From time to time, there are people who stand out in a community, individuals who embody the traditions and spirit of a place. Johnny Cleveland from Blanket was one of those people; a man whose life touched many because he lived true to his values with humor and dedication. Several days ago, I was saddened to hear of his passing. Johnny was a great storyteller. I had the chance a few years back to record some of his tales. He told of a life spent on horseback, doing the work generations had done before him, and loving every minute of it. I went back and pulled up a few of Johnny’s remembrances about his growing up years and his day work as a cowboy for neighboring ranchers.
Johnny was born in Comanche in 1952. “I was raised at Dudley Brothers Hereford Ranch when I was a kid and stayed there until I was about 14 I guess,’ he recalled. “ I started breaking Shetlands, when we lived at Dudley Brothers, when I was about 5. My sister, she was too chicken to ride the broncs, so we rode in a chute, I had to crawl down in the squeeze shoot, then she’d open the head gate and I’d come out. We had to ride bareback. My dad wouldn’t let us ride with saddles. We had lots of wrecks. We lived through all of them. Just a few scars. It beat the heck out of walking. In those days, you either walked or you rode.”
Johnny’s sister, Linda Lindley, also recalled the days of breaking the small ponies, and how much time she and her brother spent on horseback. “We didn’t like being at the house at all, so we would tie those ponies up outside and as soon as we ate we took off anywhere else. We rode everywhere on those little things. Not to my dad’s knowledge, we also rode his show bulls. One of us would lead it down the lane and the other ride back. Thankfully, we never got caught. We did that quite a few times. We also brought a friendly pasture bull in and washed him and curled him with pride. We thought he was as good as any show bull. Well, daddy didn’t see it that way so he was the cleanest bull in the pasture.’
Johnny and Linda developed a lifelong love of horses and the outdoors during childhood. Cleveland was a bit of a rebel as a young man, but found his place and purpose in ranching. “Took me about six years to get out of high school, cause I got smarter than everybody else, so I quit for two years as a freshman cause my attitude wasn’t good. So anyway then I got back into it [ranching] in ‘75. I’ve been bucked off a bunch. I used to ride for an old man, in fact we took a lot of horses in when I was in high school. His name was Buck Williams. We rode cutting horses, trained them, back in the 50s. I rode lots of colts for him. I’ve been kind of out on my own since I was 14, so I had to work and make a living. Back then we just called it breaking colts, we didn’t call it training or nothing.,” Cleveland shared.
If you ever talked with Johnny Cleveland, you know he always had a story. He lived all over Texas, managing ranches, breaking horses and enjoying the life he loved. “I went to East Texas and managed a ranch down there for a guy by the name of Wayne May that had an auction barn in Brownwood. Worked at this for 18 months, and then I left there and went to Athens to manage another ranch, for 6 ½ years. Then I left there and come back home cause I had a daughter who wanted to know her grandparents. So I took a job out West for about 18 months, running a ranch out there, out between Merkel and 277. I can tell you a sorry story about that”, Johnny said. “So then I came back, went to work on some other deals, but still I kept my horses, and still rode a lot, helped whoever needed help, Well I don’t know, whenever the season is going, I’m going, whenever it’s not, I bale hay in the summer, run a dozer and whatever to make a dime, that’s about what I do.”
“So this is what I like to do. Sometimes the cowboy life isn’t a real high paying job. You got to like it, you know, in order to do it. Because you make 125 or 150 dollars a day and drive sixty miles one way. It’s not that you’re doing it to make a living. You’re doing it because you like it. My wife, she goes with me on some jobs, then my grandkids, they haven’t really gotten into it too much, but I give them horses to ride so maybe someday they’ll figure out that they need to learn how to do some of this.”
Johnny Cleveland will be missed, but he left something valuable behind for generations to come. He was known as a man of his word, and a friend to many, someone you could describe as ‘out of the old rock’, embodying the cowboy code of living and passing that on to others. Johnny had an interest and talent for teaching young people the ropes of the work he loved, an aspect of his character that will doubtless endure for many more years. “Off and on for sixty years, I’ve been a cowboy,” he explained. “Us old folks are going to get old. When we can’t do it anymore, you need some young people coming up. It’s been a great ride for me. I wouldn’t change nothing about it.”
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Diane Adams is a local journalist whose columns appear Thursdays on BrownwoodNews.com. Comments regarding her columns can be emailed to [email protected].
