A Sample Chapter from Cowgirl Smarts: How to Rope a Kick-Ass Life
This story is about Adele von Ohl Parker, the cowgirl we feature on our homepage.
Chapter Title: Stay Balanced in the Saddle
Life is like riding balanced in the saddle—it requires a lot of practice to acquire and work to maintain. Once you find your balance, stirrups and a saddle become unnecessary for balance. Balanced riders look as though they move effortlessly with the horse. In actuality, staying balanced requires stability that comes from your inner core muscles. Riding through life is no different: your stability comes from your inner being. You can spot an unbalanced rider because she holds onto the saddle horn or pulls on the reins to steady herself. When our lives get out of balance, we do the same thing—we grasp for stability or ask too much of others.
Whether you’re riding a horse or loping down the trail of life, you don’t want to find yourself unbalanced and thrown from the saddle. You want to keep a balanced seat that will allow you to move in rhythm with life and keep you in control through the inevitable bucks and abrupt stops that life throws your way.
Women with cowgirl smarts find and maintain balance in their lives. Whether they are juggling work and play, eating and drinking in moderation, sharing responsibilities with their partners or ensuring time for themselves as well as their kids, they strive to achieve balance in their lives. But much like riding, everyone has a different point of equilibrium. What feels right for one rider may not work for another. That’s because only you can define balance. If you’re looking to other riders to find balance, you’re merely copying their posture and that might not yield a balanced seat for you.
To live a kick-ass life you must define your own sense of balance. Your definition of balance will be the equilibrium between what you want to do and what you have to do. Adele von Ohl Parker was an eccentric cowgirl who lived a life mixing with high society and down and out circus performers. She had a passion for expensive horses and bawdy Vaudeville. Some outsiders thought that while Adele had uncanny balance on a horse, she had little to none in her life. In fact, many thought she had a loose screw or two. But her friends and students in North Olmstead, Ohio, knew otherwise. Adele chose a life of extremes that felt good to her.
To understand Adele and how she balanced extremes in her life, you need to look at her background. She was raised in New Jersey, by aristocratic parents who were successful horse breeders and trainers of fine riding stallions in a society that no longer valued horsepower. Her family began importing fine horses into the United States in 1682 and supplied valuable scout horses to George Washington during the American Revolution. Their horses were so respected that they were honored in the state seal of New Jersey, which features the head of a black stallion, said to be trained by the von Ohl family.
In 1902, Adele and her sister could be found using the finest stallions in New Jersey to plow the neighbors’ fields to put food on the table. With money tight, Adele left home to become an actress. Though there isn’t a record of Adele having any formal theatrical training, her acting debut in Plainfield, New Jersey was met with stunning reviews. The Plainfield Courier-News described Adele’s performance as “a triumph, for almost every one of her long speeches was followed by a burst of hand clapping.” Though she went on to be one of the highest paid actresses in New York, she found she was snubbed by the same society in which her parents once belonged. Actresses in her time were considered secondary citizens, regardless of whether their bloodline was aristocratic.
When Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show came to New York, Adele didn’t hesitate to join a show that combined her love of riding with acting. With an unmatchable ability to train horses and perform daring equestrian feats, she quickly became one of the stars of Buffalo Bill’s show.
In 1909, she married Jim Parker, who also rode in Buffalo Bill’s shows. A year later, the two were starring in a new show called “Cheyenne Days.” The show became one of the most successful international equestrian shows ever produced and they toured the globe together for five years. Part of Adele’s success came from her ability to perform dangerous horse stunts like picking up gold coins from the arena floor while hanging from the side of a galloping horse. Usually she scooped up the coin with her hand, but for theatrics, she’d pick the coin up with her teeth. She loved stallions with spirit and frequently rode on stage with her horse rearing. Such feats thrilled audiences, but terrified musicians in the orchestra pit since Adele didn’t shy from jumping over the pit or even into it. She was a daring horsewoman, and the crowds loved her.
