The Rankin All-Kid Rodeo has been held in this tiny Texas town since 1952. Now it is held at the Dub Day Arena just west of town.
In 2010 the All-Kid Rodeo was awarded a historic marker. In response, a columnist from the Midland newspaper profiled the event and participants.
From the Midland Reporter-Telegram: (
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All-Kid Rodeo marker is celebrated, Tommy Owens sings ‘Keeper of My Heart’
Ed Todd
Midland Reporter-Telegram
Posted: Wednesday, October 27, 2010 9:30 pm
RANKIN — In 1952, at the curious age of 10 some 58 years ago, Walton “Bud” Poage and sidekick Mac Yocham figured that enterprising youngsters such as they could get into something worth their while in a rodeo arena.
“We kind of ran around with a crowd of old-timers who made us think we could do anything,” recalled the lanky 6-foot-1 Poage, a rancher who competed in rodeos.
And so they did, with “anything” being a rodeo for boys and girls in ranching and oilfield country south of Midland.
The idea was the beginning of the enterprising All-Kid Rodeo that began with a “unique rodeo” event sparked by youngsters’ playful imagination and derring-do games.
In the beginning, the youngsters gathered around an ant bed.
“The last one that got stung was the winner,” Poage said at the recent dedication of the Texas Historical Marker commemorating the community’s All-Kid Rodeo held each June since 1952.
From drafting ants for their first rodeo, the youngsters went on to compete in such events as calf roping, goat roping, ribbon roping, steer riding, barrel racing, team roping, boot scramble and the greased-pig race sponsored by Mauldin Boot Shop.
In 1953, the Upton County 4-H Club took on sponsorship of the All-Kid Rodeo under the leadership W.M. “Dub” Day, the congenial “boss”’ of the All-Kid Rodeo and the first-production’s “chute boss.”
Kid-friendly prizes included saddle soap, hair tonic, Levi’s blue jeans and shoe polish.
By 1954, the event was attracting 1,500 spectators and was directed by Day, the community’s agricultural agent from the early 1950s until his death at age 53 in 1978.
“For nearly 60 years, the Rankin All-Kid Rodeo has upheld the community’s ranching traditions and strong sense of family,” Tom Craddick, a Texas legislator based in Midland, said in a State of Texas resolution. The rodeo is held in the Dub Day Arena just west of town.
“Dub Day helped us a lot, my dad, the merchants,” Poage recalled.
Early-day adult leaders in the rodeo, according to “History of the ‘All-Kid Rodeo,’” included Walt Poage, Lloyd Yocham, J.D. Shipp, Louis and Lucille Mauldin, Allen Holder, Jay and Velma Lane, Preston Patton, John Ivy, Grimm Taylor, John D. Holleyman, Charlie Campbell, Tom Workman, Margaret Owens, Tom Owens, Jiggs Barfield, Harry and Mabel Howard, and Day.
The youthful cowboy and cowgirl contestants from Rankin, McCamey and neighboring towns included San Angelo’s Richard Gray, who won the 1952 All-Around Cowboy title, and Bud Poage, Mac Yocham (who became the Somervell County sheriff based in Glen Rose), Jack McCain, Archie Higgins, Clifford Chandler, Clifford Brown, Frank and John Boyd, Mike Collins, Johnny Mauldin, Johnny and Babs Barfield, Teed Boyd, Owen Gray Jr., Bill Dolan, Genevieve Poage, Mary Beth and Janey Shipp, Joyce Autrey, Sis and Doug Miller, Scotty and Saundra Howard, and Johnny and Sister Ivy. Grimm Taylor was the rodeo’s first timekeeper. J.D. “Jake” Shipp was the first announcer, Jay Lane flagged the timed events, Enoch Smith and John Ivy were the bucking judges, Walt Poage was the stock contractor, and Velma Lane and Mabel Howard kept the books.
Rather than an admission charge, the “hat” was passed. Rodeogoers were “very generous.”
McCamey’s Peggy Kelton, the Upton County Historical Commission chairwoman who researched the rodeo’s history, applied for the Texas Historical Marker for the All-Kid Rodeo just as she did in securing the 2007 marker for the Midkiff community’s “Hadacol Corner” and its Calcote Café dating to the Spraberry oil boom of the 1950s and the 2008 marker for the T.P. Tavern, a popular McCamey honky-tonk way “back when.”
The Poage-Yocham 1952 idea for the All-Kid Rodeo coincided with the founding of the American Junior Rodeo Association.
The All-Kid Rodeo produced several youngsters who developed into world-class rodeo athletes, including 32-year-old Cody Owens, son of Tommy and Edra Owens, who is a champion calf-roper in the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association. His sister, Shanna Coker, 35, who also performed in rodeos, is a school principal and assistant superintend in Millsap.
Their father, Tommy Owens, is a rancher, rodeo stock producer through his Circle T Rodeo Company, Upton County commissioner, former rodeo performer (calf roper, steer roper, bare-back bronco rider and rodeo clown) and, in 2008, he was inducted into the Texas Rodeo Cowboy Hall of Fame.
The 70-year-old Owens, a singer-guitarist who performs ballads and Old West tunes and honky-tonk songs, performed at Midkiff’s Hadacol Corner and McCamey’s T.P. Tavern dedications, also was “on stage” singing and strumming at the Rankin All-Kid Rodeo dedication.
Owens, sentimental and personable, sang Bob Wills’s Western swing song “Keeper of My Heart” (“Without your love, life’s no good for me, you see”) and “Sioux City Sue,” sung long ago by the singing movie cowboy, Gene Autry, that goes something like this:
Sioux City Sue, Sioux City Sue,
Your hair is red.
Your eyes are blue
I’d swap my horse and dog for you
There ain’t no gal as true as my sweet Sioux City Sue."
Ed Todd is a writer for The Midland Reporter-Telegram."