Country Lifestyles
June 2016 Profile – The man behind the mic: Bob Tallman
By Jessica Crabtree
You know his voice almost immediately after he utters one word. It’s filled with his grizzly drawl and diction. You recognize it whether it’s at the Fort Worth Stock Show and Rodeo, Houston, Reno, Calgary or even the National Finals in Las Vegas. With a voice known as “The Voice of Professional Rodeo,” handle-bar mustache and cowboy hat, who is Bob Tallman?
Tallman wasn’t born in Texas, but after spending more than 40 years here, who would know? Born October 25, 1947, in Winnemucca, Nev., his raising was in northern Nevada on a cow/calf operation. Tallman is a fifth generation cattleman. With a younger sister, the family lived in a home with no electricity or running water. He attended a one-room school until the fifth grade that started in April and let out in September, in correlation to ranch gatherings and cattle works. The teacher, a lady, was also a buckaroo, though all were. That was their lifestyle.
“It was a buckaroo outfit, a rodeo every morning! I didn’t know a Shetland pony existed until college. My dad didn’t start a colt before the age of five,” Tallman laughed. Moving in the sixth grade, Tallman recalls several humorous memories from his childhood. “I played football three days; my friends beat the fire out of me. I thought, ‘I can rope and ride and enjoy it,”” That was all the football Tallman could stand. Roping and riding was more his style.
In ’66, Tallman attended college at Cal Poly. Leasing a ranch and working the sale barn, he added trading cattle and horses, Tallman admitted he soon forgot why he was there. He later transferred to the University of Nevada. To read more pick up a copy of the June 2016 issue.
By Nicholas Waters
As winter plods along – come Spring and gopher mounds – homeowners and farmers find themselves playing a familiar song – fiddling while Rome is burning.
Let’s make a mountain out of a molehill. Those mounds on your lawn and pasture could be moles, but they’re more than likely gophers; Plains Pocket Gophers to be pragmatic – Geomys bursarius to be scientific.
These rodents dig and chew, and the damage they can do goes beyond the mounds we mow over. Iowa State University cited a study in Nebraska showing a 35 percent loss in irrigated alfalfa fields due to the presence of pocket gophers; the number jumped to 46 percent in decreased production of non-irrigated alfalfa fields.
The internet is replete with academic research from coast-to-coast on how to curtail gopher populations, or at least control them. Kansas State University – then called Kansas State Agricultural College – also published a book [Bulletin 152] in February 1908 focused exclusively on the pocket gopher.
To read more, pick up a copy of the April issue of NTFR magazine. To subscribe by mail, call 940-872-5922.
By Annette Bridges
Everyone needs a room with a view that makes their heart happy. My honest favorite panorama would be either the mountains or the ocean. I have yet to convince my hubby to make permanent moves to either, although he does enjoy the visits as much as I do.
The location of our house on our ranch does not provide the expansive field of vision of our land that I would enjoy. So, I have created a room decorated and furnished in a way that gives me smiles, giggles, and a wonderful peace-filled feeling when I am hanging out in it. I am in that place right now writing this column. I am in a lounging position with my computer in my lap on the chaise that was once my sweet mama’s. I had it reupholstered this year to give it a fresh look.
To read more, pick up a copy of the April issue of NTFR magazine. To subscribe by mail, call 940-872-5922.
Local celebrity dancers of the greater Gainesville area brought the house down recently at the second annual “Dancing With Our Stars” contest in Lindsay. The event raised more than $200,000 as the sponsored dance teams did their best to take home the grand prize.
The money raised will go to the “Heart of NTMC” Campaign for the purchase of a cardiac capable CT machine for the Gainesville hospital. Rodolfo “Rudy” Martinez and Sherry Sherriden took home the Mirror Ball Trophy.
To read more, pick up a copy of the April issue of NTFR magazine. To subscribe by mail, call 940-872-5922.
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