In 1915, when ticket sales for Wild West shows began to lag, Buffalo Bill and Adele parted ways, and Adele and her husband moved to Hollywood. Adele spent almost ten years as an actress, cowboy trainer and stuntwoman for “B” westerns. Many a “cowboy” stunt was actually performed by a cowgirl named Adele. She proved to them all that some of the best cowboys are girls.
While filming in California, Adele built a small barn on a back studio lot in Pasadena and in her spare time taught low-income kids to ride. She called them the Junior Rough Riders. Without proper schools to attend, these boys were illiterate. Adele ensured her students learned to read and do simple arithmetic in payment for their lessons. When asked why she taught children, she relayed a story about the time she was riding down a street in Los Angeles and a little girl walked up to her mare Daisy and asked Adele what it was. It was then she decided to teach city-slicker children the joy and discipline of horsemanship. Combining her love of horses and teaching children gave Adele the balance in life she had always needed.
They only thing that could drag Adele away from her Junior Rough Riders was a man’s dream of taming wild horses. Adele followed her husband to Montana where they spent time rounding up wild horses. After years of performing dangerous stunts on horseback, it was probably the only ride that could still put goose bumps down their spines. But by 1929, their money grew short as did Adele’s patience with her husband’s unwillingness to leave Montana.
In 1929, Adele decided to take her own show on the road where she found limited success and much anguish producing and starring in a traveling show. With only seventy cents in her purse, she debarked the train in Cleveland, to find her booking cancelled. Not to be beaten, Adele used her cowgirl smarts to turn a catastrophe into an opportunity to return to what she loved most: teaching children to ride.. The fact that she arrived in Cleveland with seven horses and a rabbit to feed and only seventy cents to her name didn’t faze Adele. She marched into the nearest soda shop with her pet rabbit and paid what few cents she had for a milkshake. She then called all the newspapers to report a thirsty giant rabbit in the soda shop drinking milkshakes from a straw. When reporters arrived, they found her well-trained rabbit politely sharing a milkshake with Adele. The reporters ate it up. The picture of Adele and her rabbit sharing a milkshake was priceless and it worked to gain publicity for her new Von Ohl School of Riding. Due to her successful publicity stunt, she was able to start a handful of students the next day and feed her treasured horses. Word spread of her student’s success and she saved enough cash to purchase a small piece of land in North Olmsted just outside of Cleveland. She called it The Parker Ranch, but was later more likely to refer to her land as “Paradise.” At Adele’s ranch, kids learned as much about life as they did about riding.
On the Parker Ranch, it wasn’t uncommon to see a group of Indians camping on the lawn, fifty goats from an animal rescue or cast-off circus elephants bathing in the river. She took in all the sick and broken animals that people brought her way. One student remembers entering her house on a cold winter day to find Adele painting a portrait of the donkey standing in her kitchen, while a dog, a cat, a pig and a fawn all slept side-by-side in front of the fire. Adele could work magic with animals.
The Parker Ranch became a gathering place not only for recovering animals, but also for performers spun off from failing Wild West shows, circuses and washed-up Hollywood careers. Trick ropers, clowns, bronc riders and horse trainers would converge on the ranch and throw impromptu shows to earn enough money to move onto the next town. When students arrived at the ranch, they never knew what to expect: Ms. von Ohl Parker in formal riding attire barking commands or a menagerie of performers with one foot in the poor house and the other in a stirrup. It might have seemed that Adele’s life was “unbalanced,” when in fact she had found her calling to help others.
Adele taught riding for a dollar a week and kept her wild child alive by ending each semester with a rowdy, Wild West show. It was a far cry from the $100 a week she made starring in Buffalo Bill’s shows, or her fat Hollywood paychecks, but she reveled in the new balance she had created in her life using horses both to earn money and help others.
Other incidents led neighbors to think that Adele’s life was completely out of balance. She’d give all her hay away to save the horses of a broke rancher, even though she had no idea how she’d refill her own hay barn. She’d loan her last fifty dollars to a laid-off cowboy, leaving no money for her own groceries. Somehow she always managed to survive: hay would be donated, friends would bring food or she’d find a buyer for a horse. Worrying about tomorrow wasn’t how Adele lived life. She lived to keep performing, teaching and training horses. Her definition of balance was extreme: worry about the horses, the students and the show, and everything else would take care of itself.
