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Growing Our Future
Growing Our Future
I Wanted to be a Cowboy
In this episode of the Growing Our Future podcast, host Aaron Alejandro engages with legendary rodeo announcer Bob Tallman, exploring themes of gratitude, agricultural heritage, and the importance of education in agriculture. They discuss the role of organizations like 4-H and FFA in shaping young people's futures, the challenges facing the agricultural industry, and the need for conservation and resource management. The conversation emphasizes the significance of understanding where our food comes from and the opportunities available in agricultural careers.
Story Notes:
- The Importance of Gratitude in Agriculture
- Personal Stories and Agricultural Heritage
- Understanding Agriculture and Food Production
- The Future of Food and Agricultural Careers
- Conservation and Resource Management in Agriculture
- The Impact of Waste in Food Production
- Water Conservation and Its Importance
Learn more at MyTexasFFA.org
Welcome to the Growing Our Future podcast. In this show, the Texas FFA Foundation will take on a journey of exploration into agricultural science, education, leadership development and insights from subject matter experts and sponsors who provide the fuel to make dreams come true. Here's your host, Aaron Alejandro.
Speaker 2:Well, good morning, good afternoon or good evening, or whenever you may be tuning in to the Growing Our Future podcast. Hey, listen, number one, we want to say thank you for stopping by. You know time's the only thing. We can't save it. All we can do is spend it. So the fact that you're willing to share a little of your time with us, trust me, we're honored. We're also honored because this show brings on some incredible guests.
Speaker 2:You know Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln used to say that the philosophy of the school room in one generation will be the philosophy of government in the next. Now, let that sink in. The will be the philosophy of government in the next. Now, let that sink in. The philosophy of the schoolroom in one generation will be philosophy of government in the next. So when I think about the future, I think about agriculture and I tell people, if agriculture has taught me anything, it's taught me this If you want to know what the future is, grow it. Well, how do you grow it? You got to plant the right seeds, you got to nurture those seeds and then you got to harvest it and share it with others.
Speaker 2:The reason I enjoy this show is because we get to bring on incredible guests, guests that share their experiences, their insights, their seeds of greatness that we can put in place in our lives and share with others. I am so excited for today's guest y'all. I got to tell you I'm going to try not to fanboy it here, but I may fanboy it a little bit because I am in awe of this man's career. I'm inspired by his passion for agriculture and I'm taken by his incredible heart for others. Ladies and gentlemen, legendary rodeo announcer, bob Tallman. Bob, thank you for being with us today, thank you.
Speaker 3:Cowboy. Thank you, I like it. I love it, I love it. You know I'm big on Jesus, big on agriculture, big on America. So God bless America and God bless Texas and I know this will go outside Sure Texas, and I was born and raised in Nevada, nevada.
Speaker 2:Nevada.
Speaker 1:Nevada.
Speaker 3:And there's some pictures behind me of my great great uncle, 1903 in Denial, nevada. He came, he raised horses for uh the cavalry in butte montana and there was a uh scuffle so he left with about 150 mares and 20 studs and 10 dogs 1600 miles. He drove them horses to nevada. I was raised in a place called four vada, nevada, 55 miles outside of Winnemucca. W-i-n-n-e-m-u-c-c-a stands for one moccasin, because Chief Winnemucca is a Pied Indian chief there and he was in World War I and he got his foot shot off so he only had to wear one moccasin. Cool people, pied Indians, you said about raising kids in agriculture. We're ready to go.
Speaker 2:Okay. So before I get you wound up, let me ask you one question, because every one of these episodes, every episode of the Growing Our Future podcast, I ask all the guests the same question. I'm going to ask you the question. You ready? Here it is Bob Tallman. What are you grateful for today?
Speaker 3:Oh, life, life, God's abundance. Family, my family, my friends, we're in agriculture. My grandkids now are seventh generation agriculture, blessed, blessed, blessed, blessed. As you well know, I'm not very technical and had help setting up this podcast with you, with Jordan Jo Hollibaugh, who does all my social media stuff and she's a pretty cool lady Mary Doream and Hollibaugh rodeo people and breakaway ropers and horse people and so forth, but seven generations of us. The next room, in the tack room, I've got brands that go back to 1894 246, which was the cavalry brand for those horses he raised in montana. Je, my mom and dad's brand, three-quarter circle T and now 3T, our brand. It's like Rodeo Houston, everybody's got a brand.
