"You pull up to that starting line, you don't know whether to sh-t or go blind. "You ain't never seen nothing like these races in your life," he said. When his wagon got hung up with another, he was thrown and broke both wrists in the landing. "It was a blast," the driver said, surely because both he and his riding partner, Dan Stevens, came out just fine.įour years ago, Lowrance wasn't so lucky. "Next thing I know," Lowrance said, "we were tumbling." The horse crumpled the barrel the wagon flipped. The rub is that, galloping at about 25 mph in this modern-day Old West chariot race, the horse tried to compromise by hurdling the barrel harness and wagon be damned. Whether the horse then panicked or overestimated its athleticism, only a whisperer could know. His inside horse thought Lowrance was steering him to run to the inside of the barrel. In his final heat, Lowrance had been trying to bank his two-horse team and 1,000-pound covered wagon tight around one of the reflective and orange traffic barrels demarcating the course. He and his crew were not two hours removed from one of the most dramatic moments of a weekend packed with them.
The driver of the Stone County Tick Pickers wagon, he was standing on the paved concourse with a soggy Band-Aid trying to peel itself off a day-old dog bite on his upper lip. It was the end, but Lowrance comes here, at the beginning of the story, because he can make you understand, in short space, why tens of thousands had come to witness the National Championship Chuck Wagon Races on a patch of north Arkansas ranchland. Folks were packing RVs, vendors were shuttering onion blossom trailers, and kids were taking a few final turns on the bucking mechanical bull. When Jay Lowrance summarized the past week, the trophy belt buckles already had been handed out, the dust was like virgin snowdrift on the parked trucks, and the ambulances had ceased delivering cowboys to the emergency room. You have reached a degraded version of because you're using an unsupported version of Internet Explorer.įor a complete experience, please upgrade or use a supported browserĬLINTON, Ark.
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