Even Adele’s house was extreme, but to her there was a balance between riding and housework—as long as she did as little as possible of the latter. With recovering animals in every corner of her house, you can imagine the dirt. Adele once insisted a friend have a cup of hot chocolate, but he very reluctantly accepted, knowing the cup was likely to have chili residue in the bottom. For her, keeping a balanced life didn’t put housekeeping high on the list of important chores.
There is no doubt that Adele lived a life of extremes, but few who knew her well ever thought of her life as unbalanced. Amidst every dust storm blown her way, Adele had the uncanny ability to find a safe barn and turn it into her own paradise. She may have ridden to a very different beat than what others expected, but she always stayed balanced in the saddle of life.
Lessons Learned
I recently asked my seventy-four-year-old mother if she would do anything differently if she could live her life again. She quickly replied, “I would have cleaned house a little less and gotten out more.” Adele’s life may sound a bit out of balance to you, but I think women whose housekeeping leaves little time for anything else may be more unbalanced. I’m not proposing that having cowgirl smarts means having a dirty house or apartment, but to rope more out of life, you have to find a balance. That dirt on your car won’t make it undrivable. The stain on your daughter’s shirt doesn’t mean you love her any less. Spending more time with family and less time at work may make it more difficult to balance your budget, but you will likely find your life to be more in balance.
Finding balance also means listening to the cowgirl spirit inside you. When your cowgirl spirit is bursting to get out of the stable, by all means open the door and go for a gallop. But listen just as closely to your more sensible side that knows when kids need a mother’s arms or a business deadline has to be met. Women with cowgirl smarts listen to both voices in their head and find a balance that’s as responsible as it is fulfilling.
If your cowgirl spirit isn’t quite halter broke, you’re probably having some trouble balancing the scale of life. Use your cowgirl smarts and develop a discipline to avoid always doing what you want to do, versus what you need to do. Slow down and take responsibility. Riding balanced in the saddle is easier to do at a trot than a gallop.
Here are a few ideas for staying balanced in the saddle:
1. Increase your fun quotient. Keep a diary for several weeks and track the time you spent doing things you truly love. When you tally up the time spent, what percentage of your waking hours does it represent? If the percentage isn’t acceptable, reevaluate your “have-to-do” list. Would a cowgirl find these tasks critical? Another source of measurement is your date book or PDA. Are all the entries eat, work or sleep? If so, you need to cowgirl up and get a life.
2. Learn to make trade-offs. What would you sacrifice for a good adventure? How about buying fewer designer labels or mowing your own yard to save money. Would you babysit a friend’s child one weekend this month so that you can take off a weekend next month? Finding time for an adventure could be as easy as not cleaning the house one week each month, or as difficult as finding a new job with more reasonable hours. Make trade-offs in return for a better, more balanced ride, you’ll be glad you did.
3. Change your definition of clean. Whoever told you that the woman with the cleanest house wins, was wrong. Hygiene is important, but distinguish it from compulsive. If you find you’re routinely putting off your family to clean house, you probably need a new definition of clean or need to find the cash to hire a maid.
4. Shed domestic expectations set for women. My mother jokes that I don’t own an iron anymore. She thinks this is an insult, but I think my wrinkled clothes are a perfect guage to see that my life is in better balance. When you start to buy that linen dress, calculate the ironing time or the laundry fees, then ask yourself if you’d rather use that time or money to have more fun. Start small, it adds up.
5. Adjust your balance with each new horse. Like changing horses, each new chapter of your life will require an adjustment in your balance. Some rides are smooth as silk, others seem to jar your bones. But if you stay balanced in the saddle, you can weather the roughest of rides.
6. Life is short, get out and embrace it. There’s no better time to get your life in balance than today. You’ll find lots of excuses not to do it, because change is tough. Cowgirl Up and start heading down the trail less traveled.