The Finley Boys

The average Western family would consider itself pretty special if it produced one rodeo star. The Finley family of Phoenix, Arizona, has turned out no less than three. There's no debating the success in the rodeo world of the three Finley brothers-Larry. 27. Frank 31, and Luther. 33.By all the accepted standards of distinction-cash winnings, prizes in kind, individual championships and fame from Madison Square Garden to Palm Springs, Californiathe Finleys rate among the topmost rodeo cowboys of the nation. They are truly a royal family of rodeo.

Larry was world's champion bareback bronc rider in 1947. Frank was runner-up twice. Luther won the world's championship in wild horse racing both in 1937 and 1939. Each of the past 10 years or so, with time out for service in the war, has seen at least one of the Finleys-and usually more-up among the first half-dozen or so money winners in the buckin'and-bulldoggin' business. And each year sees one or another of the Finley boys crashing into print for some sensational exploit in the arena.There was the time, for instance, when a maddened horse fell on Frank at the Detroit rodeo and broke his foot. Despite searing pain, he went on to ride four more broncs. After each ride, when the pick-up men had snatched him from the back of his heaving mount and eased him to the ground, his brother Larry would hustle out with a pair of crutches so Frank could hobble from the arena. He won first place in bronc riding at that show, broken foot and all.

And there was the year that Luther, wounded during the fighting in the Pacific and only five days out of a Marine hospital, broke a record at the Chicago rodeo by bulldogging a steer in the incredible time of 5.1 seconds. He went into the arena still wearing his Marine uniform because he hadn't had time to go home and fetch his rodeo working clothes, And there was the year at Madison Square Garden when Frank won first day money riding Hell's Angel, regarded by cowboys everywhere as the toughest, meanest, most incorrigible bucker that ever plowed the dirt of an arena. And the year that Larry rode the savage Scrapiron in New York to pile up the highest points garnered by any cowboy for a single ride since the Madison Square Garden first started holding rodeos.

Anyone with a grain of perception might have guessed. from watching the Finley boys growing up, that some day they would be making rodeo headlines. They could ride almost as soon as they could walk. Larry started riding at the age of 3. Frank wasn't in quite that much of a hurry. He waited until he was 4. At an age when the average kid is just beginning to get the feel of his new tricycle, the Finley boys were galloping in clouds of dust across the Arizona desert, learning to rope and riding cantankerous calves out of the shipping pens on L. L. Finley's ranch between Mesa and the storied Superstition Mountains.

Larry was yet only 9 when a calf he was riding flung itself in panic against a barn post and broke the lad's arm. This was the first of an almost endless succession of Finley bones broken in line of duty. One might even suppose that Larry was just getting in a little practice early. Since then, in addition to Larry's breaks and bruises, Frank has broken a leg, a foot and a collarbone, and Luther has broken both arms, both legs, four ribs and his skull. Yet when a Marine examining physician asked Luther if he had ever had any accidents, the taciturn cowboy replied, "Nothing to speak of."

"Any bones broken?" pursued the doctor.

"Oh, that kind," exclaimed Luther, brightening. "Sure." And he dutifully gave the amazed medic a fracture-by-fracture account, explaining that this was all part of the ups-anddowns of rodeo life. Frank was only 13 when he started rodeoing. His first show was one at Scottsdale, Arizona, and he had a brief, but very brief, ride aboard an irate bucking horse which apparently was bent on showing this brash kid that he had picked the worst possible vocation if he had any idea of living a long and peaceful life.

But a roll in the dirt on his first professional sortie wasn't enough to discourage Frank. The next year, at Prescott, the "Cowboy Capital of the World," Frank tackled Sunny Jim, a crochety Brahma bull that had never been ridden and quite obviously never intended to be. So rambunctious was Sunny Jim that the arena hands had to keep his head tied down in the chute to prevent him from leaping out, and there was a standing offer from the rodeo's sponsors of a dollar for each second that anyone stayed aboard the big fellow. Frank and Sunny Jim parted company after just 2.2 seconds. Bruised. dirty but not one bit less cocky, Frank declared as he pocketed his $2.20, "I'd a-rode him, but mah rope broke."