Speaker 3:Okay, where I was raised, aaron, I went to a one-room schoolhouse, no electricity, two-hole route house out in the back, eight, nine, 10 kids every year, mostly girls, and when the bus ran, ran, we went to school and the teacher lived with us and had eight grades and so if you're going to go on to high school, you had to go to winnemore, mcdermott or someplace like that. I can remember as a kid, school got out in April because we had to take the cattle to the mountain. No fences, no fences. 15 ranches all put their cattle together and went to the mountain for the summer and school didn't start till October because after Labor Day by the time you got all the cattle separated and everything had been branded in the spring and you got your cattle home. Kids had to go as a hand. They paid them in those days $2 a day to buckaroo Pretty good deal. But gas, if you could find it, cost 15 cents a gallon. So I can remember I used to love to go to the chicken yard with my grandmother and we had, oh I mean probably 100 chicken, around 500 head of sheep and 800 head of cows, and I can remember going in that chicken yard with a stick and drawing pictures of pastures, corrals, places to work cattle, because every place you build a set of crows on that ranch and those other ranches always had a creek running through it so you had water in it and the milk barn, milking barn, was right there. Normally the slaughterhouse was right over there. Being in the beef business today, I've been watching cattle, lamb, hogs, deer, trout All my life.
Speaker 3:You lived off the land so I didn't know the word agriculture, had no clue about it. Nobody ever talked about agriculture. We talked about ranching livestock horses. Everything we did was big horse m mules. I hated them. They were mean, they bite you, kick you, strike you, and we did everything with sickle bar, mowers and dump breaks and my mom drove them just like everybody else. And so when we'd sit down at the table there might be 15 men me and my little sister then she's just a baby and my mom and my grandmother and they were swiss, italian came from the old country to ellis island 1911 and there they were in their dresses. My mom and my grandmother always wore dresses and they had a rosary and they prayed while they cooked. They prayed while they made cream, prayed while they make butter. It was just something that you got used to in life, and sometimes on Sundays my grandmother would drive me to Winnemucca 54 miles A lot of it was a gravel road then church where I was born, baptized, confirmed and married 54 years ago now. So the history in all of that agriculture was not discussed Wrenchy.
Speaker 3:Then I moved to town. My dad broke his back horse bucked him off and he broke his back and he tried it for a year in a body cast. I remember cutting green willows and running them up and down. That back of his cast, couldn't take it. No more. He couldn't drive a team, couldn't run. You know, put hay up with a dairy. So we moved to town. We moved to town. I joined 4-h. We didn't have ffa, it's great, 2,500 people. Kirk day, my first 4-H leader and he was, as you and I know, thousands of them he was the head of the agricultural district in Humboldt County, nevada Changed my life.
Speaker 3:I didn't know what record keeping was. I didn't know what a record book was. I didn't know what making a speech in public was. But being an old BSer now I was a bsr as a kid got one fist fight by accident, knocked a guy out with a cast ahead on a broken arm. So I wasn't a big guy, I was a little kid. But 4-h changed my life. I did everything, everything you could do in 4-H, including home ec. Well, as time went on and I got into high school, I tried football for three days. That didn't work. So I started to rope because I was raised doing that kind of stuff and as I got ready then later to go to college, I went to Cal Poly. I was going to go to Sol Ross.
Speaker 3:I had a girlfriend change my mind. I went to Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, california, for a year. Yeah, what did?
Speaker 3:I do when I got there Agriculture I got the cap contract, steer contract, took care of all of the livestock at the Poly arena. Worked in a feed mill on Monday nights all night cleaning. Worked in a feed mill on Monday nights all night cleaning it so we could have all the free feed pelletized that we wanted to feed our cows and steers. And on Tuesday nights we worked in Buelton, california, south of Cal Poly, um, in a sale barn so we could buy all the killer horses first and go to the and do that kind of thing. So agriculture took over and I learned, I think, in my early days, about agriculture because every pamphlet I looked at, read, talked about or was lectured by, had to do with agriculture, didn't just say farming or ranching, it said agriculture in its entire sphere. Pardon me for taking so long to get to all of that, but I mean that was, you know, 20 years of my life and from that point on until I came to Texas oh, by the way, I've been in FFA 45 years.
Speaker 2:You're a great supporter, by the way, and we appreciate you more than you will ever know. When you talked about what you were grateful for your family, your country I'm with you. I love the fact that we have this incredible liberty, and the reason that we do that, bob, the reason we start every podcast with that, is because you know the great, you remember the great Zig Ziglar, the motivational speaker.
