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Boqué McSpadden’s famous uncle, Will Rogers (Photo courtesy of the Will Rogers Memorial Museum) |
A song written by Sharon Vaughn and made famous by Willie Nelson begins, “My heroes have always been cowboys.” For me, that line is certainly true. From the time I cut my teeth on the silver bullet of a masked Texas Ranger of the Old West until Michael and I wrote about a modern-day Texas Ranger, I have always held, and continue to hold, cowboys in the highest esteem.
While the TV cowboys from that golden era of the Western influenced me greatly, there came a time in my life when I desperately needed more than a fictional hero. I needed a true friend.
I think Junior High, now called Middle School, is an awkward time for most kids, but for me it was more than awkward; it was AWFUL. I wore corrective shoes -- those hideous black and white saddle oxfords that were jeeringly referred to as “clod-hoppers.” During the national physical fitness tests in the sixties, the school principal told me I should be ashamed for taking so long to run the course, even though each step of the race was painful. My overbite was so bad I could not close my lips over my buck teeth. One of my grandmothers repeatedly told me the braces made my teeth look rotten. The icing on the cake was a case of acne so severe kids would not sit next to me on the bus and one teacher even tried to send me home from school insisting I had chicken pox.
Then into my life rode a real live cowboy hero. His name was Boqué McSpadden and he became my friend. Well, he didn’t exactly ride in. He actually drove. He owned a big ivory-colored Ford Galaxie with a horn that didn’t honk, but bellowed like a Brahma bull.
Boqué was a nephew of Will Rogers and worked with my father at the Veterans Administration Regional Office in Muskogee, Oklahoma. His real name was Maurice Rogers McSpadden, but he always went by “Boqué.” I never asked him how he got the nickname or what it meant.
When I met Boqué around 1966 he was nearing retirement. He and his wife lived in a residential neighborhood in Muskogee, but how he looked forward to the day when he could leave the desk job behind and move to his ranch at Chelsea, Oklahoma.
Boqué spent a lot of precious time with me. He bought me a lariat and taught me to rope a bale of hay. His Christmas gift to me was a beautiful leather halter and lead strap fit for a show horse, though my mount was only a cow pony. We would sit for hours in his study and he’d tell me of the early days when he worked on the Tecolote Ranch in California. He said “tecolote” meant “little ground owl” in Spanish and he showed me his spurs with ornate silver owl heads on them. (Suppose that’s where the silver owl head adorning the cover of The Book of Good Deeds might have come from? ;-) He loved Western art and told me about the artist Charles M. Russell. A Russell print he gave me hangs in our foyer today. And he gave me books, LOTS of books, about the West. He took Mama, Daddy and me to the roundup at his ranch and to the Woolaroc Museum in Bartlesville.
Of course, he shared memories of his famous uncle. Through Boqué I almost felt as if I had known Will Rogers. When Mama, Daddy and I went with him to the Will Rogers Memorial, Boqué took us into the back rooms and we saw things only a privileged few were allowed to view.
“Ghost Riders in the Sky” was Boqué’s favorite song. He said whoever wrote it truly understood the heart of a cowboy. Mama bought the sheet music and I tried to play it for him on my accordion. I played terribly, but Boqué applauded anyway.
In his whole life, Boqué had never gone fishin’. There was a pond on his ranch and he thought he might give it a try after he retired so I bought him a rod and Zebco spinning reel. We went down to the pond in our pasture one day so I could show him how to cast, but Boqué didn’t seem to be quite himself. He suggested we drive his Ford the mere quarter mile instead of walking. As so many people did then before the dangers of tobacco were fully known, Boqué smoked. Soon we learned he had lung cancer and it was in the advanced stages.
The Lord called Boqué home on April 25, 1968. He never got to retire or move to his ranch. He did, however, go fishing one more time. I miss him still and will be forever grateful for the good deeds he unselfishly showered on me.
In tribute to Boqué, Michael and I named the kindly Western novelist in our “Code of the West” episode of Walker, Texas Ranger “Judge McSpadden.”
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I have kept this print titled “Reflections” by Keith Avery since the late 1960s when I tore it from a Western Horseman calendar because it reminded me of Boqué McSpadden and his favorite song “Ghost Riders in the Sky.” |
Sadly, I have not a single photo of Boqué, but I hold his memory fresh and dear in my heart. I have scoured the Internet for one, but found only a picture of his gravestone. What a lesson this has taught me about the importance of taking pictures of those dear to you!
