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Date Posted: 16:34:49 09/11/06 Mon
Author: Crystal
Subject: Article from Lewiston Round Up inside....>>>>
In reply to: Varmit 's message, "Good cartoon" on 15:58:28 09/11/06 Mon

Retired cowboy catches the current to Lewiston


By ANDREA HEISINGER
of the tribune

His first brush with the Lewiston Roundup was when he would get up at 3 a.m. to clean horse stalls on the grounds as a child, and more than a decade later it would be the first rodeo Clyde Longfellow entered as a saddle bronc rider.

At the age of 64, he is retired from the sport. His last performance at the Roundup was in 1999, and although Longfellow now lives in Hermiston, Ore., he comes back nearly every year for his favorite rodeo.

"You don't forget your first rodeo," he said before Saturday night's performance.

"You always dream of entering your hometown rodeo."

No one else in his family was into rodeo growing up, but an aunt bought him a horse to ride. He kept it at the Roundup grounds that were then in North Lewiston.

"I didn't grow up a cowboy, but I made myself one," he said.

"Once you're a cowboy, you're always a cowboy."

He admits his first two or three times riding saddle bronc weren't pretty, saying "they knocked the dirt in my face."

He became a professional cowboy in 1965 after winning an amateur saddle bronc competition. Throughout his rodeo career he almost exclusively rode the bucking horses, with brief forays into amateur bull riding and bareback riding.

He said he's always liked saddle bronc because of heroes he had growing up.

"It's the classic event of rodeo," Longfellow said.

When he wasn't going to rodeos, he was driving trucks for 20 to 25 years. It was ultimately one career that led to the end of the other.

He was driving a truck, and a drunk driver pulled in front of him causing an accident. Injuries from this eventually forced him to give up entering rodeos. He still gets his fix, though, acting as rodeo director in Union, Ore. His wife, Edie Longfellow, is a rodeo secretary for the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association, and works at the Roundup.

The Roundup was kind to Longfellow at least twice when he won the saddle bronc competition.

"That was probably my main goal in my life of rodeo was to win the saddle bronc riding here at home," he said.

"I don't know how that compares to winning the world (championship), but to me it's the maximum."

After he could no longer compete in rodeos, he said he had to figure out something else to occupy his time. Since he was a boy and took a trip across the ocean, he had always had a thought in the back of his mind that he would like to someday repeat the experience.

He took sailing lessons and last year bought a sailboat while visiting San Diego. Rather than pay to have it transported, he opted to sail it up the coast.

"I just put it in the ocean and turned right," he said.

The trip took him about five weeks, and he's taken other shorter trips, always by himself because his wife won't set foot on the boat, he said.

Longfellow has found a parallel between rodeos and sailing.

"The whole Western way of life is friendly," he said.

"That's why I like sailing. Sailors will always help each other out, just like cowboys."

------

Heisinger may be contacted at andreah@lmtribune.com or at (208) 743-9600, ext. 278.

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