Speaker 2:Oh yes, his son, tom Ziglar, is on my board of directors. And so Tom and I were talking one day and he was up on the East Coast and he was talking to these kids and he asked them this question. He said how do you feel when you're grateful about things? And the kid said well, you know, I feel good, I feel positive, I feel hopeful, and he goes through all of these words and emotions associated with the word grateful. And then he asked him this question. He said what is the opposite of gratitude? And the room got quiet and the kids were thinking. And finally he said and the kids were thinking, and finally he said the opposite of gratitude is entitlement. And watch what happens to your attitude. Well, that's not fair. That's mine, give that to me. You go from a place of being hopeful, optimistic and visionary to a place of a little bit of self-centeredness, a little bit of negativity, a little bit of anger, maybe even some hatred. So I think, when we can teach young people to that, bob Tomlin, look at this. This is an accomplished man. I mean, he's a legend, I mean he's. There's no way we could give you all of his awards. But what did he start off with? Gratitude. And so, bob, part of these dialogues that we have on this show and you're already doing it. So, as you were telling your story, one of the things that I like about bringing people on and letting them share their story is you find all these little tidbits in their testimonies, call them seeds of greatness. And as you were sharing, you were talking about that.
Speaker 2:I sure hope people heard some things, because I'm gonna tell you what I heard. Number one you were willing to sign up for something. You stepped out on on a limb. That limb was called 4-h. You probably had to stir up a little confidence to get up and say something for the first time. Let me tell you something life is that way we we've got to sometimes. You know one of the things that I've confidence to get up and say something for the first time. Let me tell you something Life is that way We've got to sometimes. You know, one of the things that I've written about, bob, is I tell people life is like a calf scramble and there's a lot of people don't even sign up. And then those that sign up, when you show up, you better chase, you better run and you better not quit running until the final calf's caught. But if you catch, that's when the real work begins.
Speaker 3:You bet.
Speaker 2:Life's the same way. There's some people I don't even know if they really sign up, and then there's some that sign up but they don't hustle, they don't run, and then some people chase their dreams and they catch them, and that's where the work begins. And your story that already we're going to get into it more, but your story already is already an example of all that. So that's why I like to start with gratitude. So thank you so much for sharing, you know, your faith, your country, your family, because those are all things that I'm grateful for as well and they make me hopeful.
Speaker 3:Can.
Speaker 3:I ask you a question. Just let me make a statement. Two things Sure. Number one time is a non-renewable natural resource. Once it's gone, you don't get it back. So in that frame, be positive, be grateful, be leading for somebody's career if it's not your own. The second thing is you don't understand winning if you lose the first time and you don't try again. Know what a winner is. Know what a winner is. A winner is a person, a horse, turtle that becomes a winner because they lost, they lost, they lost and they tried again. Never give up. Never give up and the gratefulness that we all need to have. That's how you earn grace from our Lord and Savior Jesus.
Speaker 2:Christ man, I'm writing notes, because that was really good that was good.
Speaker 3:I think about it every day you have this incredible kickoff.
Speaker 2:It sounds like you learned some work ethic early on. You learned you know something else that you said. I wanted to mention this to you because this is a. This is a little tip that I use with the kids. I don't necessarily personally, I don't like it. When I get into discussions and the kids will say the word ag, they'll say the words ag, industry, and I always tell them. I said, let me tell you something. Number one I don't know any industry, but I sure know a lot of farmers and ranchers that raise some good food, and so I like to personalize it all the way down to farmers and ranchers. And here's the reason why when you use the word agriculture, back in about 2017, they did a survey of Americans. Did you know that 79% of Americans did not know what agriculture was?
Speaker 2:I believe that Now, if you use the word food, now get it. So a lot of the times, what I challenge the kids with is, I said, start a discussion by let's talk about food, because then it won't matter if it's sushi or barbecue or steaks or baked potato, but if we can start with food, we can start having a dialogue about where that food came from and that food came from. And that food came from agriculture and it came from farmers and ranchers who did exactly what you did as a young man that put in the toil, sweat the tears and lived a brand of bringing a product to the table.
Speaker 3:Have you ever cut three, three or 400 trout in?
Speaker 2:one day no sir.
Speaker 3:Where I was raised the cricks would go dry. The 4th of July, snowpack springs, they just dry it. And on that ranch we had beautiful, beautiful rainbow trout. And if you told somebody today that you ground sluiced a bunch of quail they'd say well, that's not right. You'd say if you went down an irrigation ditch with one or two gunny sacks and pushed them fish together and somebody was coming the other way and you turned, somebody else got in the middle of it and filled those gunny sacks full of trout, some of them might be six, eight inches, some of them were a foot and a half.
