Film, Video 96 Ranch Rodeo and Barbecue (1951)

Title

• 96 Ranch Rodeo and Barbecue (1951)

Names

• Stewart, Leslie J. (Narrator)
• Stewart, Leslie J. (Interviewer)

Created / Published

• 1951

Headings

• -  Ninety-Six Ranch
• -  Activities
• -  Rodeos
• -  Ribbon roping
• -  Barbecues
• -  Ethnography
• -  Motion Pictures

Genre

• Ethnography
• Motion Pictures

Notes

• -  Rights: The Stewart family shares this film under a Creative Commons attribution license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 External).
• -  Les Stewart's film “96 Ranch Rodeo and Barbecue” (1951) documents a harvest celebration on the Ninety-Six Ranch. Les’s narration was recorded on July 7, 1982, by Margaret Purser and Carl Fleischhauer. The Ninety-Six Ranch barbecue and rodeo followed the fall roundup and the sale of cattle, and marked the end of the ranch's agricultural cycle. It was an event that permitted the family to play host to the Paradise Valley neighborhood and the wider region. The Stewarts are the principal landowners in the valley and, to some degree, the rodeo and barbecue are acts of noblesse oblige. As Les explains in the soundtrack, eventually over two hundred guests attended. This was more than could be comfortably accommodated and, during the late 1950s and early 1960s, the scale of the event was greatly reduced. The event did not cease altogether, however, and members of the folklife project team attended one in 1978. Many of the 1951 rodeo events have a distinctly comic quality; some were invented by Les for this affair. Although difficult, cow riding is also silly. Ribbon roping is less silly, but is still likely to be funny. Les’s film footage does not depict two other events: the flag race and bell-calf roping. The flag race was a relay on horseback guaranteed to be full of confused shouting and screaming. In bell-calf roping, two calves with bells would be turned out with fifteen others, and as many as twenty contestants would try to rope the bell calves. The affair also included a few normal rodeo events, like calf roping, but its purposes were best served by comedy. A harvest festival is an occasion to let off steam and poke a little fun at the boss. When Pete Pedroli grabs the tail of the cow Les is riding, he signals the audience that the ride is to be taken as a joke. Les said his job was to run the rodeo, while his father concerned himself with the barbecue. Fred Stewart learned this method for barbecuing beef from Mexicans in California. The meat is cooked in a pit without sauce, but Stewart's secret barbecue sauce was on the table as a condiment. Les says that Gus Ramasco learned the cooking method when he worked on the ranch, and subsequently introduced it to the volunteer Paradise Valley Fire Department. Their annual Father's Day barbecue picnic has become a very successful fund-raiser. Les recalled that Don Questa, a friend from Reno, took the pictures in which Les appears. Questa and his wife, Virginia, are seen at the table signing up contestants; Virginia and Les are the contestants in the ribbon-roping event. The first cow rider is Jimmy Angus; the competitors in the calf roping are Les and Tex Bouscal, the cowboy who receives the trophy belt buckle at the end of the film.

Medium

• 16mm film

Call Number/Physical Location

• AFC 1991/021: NV-VDP-VT9

Source Collection

• Paradise Valley Folklife Project Collection (AFC 1991/021)

Repository

• American Folklife Center

Digital Id

• http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.afc/afc96ran.v034

Online Format

• video