Larry was a comparative oldster of 15 when he took the cold plunge into the rodeo business. That was at Chandler. Arizona, and he chose to make his rodeo debut in the conventional manner-atop a buckin' horse.

The following year, on his 16th birthday, he entered at Prescott, competing with men who had been in the game 10 years or more and had scars to show for every one of them. Larry drew eight horses. One of the eight was a waspish and highly anti-social animal known as the Nevada Kid. Larry covered just about every inch of the Kid, from his head to his tail, and it turned out to be one of the most spectacular rides to which a Prescott audience had ever been treated. The horse whipped Larry around in frantic, violent circles. then leaped high into the air and landed stiff-legged with a jolt that might have cracked the hull of a battleship. For a few precarious seconds the boy was hanging on only because his chaps had become tangled around the horn of the saddle, and the crowd was beginning to wonder if this was going to be Larry Finley's last rodeo as well as his second. But Larry came out of it very much alive, landing on his feet and quite a few dollars to the good, and went on to ride five more horses.

Deciding, presumably, that he might as well try the biggest and roughest rodeo of them all while he was still young and could mend quickly, Larry went to Madison Square Garden when he was only 18. He rode every horse that he drew and won third in the "average." Old-timers, many of whom carried far less cash out of New York that year than Larry, began to take notice of this quiet, rangy youngster from Arizona. Somewhere between Frank and Larry. Luther got his start in the business, and soon he had acquired not only the customary assortment of gashes and scratches but a nickname as well. This was because of his curious mannerism in the chutes-a mannerism which could usually identify him to inveterate rodeo-goers up in the stands even though they might have missed hearing his name from the loudspeaker. Luther. a staunch believer in "safety first," even in a business whose credo is more often "safety last," would ease himself gingerly onto his hypersensitive bronc and then commence bobbing his head up and down-checking his mount, looking to see if the judges were ready, peering out to make certain the pick-up men were standing by, glancing down to see if the gatemen were ready. The cowboys decided that at such times Luther looked as much like a chipmunk as a cowboy, and "Chipmunk" Finley he became.

Although rodeoing is one of the most individualistic sports in America-essentially man against brute animal-the Finleys forge out whatever little advantage is to be had from brotherly teamwork. Frank and Larry, for instance, haze for each other in bulldogging. A hazer, for the benefit of those who aren't up on their rodeo Hoyle, is the cowboy who gallops out of the chutes abreast of the bulldogger and keeps the steer running in line so the bulldogger can tackle from the other side.

Then, too, they occasionally augment their rodeo winnings by betting on each other's performance, so great is their mutual confidence. Frank picked up a nice piece of extra change that way at the Garden two years ago. First he bet $180 that Larry would ride a rough-tough horse named Conclusion. Larry rode 'im. Then Frank bet $240 that Larry would ride another chunk of four-footed dynamite known as Kickapoo. Larry rode that one, too. The wonder of it is that any sucker would put up the kind of money that guesses a Finley is going to get bucked off. And it will be even greater wonder if Frank finds much more of that kind of money waiting around. For it is well known in the rodeo world now that Larry, riding the most wicked animals in the business from coast to coast, bucked off only one of them all last year. That was a horse named Old Black Joe, who is probably still pinching himself to make sure that he really did it.

It may surprise the casual rodeo-goer, incidentally, to know that the best bronc to ride is the one which, from the grandstand, seems to be the wildest. Luther explains it this way:

"The wild one hasn't the experience or the cunning to buck a good rider. He's just scared. But the old spoiled cow horse or plow horse, one that doesn't seem like much of a bucker, actually can recognize when the cowboy is off balance and take advantage of him.