Speaker 3:Would that be poaching? No, sir, that's conservation. That is a part of agriculture that doesn't happen anymore, and so when I see things spill in creeks and rivers and lakes and you know, kill fish. I'm big on fish, I like fish, but I like steak, I like mutton, I like pork, I like everything. You can tell by my waistline. I got a lot of scar tissue here. The thing with agriculture, I'm afraid today that 79% in 2017, you said, I believe that was when it was taken.
Speaker 3:I'm afraid, with the world population the way it is today, and even here in the United States of America, that it might be closer to 89% today. That don't understand, because we don't represent it right, often enough and meaningful enough.
Speaker 2:Yep, I agree with you. By the way, you know Wayne Gretzky, great hockey player, and they asked Gretzky one time. They said what makes you such a great hockey player? And he said most players scaped where the puck is. I scaped where the puck is going. Now, when you said what you did just a second ago, Bob Tallman, you said something really good and that is where's the puck going? I can tell you where it's going.
Speaker 2:It's going to a hungry world. And to think that in the next 25 years we're going to need 60 to 80% more food than we have today, there will not be 60 to 80% more land. There will not be 60 to 80% more resources. 60 to 80% more land. There will not be 60 to 80% more resources. That means we're going to need the brightest minds that we can cultivate to pursue careers in food and agriculture and science and technology, because the challenges that this whole world are going to face when people get desperate, they do desperate things.
Speaker 2:When countries get hungry and we're very fortunate to live in the United States, we're very fortunate to live in a country that has the natural resources that if, to your point, we use conservation and take care of them we have the capacity to not only feed ourselves but to feed a lot of our friends around the world. But we're going to need young people to step into those leadership roles, to step up and say I want to pursue this career and learning how to build a bridge to get food over this river, I want to learn how to use a drone to get food into this other village and I want to learn entomology where I can help with the pest control. I mean, it is so many things, but it's exciting to think about all the opportunities that are coming down the line for our young people if they will consider looking at a career in agriculture and food.
Speaker 3:I'm glad you brought up Wayne Gretzky. I'm glad you brought up Wayne Gretzky. I met him when he was 19 years old. Oh wow, one of my dearest, dearest friends, michael Barnett, played for Calgary Flames. He used to go to Edmonton watch the Oilers play. I'm a hockey fan. I met Gretzky in a restaurant with Michael Barnett. Michael Barnett built Wayne Gretzky in a restaurant with Michael Barnett. Michael Barnett built Wayne Gretzky. Michael Barnett has built a lot.
Speaker 3:I don't get to see him as often as I'd like to, but first time I met Wayne Gretzky I looked at him and I went. That skinny little kid what can he do? You know what he did. He outsmarted him as a little kid right here. I had to be quicker and get there sooner because I wasn't big enough to outrun the big ones. You know what gretzky did. He saw where his shot was going to go and he let his feet carry his butt so that he can stand that shot. But he played beyond that shot. This is not the first quote I've heard that you just gave me about him. As another point, you're talking about we as a society in agriculture am I still correct, because I'm on a lot of different television shows and radio podcasts and so forth. I still say that less than 2% of us in agriculture raise the food for the 98%. Am I fairly correct still?
Speaker 2:Yes, sir.
Speaker 3:And I'm not so sure that 20 years ago you didn't give me those numbers. You've given me a great lead in so much of this, aaron, as we've done it With. That said, we need to teach something besides agriculture. I'll get back to that in a moment. We need to teach people agriculture. I'll get back to that in a moment. We need to teach people the average consumer about waste. Oh yeah, yeah. Portion portion serving clean your plate. Portion serving waste.
Speaker 3:Have you been in a restaurant lately? You watch what those waiters pick off the tables. There is enough food in a restaurant. Pick the one you want. Every night at midnight it goes in a dumpster. I used to slop hogs so I know how that works because we went to restaurants and grocery stores and heads of lettuce threw them in a garbage truck and slopped dogs with a guy named Pete Pedroli when I was a kid. No waste. But today we waste and that all goes to a landfill or something somewhere. We've got to quit wasting. We've got to learn to produce on 10 acres what we used to produce on 100. We need to think about water on 100. We need to think about water.
