“Buddy Heaton – The Original Ring Tailed Snorter”

The thing this country probably remembers most about Buddy Heaton was his riding a buffalo in President John F. Kennedy’s inaugural parade in 1961. If you knew Buddy at the time, riding a partially tamed bison down the crowded main streets of Washington, D. C. was just the thing you’d expect him to do. But you always had to wonder what he’d do next – and of course he’d always come up with something totally unexpected.

It is most unfortunate that the reader could not have this story told by Buddy, himself, because he was well known as being a person who could charm a snake out of his skin, and tell captivating tales that left an audience wondering just how much of his yarns were based in truth. But rest assured in this case, that the writer has made every reasonable effort to sort out fact from fiction.

Buddy’s formal name is Harold Lloyd Heaton. He was born in his parent’s home in Alva, Oklahoma on March 30, 1929, and at the time of the parade, he was residing in Hugoton, Kansas. The name of his buffalo was “Old Grunter”.

Mike Slater of Alva, Oklahoma recalls that sometime, during or after the parade, Buddy caused quite a stir among the White House security staff when he rode Old Grunter right up the steps of the Capitol Building. But they eventually calmed down, and later Buddy was called back to the president’s viewing stand by Vice-President Lyndon Johnson to shake hands with Kennedy.

Buddy later performed his renowned “Rodeo Clown and Burlesque Bull Fighting Act” for Kennedy two times, once in Washington and again in the biggest rodeo in the world, The Calgary Stampede in Alberta, Canada, where he was featured as the main show clown 1952 - 1954. Buddy was not one to discriminate politically, as he also performed his act for seven other presidents, Queen Elizabeth, Winston Churchill, and General Omar Bradley, among other leaders of the world.

At an early age Buddy knew he wanted to be a rodeo show clown, but was aware he would have to become an accomplished showman to make a living at it. Thus he began working with various farm animals to add variety to his act. By the age of twelve, he was jumping over full sized cars on horseback, and looked forward to doing such stunts in the rodeo arena.

As a teenager he began to ditch school from time to time, and try to get work doing odd jobs in rodeos. Then he met a promoter from Dodge City, Kansas that promised to hire him as a rodeo clown any time he could get out of school. Buddy had found his niche in life, and never looked back.

In the early days, Buddy was paid $25 for each performance, and he soon showed a unique ability to interact with a rodeo announcer and a crowd. His burgeoning reputation for an ability to ad-lib in any given situation and zany clown antics began to fill the stands anywhere he was scheduled to appear.

The limited income from rodeo clowning in small towns was only enough to sustain a Spartan type of existence, but Buddy refused to take a second job to support himself while honing his show clown skills. Occasionally for extra money, he would enter a rodeo as a Brahma bull rider or a bull dogger, but otherwise he concentrated on improving himself as a show clown. Not that he was any slouch as a contestant, as he won numerous championships including titles in bull dogging at Denver and Chicago.

The “burlesque bull fighting” part of his act was developed as an extension of one of the roles traditionally played by a rodeo clown. The role that Buddy particularly liked was getting knocked around in a barrel by a bull while he hunkered down and did his best not to get too familiar with the animal’s horns. But Buddy began to search for ways to return some of those knocks, and his pursuit in this endeavor almost got him killed.

At a rodeo in Alva, Oklahoma in the late 1940's, a challenge was issued to anyone present to fight a particularly bad tempered bull, named “El Rocco”. As there were no other takers, Buddy decided this was a rare opportunity to try his hand at the exotic sport of bull fighting.

However, unknown at the time to Buddy, this bull was not fitted with a shank which is designed to stimulate bucking while the bull is being ridden, and also restricts the animal’s movements somewhat. During the bull fight, the unshanked bull caught Buddy on his horns and tossed him into the air several times, rendering him unconscious for thirty-three days. He still carries scars from the experience on his body, the location of which are described by Buddy as “various places south of the border.”

Nevertheless, not all the memories of being in the (former) Alva hospital are unfavorable. Buddy fondly remembers sharing hard luck stories with Tom Mix when the Hollywood Cowboy got kicked by a horse, and wound up in the same hospital with a broken leg.

When Buddy recovered from his bout with “El Rocco”, he continued in his quest to find ways to improve his act. He was of the opinion that a rodeo clown should do more than merely preventing Brahma bulls from goring and stomping on thrown cowboys, and his act “needed punching up a bit.”

Even in his early clown acts, Buddy used several Houdini-like tricks. In one of his favorites, he would prepare by digging a hole in the center of the arena when no one was around, and concealing the entrance with a trapdoor. Then during the show, a phone booth prop would be placed over the trapdoor with a dummy and doctor’s white coat hidden inside.

Next, a comic emergency would be staged in the arena, and Buddy would run to the phone booth to call for an ambulance. An apparently drunken ambulance driver would respond to the emergency by driving the ambulance into the arena and careening wildly about while Buddy ducked in and out of the phone booth to narrowly avoid being hit.

