Whether your particular addiction is riding cutting horses, roping calves or playing golf, we all have one thing in common. We are all in the relentless pursuit of a "style".

Once you have mastered the basic skills necessary for entry level participation in the activity you

begin the effort of refining these skills into a pattern or style. This usually takes most of the rest of your life. Besides horse and rodeo people, golfers know what I'm talking about, as do baseball players, skiers and just about anyone performing a skilled maneuver with a fanatic goal of perfection.

When I was about fourteen years old a gentleman by the name of Shorty Creede introduced me to the sport of roping calves. I suppose he took the better part of an hour to show me the way to throw my rope properly, pull my slack, step off, flank and tie. At the end of that hour he said, "There, that's all you'll ever need to know about roping calves. Now go spend the rest of your life tryin' to get it all right at the same time." His statement stuck with me even though at the age of fourteen the significance of his comment evaded me. At that age you're pretty much invincible, invisible and think you can leap tall building in a single bound. In later years several broken bones would point out I wasn't invincible.


I did enough stupid things in front of the whole world to prove I wasn't invisible and the buildings just kept getting higher and higher. Slamming into the first story wall made me aware my jump wasn't all I thought it would be.

Work on it we did, though, didn't we? Many of you, too, have spent much of your life to date in pur- suit of that refining style. We watch others whom we admire and try to copy their style. What aspiring bull rider didn't want to have Tuff Hedeman's flair? Golfers try to copy Tiger Woods. We take bits from here, pieces from there and attempt to put them all together into one clump that will become us. Some things work out, others don't. I'll never be able to walk, rope, golf or (Heaven forbid) ride bulls like anyone else. Actually, looking like someone else has started to become less important each year.

As I develop a few more gray hairs, I have started to realize something about my style... It seems the older I get the more I start to resemble myself.

Gary Hodgson is a syndicated columnist and broadcaster. He and his wife, Sue, operate a ranch near Brush, Colo. He can be contacted at office@hodgsonmedia.com.