BY THATCH ELMER

From miles you hear the echo, from hoof beats on the ground, an eruption from chute gate is a great familiar sound

Everytown west of everywhere, and a couple further south, knows the same old hymn of legacy coming from the announcers mouth

There’s silence for a moment when the latch cracks on the gate, and a hungry girl in stephenville depends on daddy’s fate

You’ve grown to know the characters that have changed the sport at best, they’ve put small towns on the atlas changed the way we won the west

Donny gay and Bobby Steiner, freckles brown all paved the way, so sage and josh and jb can all ride bulls today

Alexander, Lyle Sanky and Lewis Feild all made the style,

That makes Tilden hooper look in control on the ride that is so wild

Tie down roping has the fastest hands, Roy cooper is the proof, because joe beaver might have built the house, but fred Whitfield raised the roof

Speed and rich changed roping then and there when they set the record straight, but clay and jade turned tables when they broke the time 3.8

Sherry cervi owned the barrels on in her time she wasn’t beat . But records couldn’t hold haily. Sisters light upon her feet

Casy tibbs and, hawk and billy, showed em how to ride one down, but the game was changed forever when the Wright boys came to town

The last sport left for cowboys, the last of a dying breed. The migrants say those words to us and take our land in greed

But there’s hope left for the rancher, the men and women of the west, because there’s little kids who grow and dream of being best

So if you’ll listen you’ll hear a echo. And hoofbeats on the ground, where horn and hoof touch heart and mind. Because the rodeos come to town