon, Sparks says, and his dad could make more money cooking than cowboying.

"We drove up here in a 1929 Ford coupe with a rumble seat," Sparks says. "We went to the old Plains Corral Camp on the JA."

Buffalo Heim was living there. He had worked with Frank Sparks at the Matadors.

"We drove up to his camp there and got to talking to Buffalo, and he said, 'Well, the fellow that hired you left,'" Sparks says. "Dad looked over at me and said we may have to go back home. We may not have a job."

They went on down to the headquarters, where Beale Queen had taken over as wagon boss after Bill Beverly, who had written the senior Sparks, left.

"Dad walked into the office and Beale and the superintendent, Clinton Henry, were in the office," Sparks says. "Dad introduced himself, and Beale said, 'Well, Mr. Sparks, we've been looking for you for a week.'"

They took Sparks’ father to the wagon. Sparks went to Hereford to stay with his older sister until the fall.

"When I went back, they give me a mount of horses and I went to work," Sparks says. "When you went to work on a ranch like that, you cowboyed. There were some good cowboys back then."

The big outfits like the Matadors, the Sixes or the JA would issue a mount of a dozen or so horses to each cowboy.

"When I went to the JA, they gave me 11 head of horses and a bronc," Sparks says. "They were all grass horses. In the winter time, you'd get your best horses, maybe not the best cutting horse or the best roping horse, but the horses that could stand a lot of riding. We'd just feed three in the winter, three and the bronc."

The first three years Sparks was at the JA, he spent the winters in a line camp. The fourth year, Rex Long, who was in charge of breaking the horses, wanted Sparks to help him.

"I helped him that year break horses," Sparks says. "We broke about 80 head that winter. It paid five dollars a head on top of your wages. I got $30 a month."

Sparks says Long was a big fellow.

"I weighed about 140 pounds," Sparks says. "Rex said, 'I'll take the big ones. You take the little ones.' I don't think a big one ever made a jump. Three or four of those little ones pitched like scalded hogs."

Sparks worked there a couple more years, then left to go to Arizona for about a year.

"I was at Superior, Ariz., working for the A1 Bar," Sparks says. "It wasn't too big an outfit. I stayed there a while, then came back to Midland."

He broke horses one winter for Tom Nance, then went to the Sixes. "John Brown was running the wagon," Sparks says. "I worked there one spring, up to the Fourth of July. It's too hot down there."

Sparks moved to the Matadors, where Red Payne was running the wagon.

"The Matadors down there," Sparks says, "all the mounts of horses people had, nobody could trade into them. After they quit, you couldn't take the best horses out of that mount. These mounts always stayed together. I got Shorty Klebo's old mount. He was quite a horseman. That was about the best mount I ever rode. Most outfits would give you a bunch of old crowbaits to start out with, and you had to make your mount, but I had some excellent horses there. I had about four good cutting horses."

Young Sparks worked at the Matadors for about a year, then Bill Beverly, who had returned to the JA, offered Sparks a job.

Sparks and his dad had first come to the JA the same year that Montie Ritchie came to the ranch from England. Ritchie is Cornelia Adair's grandson. She and her husband, John Adair, and Col. Charles Goodnight founded the JA Ranch in Palo Duro Canyon in 1877.

"Montie and I came at the same time," Sparks says. "He was just 21 or 22. He'd just gotten out of school, and he had to work as a cowboy there before he could have anything to do with the ranch."

While Sparks has known Ritchie since they worked at the wagon together through the hot, dry, dusty 1930s, it's Ritchie's daughter, Nina, for whom Sparks has fond memories.

"I always liked Nina," Sparks says. "When I was foreman out there, Nina had kind of taken it over. If I wanted anything, I'd go to Nina."

Just before Sparks left the JA for the final time, they were breaking colts at the bronc corrals north of the ranch headquarters. One of the colts ran into the fence and got a splinter in his shoulder.

Nina had seen it and asked Sparks about the corrals.

"I told her what we needed to do was build a bronc corral up at the headquarters," he says. "We had a big old hay shed out there and plenty of room for a good bronc corral."

She said she'd think about it. When her father was off on an extended trip not long afterward, Sparks went back to Nina to see about the corral. She said okay.

She told the bookkeeper to older the panels out of Clovis. They got a bulldozer to level the area that had been the old windmill yard.

Sparks told her they needed to build a little tack house, too.

"In no time we had a Cat out there leveling the place, and a carpenter running a foundation," Sparks says. "We got the whole thing put up except one corral. I was going to build another corral, but Montie came back. He put a halt on it.

But they did get the corral built.

"Montie liked it all right, but he didn't want to spend any more money on it," Sparks says. "Nina was a good girl. I really liked her. She was a pretty good hand on a horse."

As World War II broke out, Sparks joined the cavalry, but after about a year, his father became ill and Sparks was discharged so he could return home and take care of the family.

He was working around Midland when the Clarendon draft board put him back in the army, where he served in the artillery.

After the war, Sparks got married at Bangs, Texas, near Brownwood, to a girl from Snyder.

"I didn't know what we were going to do for a living," he says. "The ranchers weren't paying anything."

But his new brother-in-law at Clarendon called and asked Sparks if it would embarrass him to come up to Clarendon and harvest his cotton crop.

"I told him I was ready to do anything that had any money in it," Sparks says.

By the time they'd finished with the cotton crop, a new locker plant had been built in Clarendon.

"Me and two more cowboys, Shy Johnson and Ralph Grady, went to work there," Sparks says.

He worked as a butcher for about eight years.

"That wasn't my deal," he says. "That wasn't my thing."

In the meantime, his first wife died, and Sparks married a girl from Anton. They lived in Plainview, where Sparks worked as a butcher.

He finally told his wife he was going back to cowboying. A friend who lived at the Bitter Creek Ranch called one day and said a fellow who had the Sandy Camp leased from the JA was looking for somebody.

Sparks drove over to the JA, and Jiggs Mann, the foreman, was standing outside the headquarters. Mann told him that the lessee who had been looking for a man had already hired one, but the JA had an opening.

Sparks was hired to back up Mann and take over when the foreman was gone.

When Sparks went back to Plainview, he asked his wife if she would like to live on a ranch.

She said she was ready. They moved their three boys and girl to the JA.

"She loved it," Sparks says of his late wife, Leora. "She's quite a lady."

In 1968, Mann quit, and Sparks took over as range boss.

"I was in charge of the cattle," he says.

But after about six years, Sparks says he felt it was time to move on. He went to work for a man who had part of the JA leased. Then he worked for Billy Cogdell for a couple of years.

Eventually, Ritchie hired Sparks back, and Sparks spent another six years at the JA.

"I left again and moved to town here," he says. "I had this little old house for 40 years and never had lived in it. We lived here about 13 months. I was kind of day working around."

It was then that Wayne Riggs, who had the farm and ranch store in Clarendon, said he was buying a four section ranch near Lefors and asked if Sparks would run it for him.

Sparks went home to talk it over with his wife.

"I walked in the door and hollered, 'Momma, you ready to move?'" Sparks says. "She said, 'I'm ready to move.'"

They moved to the ranch at Lefors.

"I guess we had 12 of the best years of our lives out there," Sparks says. "It was a nice place, a nice little ranch. It had a nice house."

Health problems and the loss of his wife have slowed Sparks down a little the last couple of years, but he still knows horses, and he still knows cattle. He still looks up at the sky as he walks out the door, checking the weather.

"I'm 84," says Snooks Sparks, "and it's rained every year I've been here. Sometimes you think it won't, but it does."

His saddle still rests in the dining room, ready to go.

"It's about the only partner I got left," he says.