The “Official Cowboy Poet of Texas” chats with famed charro and cowboy performer Jerry Diaz.
In each issue of C&I, Red Steagall shares an excerpt from his work and a conversation with notable people of the West.
Red Steagall: Let’s start with the history of the charro. It is a very special way of life. Where’s it from?
Jerry Diaz: It is understood in my generation — growing up with my father and the stories of his father and my great-grandfather — that when you wear the charro outfit, it’s like wearing a military outfit. It’s so [full of pride], carrying the flag of Mexico. That’s how I have raised my son ... to really respect the outfit. It’s just not putting it on, and not just anybody can put on a charro outfit and say they’re a charro, because to be a charro, it takes, number one, a lot of respect, a lot of discipline, and the charro must be very, very good with his horse.
Jerry, Staci, and Nicolas Diaz with Red Steagall and production team members.
Red: The horses that you ride are absolutely gorgeous animals, and I know that you take a long time [with them]. We start working cattle on a horse when they’re 2. We don’t put a lot of pressure on them, but by the time they’re 4 years old, we use them every day. But you don’t consider a horse till he’s about 7 or 8, do you?
Jerry: That’s correct. That’s a legacy of my father. He told me that your best horse, especially under a lot of pressure with music, lighting, and today, the sound systems and all the fireworks, and the smell of the fireworks ... your chances are going to be a lot better on an older horse.
Red: There’s just a way with the horses that you have ...
Jerry: My good friend, Red, the horse is going to be what you feel. If your soul and your mind is thinking something else when you are riding this horse, or you’re just going through the paces, or you feel sick, or there’s death in the family, or joy in the family, that horse is going to be what you’re feeling. ... In training, you put everything you have to succeed into that horse to be where he needs to be, and that’s the horse he’ll be — a champion.
Find the full episode of Red Steagall Is Somewhere West of Wall Street, featuring the conversation with Jerry Diaz, at watchrfdtv.com.
Panhandle Wind
My grandparents came here from Yell, Arkansas,
They built them a soddie on the Sulphur Springs draw.
They scratched out a living for a family of ten,
With a faith that was strong as the Panhandle Wind.
All those tall Texas tales Grandpa passed down to me,
Are still just as vivid as when I sat on his knee.
But the thing I remember ’bout the tales that he’d spin,
Was the way he would cuss that blamed Panhandle Wind.
It taught the coyote to howl, makes the tumbleweeds roll,
It controlled the migration of the great buffalo.
Makes the salt cedar sing and the cottonwood bend,
Your constant companion is the Panhandle Wind.
It sweeps off the Rockies like a fast movin’ train,
Brings a sky full of dust and a few drops of rain.
Usually blows from the North but it’s subject to change,
As it sculpts the face of the Panhandle plains
Excerpted from a song written by Red Steagall, Billy Joe Foster, and Luke Reed.
Episodes of Red’s travel show, Red Steagall Is Somewhere West of Wall Street, air Mondays at 8:30 p.m. Central on RFD-TV. Find out more about the TV program at watchrfdtv.com, and keep up with Red’s radio show, Cowboy Corner, at redsteagall.com/cowboy-corner. And visit Red’s new YouTube channel here.
From our April 2022 issue
Photography: (All images) courtesy Jerry Diaz Photography