"Same with bulldogging. The best steer, from the cowboy's point of view, is the wild one. He throws himself around violently, and all you have to do is hold onto his head and he throws himself to the ground. But the old gentle ox-four men and a kid can't throw him."

It is characteristic of all the Finleys to keep a weather eye on the business aspects of rodeo. Rodeoing is fun and it's glamorous (Larry calls it "play day every day"). But, first and foremost, it is to them a serious business. It's just a darned good way to make money-big money-the kind of money with which the Finleys are about ready to acquire their ranches.

Their versatility is one very important reason that the Finleys have been right up among the top money boys of rodeo. The mine-run cowboy limits himself to one or two events in each show and has to be of almost championship caliber in order to make rodeo pay off. The Finleys spread out. Frank has four specialties. Larry has three, and so does Luther. This way, whether or not they win any championships, they wind up the year with a very sizeable pile of chips in the bank. It's simply the application to rodeo of the technique which a merchant uses when he handles several lines of merchandise instead of only one.

Frank's specialties are saddle bronc riding, bareback, bulldogging and calf roping. You ask him which one he likes the best and he's as liable as not to reply crisply. "Whichever I can make the most money at." Spoken like a true businessman!

But even the lure of big money isn't enough to persuade the Finleys to cozy up to death any more than necessary. And that's why, when the Brahma bull riding event is called down there in the rodeo arena, you'll find the brothers sitting this one out.

"It's dangerous," says Frank. "Toughest event there is. More men are killed and hurt by bulls than all the rest of the events put together. There's no one to pick you off, as in bronc riding, because a horse won't ride up to a bull. You have to jump off, and he can gore you before you get away.

"Larry and I quit the bulls the same day, back in '40. We both got bucked off and scratched up, and we quit."

But the Finleys don't pass up many other opportunities for rodeo pay dirt. They schedule themselves carefully around the rodeo circuit, with almost the same timetable meticulousness as a lecturer or a concert singer. If there are two four-day rodeos within reasonable driving distance of each other, the Finleys will ride in one show on the first day, then dash to the other for the second and third days, and then back to the first on the fourth day.

Nor does their rodeo-business acumen end with that. When a Finley isn't working, his horse usually is "rented out" to another cowboy for a calf-roping or bulldogging event.

In a transaction of that kind the usual practice is for the owner to receive one-fourth of the money won on his mount.

"A man can make $5,000 a year just off his horses," says Frank, and then, with a wry grin, "Sometimes a horse knows more than his rider does."

And finally, to keep their rodeo books well in the black, the Finleys watch their crowds closely. Not for the applause and adulation which is so important to most people in the sports and entertainment field, for applause means little to a rodeo cowboy. In fact, rodeo audiences are noted for applauding at the wrong times-for a cowboy, say, whose ride may have seemed spectacular up in the stands but to the judges was pure turkey. No, the Finleys watch the crowds solely for size. If some particular show enjoys a large gate, they make a note to include that show in their circuit the next year, because they know the purse will be lush.

Don't let all this persuade you, though, that the brothers Finley see in rodeo nothing but a big dollar sign with a mane, a tail and four flying hooves. There's something else-something which even they cannot define.

Whatever it may be, it's magnetic enough to pull them once again each year out onto the rodeo circuit, to travel ceaselessly from Madison Square Garden to Palm Springs and back, to risk their necks on wild, contumacious horseflesh, to eat the dirt of the rodeo arena. It's a distillation of all the crowd sounds and animal smells and excitement and challenge-yes, and of the rustle of folding green.

Luther Finley says it just "gets in your blood." "Mom"

Finley wrote a little poem once, trying to capture the spirit of rodeo. She did pretty well, too, although she'd be the first to admit it's nothing fancy. This is how the poem ended: "All in all it's a life of thrills, "Of ups and downs and overs and spills; "And don't deny I oughta know. "For I've three sons in the rodeo."