Speaker 3:Water conservation is the number one thing in my mind in the real estate business today and in the ranching business, livestock business, agriculture business that if we don't start conserving our water because our snow packs less and our runoff is less, we waste water by letting it run in different directions to where it does no good. And if we learn how I've got a little place here. Have you ever been to my house? Well, we manage with lease places about 800 acres and I have a little D5 Caterpillar. Now this is going to kick your bottom. You know how I shoot grade? Watch this. My grandfather was an engineer. This is how I shoot grade Right here, this pencil.
Speaker 3:So you take this and you either focus where you want to go which way do you want to move that water this way or this way and then you find a way to go and you find out what you're going to do to do this, or come back and do this looky there all it is.
Speaker 3:Well, I packed a stick for my grandpa as a kid. I've done a lot of things I I just thought about this. But catching rainwater and I was in a continuing education class the other day in real estate that just really brought it to a head that we catch rainwater and it's the purest form of water that you can have, full of nitrogen, awesome, clean. And what do we do with it? We let it run out on the ground. If you learn how, as a hydrologist will teach you how to collect it, use it. Water, cattle water, garden water, yard water, your house there's so many things. Be careful about waste.
Speaker 2:That's the end result of cooking and producing food, but you better don't waste your natural resources going into making you know, bob, one of the things that you said and I know we probably have talked about this over the years. I live in North Texas, I live in Wichita Falls and we were on the verge. Our city was on the verge of becoming the first major MSA ghost city in the state of Texas.
Speaker 3:Really, I didn't know that.
Speaker 2:During the drought, our three combined lake levels three combined lake levels was down to 17%. The Texas FFA officers happened to be traveling through Wichita Falls one day and I said I'd like to take you all on a little field trip and I drove them out in the country, out to a little rural bridge. We went across the bridge, we parked and I said follow me. And we started walking and we walked, and we walked and we walked and I looked at these two young men. I said I want you to look around you right now. They said where are we? I, these two young men.
Speaker 2:I said I want you to look around you right now. They said where are we? I said you're walking on the bottom of a lake and I want you to look at the ground. I want you to look at the cracks in the ground. And I want you to look around because in my lifetime I've heard people talk about droughts but I'd never experienced one. And I said I want y'all to look around as far as your eye can see that there is no water.
Speaker 2:How much water is it going to take to fill this lake back up? And when? You understand just to your point, bob, how precious our resources are. That's why we love working with Texas Soil and Water Conservation. Matter of fact, rex Isom, their executive director, is on our board of directors. We work with American Water Works Daniel Nix, their new executive director, is a former FFA member. We work with Ducks Unlimited, another great conservation group, which is working with Certified Angus Beef, which is another collaboration on conservation, because, you said it a while ago, we're going to have to manage this land that we've got. We've got to manage this water, because people are going to get hungry and we need people that are smart, that can stand up and say let me help figure this out, let me be part of the solution here, and I think that our 4-H and our FFA kids I have a feeling they're the ones that can stand up and lead this opportunity that's going to be presented them are some pretty heavy names.
Speaker 3:You just dropped the people of what they're doing and where they came from. Sometimes I get preached back at for preaching. I am ordained, by the way, I have a license, okay, and I have a God gift on this property. It's a hand-dug well. It's 512 feet from the county road, hand-dug 21 feet. Down in a hand-dug well is 25 feet of water. We've pumped it twice with a full horse pump for 24 hours and reduced it maybe an inch.
Speaker 3:It's above the Paluxy. It's groundwater. It's as clear, clean and safe to drink as you could have. I don't use it. There's an old windmill on it. We shut it down and just let it turn because it's fun to listen to in the wind. If it ever comes going to follow what t boone pickens said, the day's going to come that a gallon of water will be worth more than a barrel of oil. The day comes, I'll put a solar pump on that front of pipeline. Out there, that street, tell people it's free, god gave it to me. It's free, god gave it to me. It's my right and deservency to give to them.
Speaker 2:I'm going to tell you when we were in that situation here in our community so I've experienced it you realize just how precious that resource is over in some of the arid land over in the Mideast that actually the billboard has porous holes in it and captures the moisture out of the atmosphere. I mean you have to try everything you can to grab that resource while you have the opportunity.
Speaker 3:I don't know what you know about wind or solar energy In the real estate business. My partner, phil Sanders, and I have got quite into the development for clients in solar energy and people say, well, there's miles and miles of solar panels, yep sun, second, condensation, third, rain when it rains. And where does that water go onto the ground? Capture, making solar panels. Now that capture that water in a trough, goes into a tube, tubes go into big pipes, pipes go into big rivers. It's picked up, you can turn it around. It's amazing. Well, you take 12 sections of ground, 9,600 acres, and you cover it up with solar panels and you catch that much condensation. You can build a lake in a day in a drought.