The comic atmosphere of the arena would suddenly turn “tragic” when the ambulance driver lost control of the vehicle and wiped out the phone booth and the quickly substituted dummy, smashing them to smithereens. If things went according to plan, Buddy would escape through the trapdoor and into the hole just before impact.

He would then don the white coat while still in the hole, emerge from the hole when screened from the audience by the ambulance crew, help evacuate the “body” of the dummy, and depart the arena in the ambulance leaving the crowd wondering what really happened to Buddy.

“Thank heaven the ambulance driver never hit the wrong dummy in the phone booth – although several times he got a bit too close for comfort. And one time an ornery ambulance crew double-crossed me by filling my hole with water,” Heaton said with a chuckle.

Harry Herrmann of Alva, Oklahoma remembers catching Buddy’s act at a rodeo in Denver. In this event, Buddy staged an outrageous stunt in which he was struck from behind by a bull. As a result of the collision, one of the bull’s horns appeared to pass completely through the clown’s body.

The shock from the impact caused the horn to “break off” and separate from the bull’s head, and it ended up protruding grotesquely from Buddy’s chest. Then the skewered clown closed the skit by staggering around the arena in the comedic style of Red Foxx suffering “the big one” as Fred Sanford on TV. Herrmann said that he has never heard such loud and prolonged laughter in his life.

This writer has little personal knowledge of Buddy’s ability to work a crowd. I only had one opportunity to observe his clowning talents first hand when I attended a rodeo at an early age in 1950. I can recall the crowd almost holding it’s breath to catch his every word during the quieter moments between the action, punctuated periodically by wild gales of laughter when he made a comment about one of the contestants.

Years later, as a teenager, I had an opportunity to see Buddy in action as a substitute baseball announcer. In an intercity little league baseball game in Hugoton, the regular announcer had to leave the game and called for a volunteer to “spell him” while he was gone. Buddy said, “I’ll do it, get on with the game.”

One of the next batters up was Richard Fell, who currently resides in Holly, Colorado. Buddy was fond of Fell, but that didn’t necessarily bode well for Richard, who at the time carried a little extra weight.

As I recall, Richard’s time at bat was described by Buddy thusly. “The next batter is a little short for his height, but don’t let that fool you, folks. He has blazing speed down that first base line – in fact he has several times torn the cleats right out of his shoes under acceleration. Why just last week he was thrown out of a game for raising too much dust with his running ability.” Perhaps Heaton was ahead of his time as a baseball color commentator.

Buddy felt his rodeo act needed to add some animals not customarily a part of the sport to attract offers from big time rodeos. “Adding a buffalo to the atmosphere of a rodeo seemed like a perfectly logical step to take, and since no one else had tried it, I decided to give it a go.”

So in 1950, “after looking around for some time in various places”, Buddy located a buffalo owned by Jim Jordan in Four Corners, Oklahoma. And for the purchase price of “about 500 dollars”, Buddy became the proud owner of a three year old buffalo.

“Old Grunter didn’t come with a detailed set of riding instructions, and it took two years of trial and error to get the hang of riding the buffalo right side up. A good part of that time was spent sailing through the air and then having to pick my backside up off the ground. It quickly became apparent that a healthy young buffalo is not the gentlest of God’s creatures, y’know,” explained Heaton.

The buffalo, which over time acquired the stage name of “Clyde”, was gradually worked into Buddy’s act , and offers from major rodeos began to arrive. Rodeos in cities such as Denver, Cheyenne, Oklahoma City, and Fort Worth began wanting his services in the early 1950's. And then in 1952, the offer came from Calgary. It was a working relationship which lasted for three consecutive years.

Not all of Buddy’s memories of Canada are enjoyable, however. In 1952 when he tried to cross the Canadian border at Sweetgrass, Montana, the Canadian authorities insisted that Old Grunter be quarantined and neutered before he would be allowed to continue on his way to Calgary. Rodeo producer Harold Vold helped Buddy perform the required surgery, although both of them were reluctant to do so.

Twenty years later in 1972, Old Grunter would die in Dewinton, Alberta, Canada after eating some contaminated alfalfa. “Burying an old friend like Grunter was one of the hardest things I’ve had to do in my life,” said Buddy. He later acquired another buffalo which he named “Harold” but the act just wasn’t the same. (The reader might note that Buddy’s proper first name is “Harold.” And the seller’s first name was “Harold”. “And so naturally, the buffalo’s name also had to be “Harold”, explained Heaton.

But while Buddy had Old Grunter, one never knew just where the two of them would show up or under what circumstances. Certainly Buddy was not one to wait on a formal invitation from anyone.

It was a spur of the moment decision by Buddy in January of 1961, to ride Old Grunter in Kennedy’s Inaugural parade. Buddy quickly reasoned that since a trick roper named “Montie Montana” had gotten some favorable publicity by roping President Dwight Eisenhower in his inaugural parade of 1953 (which, by the way, caused Eisenhower’s security to “have kittens”), he could possibly get more recognition by riding a buffalo in Washington.

