CATEGORY: HIGH SCHOOL
PHOTO: ROSS DOLLARHIDE IN CENTER

I met Ross Dollarhide at the Sherman County Fair Dance that I attended with Harold Arstel.  I was wearing a dress that I would have been embarrassed to wear again–ever.  I had designed and made it myself out of heavy black satin, thinking it was so sophisticated.  It was much too sophisticated for a 17 year old girl.  It was not low cut: in fact it had a high “Catholic priest” neck, but it had slits radiating out from the neck band, one of them center front.  That slit would have shown my white bra.  I didn’t have a black bra, so I chose to go without a bra at all.  Same with wearing a slip; it would have shown at the neck.  And the seams of my panties would have shown through the fabric.  So, guess what?  No bra, no slip and no panties = 0.  When I see each year’s crop of Academy Award gowns on the internet, it is obvious that they don’t have anything on under them either.  I think, HA! they have nothing on me! (excuse the pun).  But this is now, and that was 1947. Well maybe I am still embarrassed at the memory, and it wasn’t as bad as I thought.  My body was very firm (from all those years of jumping out of barns, making hay and playing high school sports): plus, Harold liked the dress, and he was OH, SO, conservative.

I saw this MAN the minute he walked in the door.  He was obviously a cowboy from the rodeo that was in Moro for the fair.  He was with some other rodeo cowboys.  I stared at him over Harold’s shoulder.  I had never seen anyone so marvelous.  Well, Harold was good looking too, but, whoof, what can I say?  This guy had brown hair bleached by the sun and he was shaped like a wedge.  He was shaped like an up-side-down bowling pin cut off at the widest circumference with an elongated cube added for a head and neck–because even his neck had muscles.  I could see the rest of his muscles through his clothing.  (Well there we had something in common!)  The first thing he did was come right out on the dance floor and cut in on Harold.

I could hardly breathe!  I was giddy with euphoria.  When I put my hand on his shoulder, his shoulder came out to meet it.  I had seen his muscles through his shirt, but now I could feel his muscles through his shirt.  He was so polite and seemingly shy even if he had cut in so boldly: a deadly combination.  We kept shyly glancing at each other.  He looked like he was about nineteen or maybe twenty.  He told me his name was Ross Dollarhide.  He said he was a bulldogger.  “Bulldogger” was cowboy talk for Steer Wrestler.  He said he lived on the MC ranch east of Lakeview.  I later found out it was one of the largest ranches in Oregon.  I must have told him my name too, but I can’t remember anything I said.  I was completely mesmerized.

Surprisingly, he was a good dancer.  He could do side steps and pivots.  I wondered where this cowboy from the MC ranch, a hundred miles from nowhere, had learned such slick steps.  The dance ended, and as soon as the next one started, and I was dancing with Harold, Ross cut in again.  He kept doing this all evening until Harold was seething and took me home.

The next day I went to the rodeo and watched Ross turn bulls up-side-down.  I never saw him again, but I have never forgotten him.  Much later, when I read HOLE IN THE SKY, the autobiography of Will Kittredge who’s father owned the MC, I found out more about Ross.  Ross’s father, Ross Dollarhide Senior, was the cattle boss of the MC.  He had been a famous rodeo cowboy and had been inducted into the Buckaroo Hall of Fame.  Ross Junior had been All American Cowboy and world champion steer wrestler in 1953.  Then he had gone to Hollywood and been a stand-in and stunt man in the movies.  He was featured in ads on television for Ford trucks.  If I had ever watched TV (I hated TV), I would have seen him.  He was killed in his role as stunt man when the horse he was riding stepped in a badger hole during a stampede.  He thought he had broken ribs, was taken to the hospital where the x-ray machine was broken down.  He was told to come back in the morning.  He died that night.  He had suffered an internal injury and internal bleeding.

In HOLE IN THE SKY, Will Kittridge also wrote that Ross Jr. liked to get into fights with equally brawny guys in the back alleys behind bars and outside dance halls.  AH HA!  Harold was six foot three and probably weighed as much as Ross, albeit with the weight not quite in the same places.  Could Ross’ target have been Harold instead of me?  Oof!  Such a blow to my ego!