Speaker 2:Wow.
Speaker 3:Now you know where my next love of life is. I'm 76 years old. Okay, I'm only going to live to be 101. And then I'm going to figure out what I'm going to do in the next quarter century, and it will be in agriculture, okay.
Speaker 2:We're going to. We've got to change topics or you and I. I knew this was going to happen. I just knew when we got on the phone we were just going to start and just go down this agricultural path. I want to switch back over to your career real quick. Okay, earned it. But I'm curious for some of our younger listeners that may not know Bob Tallman's story how did you find your way into this rodeo announcer space and how did that start lend itself into a career? Can you take us on a real quick journey of what that looked like?
Speaker 3:No, it's only been 55 years. I don't know how quick I can get through it, but here's the deal. I knew as a kid that I wanted to be a cowboy. When I was four or five years old, my dad took my mom to Elkville, nevada, to see Casey Tibbs ride a bucking horse. And I knew that day when he met my mother, he took his hat off, shook her hand, kissed her hand hand, shook hands with my dad. I said, dang, that's a pretty cool dude. It's still just bright in my mind. So I wanted to be a cowboy.
Speaker 3:Well, it wasn't very big. When I started high school I was five foot one weighed 105 pounds. That's when I played football. Three days All my friends weighed 150, 200, beat me up. So that didn't work. But when I graduated from high school I said six one weighed 135. Still not big enough to do anything.
Speaker 3:In that time frame I tried to ride bucking horses, bulls, rope calves, team rope, even tried barrel racing. Didn't have a good horse, but what I could do as an individual and if I didn't win I didn't have a team that lost and the coach would make me run 30 laps around a football field I knew that I had to try again. Get a better horse, get better cattle, try harder. I did not know that I wanted to be a rodeo announcer, except I loved telling stories. So I team roped with an old gentleman. His name was Vern Ryan, he lived south of Winnemucca there and he was a rodeo announcer and he had four great big university horns and these 50 pound drivers and a bunch of cables and a little 45 record player and a microphone. So when I started I had a $26 Windsor mic, four great big horns heavy big old drivers.
Speaker 3:I mounted them on two by twelves, put them on the, but twelves Put them on the hood of my truck. My wife and I programmed eight track carts. Because you didn't, it shoots, it moves and it ruins your music. I practiced and I practiced. I also was still trying to ride bugging horses and rode. They would have to hold that for me after the rodeo. Well, about two months into that, I said my God, I'm beat up, I'm sore. All the money I made announcing rodeo I had to pay over here for this.
Speaker 3:I said there's got to be a better deal. My wife said, yeah, you need to quit that crap. Remember now she'd been training on me 54 years. Remember now, she'd been training on me 54 years. So today I did what you should. I think I went through the right sequence of career living in nevada I went to idaho, oregon, never did go to california, utah, and nevada's a big state so I had plenty of work that I could go out and get and I didn't know if I was making enough money.
Speaker 3:But the first rodeo I ever announced, the guy gave me a hundred dollars a perk. I said, whoa, there'll never be another poor day. We're going to filet mignon. So much for them hamburgers. Well, if my mom and dad hadn't supported me and us and all the rest of it, I I'd have never made it. And my dad had a split personality about that. He wanted me to stay in business with him. My mom got tired of listening to him yell at me and she said you need to go over here and do this. And the guy that really convinced me was my father-in-law, harris Goodrich. He said you'll never know if you don't try. And he said you'll never fail if you don't try and you'll never make it at whatever level you want to go to if you don't persist and push.
Speaker 3:So, just like we try to teach these kids for a career, the earlier we start on them, the better off we are. Well, I've been very blessed between the accolades and the halls of fame and Denver, fort Worth, houston, san Antonio Think about it Reno and the Calgary Stampede for 40 years and I have been from San Francisco in the Cal Palace, caltown, new Jersey. I've been from Seattle in the World's Fair with Larry Mayhem to Miami. I've been to Australia three different times Medmonton, alberta to now if I may pat their chest the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo, the ultimate, the biggest every time I drive by that gate where you and I did that interview that day I look up at nrg stadium and I go.
Speaker 3:Aaron alejandro and I did a big tv show right there. I think about it every day.
Speaker 2:I drive by boy, we didn't know what was coming that day. That we did that did we? That was right before covid hit us and yeah.
