Palo Pinto County Livestock Show: Chuckwagon Cook’s Camp Rules Reach Forty-One
Volunteer Cook Parks a Goodnight-Style Wagon Outside the Mineral Wells Expo Center, Posts Ten Camp Rules, and Amends Them Every Time Show Week Happens
MINERAL WELLS, Texas — A volunteer chuckwagon cook who parked a restored, iron-tired wagon outside the PPCLA Expo Center for the Palo Pinto County Livestock Show posted ten camp rules on his chuck box Monday evening. By the end of Saturday’s Premium Sale there were forty-one, each added in grease pencil by a man who says he has not lost an argument with a trail hand since 1987.
The cook has fed branding crews across the Palo Pinto Mountains for four decades and volunteered, he says, out of history. Charles Goodnight came back to Palo Pinto County in 1864, and two years later, on his first drive with Oliver Loving, he is credited with creating the chuckwagon.
“This is where the wagon comes from,” the cook told Farm.FM, pouring coffee the color of a stock tank after a rain. “About time one saw a livestock show.”
The Original Ten Camp Rules
- The cook is the boss.
- Nobody rides upwind of the wagon.
- Nobody kicks up dust within fifty feet of the fire.
- Nobody touches the coffee pot but the cook.
- Nobody eats until the cattle are bedded down.
- Whoever complains about the food cooks tomorrow.
- No hats on the chuck box.
- Water is for the coffee first and everybody else after.
- Breakfast is at 4:30. It was at 4:30 for Goodnight.
- What happens on the drive stays on the drive.
Tuesday: Rabbits, a Welder and Rule 13
Rabbit weigh-in opened at 7 a.m. By 7:40 the cook had posted Rule 11: “Rabbits are not a herd. Do not try to drive them.”
The 2027 rule book says pens will not be provided for rabbits, and a market rabbit may weigh no more than 5 1/2 pounds. The cook watched one 4-H junior carry her club’s entire market rabbit entry in a single crate, under one arm, while drinking hot chocolate with the other. Rule 12: “Rabbit hands eat first. They brought in the whole herd before breakfast.”
On their way to the Ag Mechanics project show, three FFA members noticed a cracked felloe on the wagon’s left rear wheel and fixed it over lunch with the portable welder they had brought for their own project. Rule 13: “The cook is the boss, except of the wheel.”
Wednesday: Goats and the Dust Question
Market goats and lambs must be slick shorn, and the rule book requires all lambs, goats and pigs to be clipped outside the barn. Outside the barn turned out to be beside the wagon.
Rule 15: “Clipping is to be done downwind.” Rule 16, eleven minutes later: “There is no downwind. In January the Palo Pinto County wind comes from every direction at once, and all of it comes here.”
Thursday: Swine and the Water Ruling
The cook deeply respects one line of the rule book: “Pigs can be sprayed down with water only, nothing else.” During swine weigh-in he found his water barrel half empty.
A Graford FFA sophomore explained, courteously, that two barrows had been sprayed with water only, as required, and the rule book did not say whose. Rule 18: “The water barrel is not water. It is coffee that hasn’t happened yet.”
Mineral Wells was built on its water, and the Crazy Water Bottling Company is on the buyer list, so an exhibitor offered him a case of bottled. He declined. “Goodnight didn’t have a brand of water,” he said. “He had a creek and an opinion.”
Thursday also produced the first Rule 5 crisis. Show cattle stand under box fans on clean shavings looking as if they expect a valet. They do not bed down in any way a trail cook recognizes. Nobody ate supper.
Friday: The Palo Pinto County Cattle Show Defeats Rule 3
Steers weighed in against a 900-pound minimum. Then came four words in the rule book that undid the camp: “Cattle blow and show.”
By 10 a.m. a blower roared in every cattle pen, each strong enough to roll a round bale (the county grows 19,056 acres of hay; he knows round bales). The dust rule failed by 10:04. By 10:06 the fire was a forge. His biscuits baked in four minutes, the best of his life. Rule 19: “Rule 3 is repealed for cattle. Blowers may approach the fire if they point at it.”
The rule book assigns cattle areas by town, so after consulting Santo, Strawn, Gordon, Mingus, Graford, Palo Pinto and Mineral Wells, the cook posted Rule 20: “Strawn is upwind until further notice.”
At the Floral Cup, young designers had one hour to build arrangements that, under the rules, remain property of the PPCLA. A senior built a spare for the wagon from leftover greenery, a stem from the county’s 2,712 acres of wheat, and a sprig of sage off the chuck box. Rule 21: “No hats on the chuck box. Flowers are allowed.”
Rule 5 was solved at 5:58 p.m. by a 4-H junior with a bag of pine shavings. She spread a fresh layer in every cattle pen on the aisle, walked to the wagon, and reported: “Cattle bedded.” Rule 22: “Bedded means bedded.” The supper line moved at 6:01.
Saturday: The Livestock Show Premium Sale and Rule 41
Breakfast went out at 4:30 a.m. The premium sale, where organizers have long asked for more buyers, opened at 9:30. By then Rule 26 read, “Glitter is prohibited at the show and sale, and now at the biscuits,” and Rule 31 read, “The classifier’s decision is final. He may have seconds without speaking.” The rule book forbids communication with the classifier before, during or after the show. He ate eleven meals at the wagon by pointing.
Everything must leave the Expo Center by the end of sale day. The cook was loading the coffee pot when the three welders returned with the Ag Mechanics rules, posted through the Palo Pinto County AgriLife Extension office.
They pointed to Division 6, Restoration Projects without motors. Construction starts April 1. Entries need a drawn plan, photographs of each stage, a complete bill of materials, and a letter disclosing help from any outside source. The outside source, they explained, would be him.
The cook noted that projects must be functional, and his wagon has been functional since before their ag teacher was born. The students pointed at Tuesday’s wheel.
Rule 41 went up at 3:15 p.m. as the last trailer pulled out: “The cook is the boss until April 1. After that he is a disclosed outside source.” The students unscrewed the board for their portfolio as Exhibit A: Original Specifications. The cook has started a new one.
Five Humorous Observations About Texas 4-H Livestock Shows
- The chuckwagon was born on the trail to New Mexico. Its first Palo Pinto County show job was feeding a crate of rabbits without a pen. Goodnight crossed the Pecos for that.
- Rule 3 banned dust near the fire. Friday showed up with forty blowers and made him the best biscuits of his life. “Cattle blow and show.” Nobody told him that included the fire.
- Nobody eats until the cattle are bedded down. A ten-year-old read that, grabbed a bag of shavings, and fed the whole camp by 6:01. That girl will run a show office someday, on time.
- The classifier can’t talk to anybody before, during or after the show. Eleven meals by pointing. On Saturday he gave the coffee pot a thumbs-up, the closest anyone came to breaking Rule 4.
- Forty-one rules in five days, and he still lost his wagon to three teenagers with a welder and a bill of materials. In Palo Pinto County that isn’t a defeat. That’s a succession plan.