I was at Mom and Dad’s house one day in 2015, when Gene started talking about his childhood horse. I pulled out my smartphone and began to make a video. The horse was named Buck. Gene’s dad, Everett, bought Buck, “from a guy somewhere. I think he was over off of [Highway] 19 somewhere. I never did know who it [was]. . . . He bought another one, old Buster.” Gene could not remember much about Buck other than that the previous owner claimed he had been used in a rodeo.

“He was a good [horse],” Gene said. “You would get after a cow. Dad had cows up in the sand hills back then–you’d get after a cow, just show him [Buck] which one you wanted and all you had to do was hang on.”

I asked Dad how you showed a horse which cow to cut out from the rest. “Oh, you just go in there and cut him out.”

Ferrell: “And he figures it out?”

Gene: “Yeah. You’re wanting to pen that one cow or something, you know.”

[Source: Gene Foster interviewed by Ferrell Foster, Jr., October 2, 2015, at Gene’s house on FM 316 southwest of Eustace. Edited transcript from four video segments.]

Copyright © 2020 Ferrell Foster