Speaker 3:So as far as a career, how many people want to do what they don't really know that they need to go? Do? I had so much support bob cook, jack roddy and jack sperrick when it all started. In those days I can go back to corky prunny diamond day rodeo company in elko, nevada, jarbridge prior to that, and then cotton rosser and then mike servey. Mike servey opened my big doors, took me to phoenix to the jc's rodeo one time. The next year I'm at denver. Two years later I'm at Houston and I'd branch off and go here and I'd branch off and go there In 1983, I did 303 performances in one year and 365 days.
Speaker 3:But think about it, we had a lot of double days, unbelievable. But we also had the Great American. Now I want to give you a little media here. But we also had the great american. Now I'm going to give you a little media here. The great american cowboy radio show, second only to paul harvey, 454 stations at its max. The great american farmer, sponsored by con agra, coors, dodge, mango, jeans all the people that sponsor me still today. Some of them are 50 years old. Wow, those, those two radio shows lasted 18 years. I did them in australia, I did them in mexico, I did them on the east coast and I've still got a bunch of those. I ought to give you some of those old tapes just for you to listen, I'd love it.
Speaker 2:Let me tell you I'm a history buff. I'd love that. Let me tell you I'm a history buff, I'd love that. And because I know you, I'd be honored to know more about your personal journey and what it was like.
Speaker 2:So, bob, real quick we got to start wrapping up. But I want to ask you something because you said something one time that I've never forgot. It's tough out there for our teachers right now. It's really tough and they're never going to hear thank you enough. They're never going to hear we appreciate you enough.
Speaker 2:And you know ag teachers are a little bit different than you know some of the other teachers because you know you know math, science, history. You know some of your basics. You know some of the other teachers because you know you know math, science, history. You know some of your basics. You know you go from eight to four and you're pretty much done in the summertime. You're pretty much done.
Speaker 2:But ag teachers they're there early in the mornings to help train teams. They're there late in the afternoon training teams and they have to go check on projects. And they got to go round up projects for lambs and sheep and you know, and goats and pigs and steers and heifers and dairy and whatever else it may be. And then they got the all summer long They've got to go to the FFA convention and the teachers conference and leadership camps and they got. We don't get to tell them thank you enough and I heard you speak at the Live Like Johnny. You were the emcee at the Live Like Johnny kickoff and I never forgot your words and I want you to share some words of encouragement. But you said that an ag teacher's name on the lips of a child is almost like God. Yeah, and it was your way of sharing your appreciation to those teachers. And would you mind just sharing a little bit of word of encouragement to our educators that are listening to this?
Speaker 3:I'd like to talk to some high school kids that are thinking about getting into some kind of agricultural training in college or tech schools to think about graduating with a teacher's degree to become an ag teacher. They normally go hand in hand with a county agent. They normally work with county supervisors and you know county commissioners. So they have broader. They're not nothing against English teachers and I'll get to that but they have a broader spectrum of life and appreciation for what they represent and who they're teaching. I have a 16-year-old grandson who's been very blessed to win a fair amount in the team roping world.
Speaker 3:One day we're sitting outside and he's coming out of the ag building at Peaster High School. I said how come you didn't come out with all them other kids up there? He said I needed to talk to my ag teacher. All them other kids up there. He said I needed to talk to my ag teacher. I said how come you in trouble? No, he said you know we get going so fast with this team open, this high school rodeo stuff, all this junior competition. He said if you go talk to a basketball or football coach, he's going to push you to go harder. He said I went to talk to my ag teacher and he said you know what? He told him sometimes you got to slow down, to go faster.
Speaker 3:Why? Because that man's life. 99 of them are married, 99, 98 of them, 90% of them, have been in the job, not because it doesn't pay that good, but because they love their career base. And 100% of them will have life left over and they might want to do something else in a career. Now to teachers in general. I've gotten in trouble a time or two that I've always supported teachers and veterinarians. You know why Veterinarians and teachers have a lot in common. Think about this when you're coaching, when you're teaching a five-year-old in preschool, they can't communicate.
Speaker 3:When you're a veterinarian and you're working on your animal, they can't communicate. So what do you have to do? You have to think for them, feel for them, teach them, make sure that the end moment that you leave them that they feel better than when you got there. Teachers today, you're exactly right here. Nice to see you, mrs Smith. Thank you, mr Johnson.
Speaker 3:Geez, I'm glad you're my teacher and in our classrooms today, except in the country school areas, we've got some big that they don't control them. I think politics controls them is to run them through, teach them, get them on, get them past the star test, act test, whatever all the tests they take, and get them on into life. Wrong, you're doing them a disfavor In the ag world with ag teachers. And then you can go on with our FFA kids into college and I to go back and think about the $27 million we just gave at Houston. And it's not all about farm kids, rural kids, it's engineering, it's art, it's music, it's, I mean, behavioral sciences. Those scholarships are so important to give those kids a chance.
Speaker 3:But it came from where the houston livestock show and rodeo, the fort worth livestock show and rodeo, austin. You know san angelo, just go san antonio and so many people outside our texas borders go. You people just manufacture money down there like it's paper. I said, yeah, we do. Yeah, and you know what we do. We educate our children and I will stand up and fly my flag for agricultural opportunities. So if you put all of this last hour sorry, you said 30 minutes, you put all this in the last hour and you think about it, if we don't educate and help our teachers, if we don't feed our people better food, if we don't give our chance, our kids a chance, to lose so they know what it is to be a winner, and if we don't give grace, the grace we receive the credit back to jesus christ, we're done. Buddy, as a society and I know you and I in Wichita Falls are only an hour and a half apart we ain't done.
Speaker 2:Thank you, wow, bob, your words, your wisdom, your expertise, your insights, your willingness to share your encouragement. There's so many things here that I could say, but I guess the easiest way to do it is just say thank you, thank you.
Speaker 2:Thank you for taking time to come on the show. You and I have been trying to get this scheduled for a while, and it's the reality of the world that you live in and we honor that. We appreciate that and we need you to keep doing what you're doing. You're not only a voice, bob, for agriculture, for farmers and ranchers, but so many people you know. I've told Red Stieg all this too.
Speaker 2:Red and I have talked about this. He's such a good man, but I told Red I said the reason I appreciate so much about what you and Bob Tallman do is because y'all also have listeners that don't come from our ranks, and so what you're doing is you're using your voice to help them understand and appreciate where some of that comes from and to encourage them to support the kids that are coming in our footsteps, and so, anyway, we could go on about that. I just wanted to say thank you. Hey, okay, so you get one fun question and I'm changing yours up a little bit. I've been thinking about what do I want to ask Bob Tallman, Every guest gets one last fun question, and so here's my question for you If they were to make a movie about Bob Tallman, who would play Bob Tallman?
Speaker 3:Interesting, somebody that loves the Lord, kids and grass, somebody that understands you get one glass in life and it's half full. It's your job to fill it up and then learn how to share it. Can I get back to you on that one? I'm not sure. I always wanted to meet Elvis, missed him. Always wanted to meet John Wayne and missed him. And after that and lifestyle changes, when you reach six million people a week in one fashion form or another, it's not about me, it's all about him. And it's not about the hurtful things in life, because that's all the news is anymore. It's about trying to make something positive. I'm going to find the guy that I would want to play me, but I'd rather have them spend their resources on a wake that is too funny.
Speaker 2:You know when they made the movie about our mutual friend mr walrath.
Speaker 3:There's a yes there.
Speaker 2:There's a scene in there where I've got just a moment there with Val Kilmer and all the actors and everything, and I always jokingly tell them they were looking for a Texas Danny DeVito, so that's why I got the job. So anyway, Bob, thank you so?
Speaker 3:much.
Speaker 2:What a man, what a giver. Your words today. I want to wrap up with this. So, again, this is the podcast Growing Our Future. If you want to know what the future is, grow it. We got to plant those right seeds and, Bob, I don't know how many times today you've said what I'm about to say, but around the foundation shop, around the programs that we operate, we have a saying. It goes like this the essence of leadership is to plant trees under whose shade you may never sit. There's going to be some mighty oaks one day. Bob Tallman, because of your encouragement, because of your support and because of the things that you've done, the catalyst that you've served to great programs, and.
Speaker 2:I just want you to know as somebody who admires you. Thank you, and thank you for taking time to be on our podcast.
Speaker 3:Thank you all. God bless America and God bless Texas.
Speaker 2:And so, until we meet again, everybody go out and do something great for somebody. Go out, listen, trust me, you're going to feel good about it. And guess what, when you do it, it just makes our homes, our community, our state and country a better place to live, work and raise our family. Until we meet again, everybody be safe. Thank you for stopping by.
Speaker 1:Welcome to the Growing Our Future podcast. In this show, the Texas FFA Foundation will take on a journey of exploration into agricultural science, education, leadership development and insights from subject matter experts and sponsors who provide the fuel to make dreams come true. Here's your host, Erin Alejandro.