However, after hauling his buffalo in a trailer for thousands of miles, Buddy found out that participation in Kennedy’s parade was only by invitation of the new President. It was not a totally unforeseeable new requirement, after Montana’s stunt with the rope, “but it did call for my having to finagle an invitation from Kennedy, or finding a way to “finesse” the D.C. boys in the parade lineup. I decided to try the latter,” said Heaton.

He managed to locate some people from Ft. Worth at the parade who’d seen him perform, and who also had the necessary invitation to participate. Then he simply fell in behind the Texas delegation with no questions being asked, and no information about his parade status being given by Buddy. As a result, it was widely reported that the media sensation who rode a buffalo in the parade was a Texan.

When Buddy and Old Grunter returned to their residence (and pasture) in Hugoton, Kansas after the inaugural parade, the town gave the two a “Welcome Home Parade” and $100. Naturally Buddy rode the buffalo in it, and this time he had an invitation from the entire home town.

As the Hugoton parade was ending, and Old Grunter neared Heaton’s familiar pickup, the buffalo unexpectedly charged up the loading ramp to the pickup bed with Buddy still aboard. The buffalo smashed into the back of the cab at considerable speed, throwing Buddy completely over the cab where he caromed off the hood and onto the pavement, ending up flat on his back. Without missing a beat, Buddy quickly explained that his new dismounting technique apparently needed some work.

From examples like the former, one can readily see that “riding a buffalo”, is much easier said than done. There are many accounts by Heaton’s neighbors, telling of just how difficult it was to prepare Old Grunter for a parade or show appearance, and then “controlling him” during a show or parade. And finding facilities to house the animal was not always easy, because of Old Grunter’s reputation for being a onebuffalo wrecking crew when he might suddenly decide that the corral containing him needed an additional exit directly through the side of the enclosure.

Some of the unexpected off-stage appearances of man and buffalo were not always appreciated. One time while in Salt Lake City, the two caused an uproar by riding the elevator up to the editor’s office of the Salt Lake City Tribune.

At other times, the pair’s unscheduled appearance would be cause for applause, and might add much color to an activity. In 1971 in Kansas, the Garden City Buffaloes high school football team had a banner year going, when Buddy got wind of it he began to haul Old Grunter to the games (at his own expense), and ride around the football stadiums to give the team the presence of an unofficial mascot. The pair was again front page news for performing mascot duty when the Garden City team managed to get to the state playoffs in Kansas City.

Buddy Heaton was never the kind of person to duck a challenge – especially if it presented unique circumstances which enhanced his reputation as an animal handler. As a consequence at the Denver Centennial Turf Club in1959, Buddy riding Old Grunter outran a horse in a 1/16 mile race. The event was covered in the August 31st issue of “Life” magazine.

In a recent interview, Buddy explained that his winning the race was determined at the start. “If you can get the buffalo out front of the horse early, the horse will not be willing to pass the buffalo because they’re afraid of them.”

Buddy’s knowledge and talent for the handling of horses is legendary. On May 13, 1952, an Appaloosa foal named “High Hand” was born on the Hugoton farm owned by Buddy and his stepfather, Fred Hagaman. By the time High Hand had matured into a young stallion, his reputation for performing tricks as a show horse was well known nation wide.

The horse was extremely intelligent and thoroughly enjoyed performing for an audience. He could mimic a broad smile on command, pull specified objects out of Buddy’s pockets or pretend to bite his backside, count a number of objects, and walk completely around an arena on his hind legs. But it was High Hand’s ability to jump into the air with all four feet simultaneously that developed into a show-stopping illusion that Buddy could lift the horse off the ground with one hand.

The show horse also competed at a championship level in rodeo events. Buddy was riding High Hand in 1957 when he won the bull dogging event at the Denver Stock Show. High Hand also worked as a roping horse on Heaton’s farm, and developed a reputation for not letting a single calf get away while he was on duty as a cutting horse.

As a sire, High Hand is on record for being among the top five registered Appaloosa horses for producing both race winners and for total race money earned. Sadly, Buddy was forced to sell High Hand in 1958 to pay educational expenses.

Being a rodeo clown is hard work, and occasionally after the day’s toil was done, it became necessary “to let the badger loose.” His routine varied a little, but it generally proceeded in the following manner: I) locate a “local water hole,” 2) consume significant quantities of Coors beer; 3) Place a $100 bill at a prominent place on the bar; and 4) announce to all present that if anyone could best him in a fight, they could have the money. It is widely reported that although many tried to earn the money according to Buddy’s terms, no one was able to do it.

A quote about Buddy from Canadian author, Judy Schultz, in her book, “Jean Pare’: an Appetite for Life”, is very enlightening concerning his tendency to engage in fisticuffs, and his relationship with rodeo enthusiast and bar companion, Clarence Lovig:

One of his (Lovig’s) favourite drinking companions was a rodeo clown named Buddy Heaton, who owned a trick buffalo. There is every possibility that the buffalo had more sense than Buddy, who was, by nature, a hard-drinking brawler.

Like Clarence, Buddy had a kind of fatal charm, and when he was sober, the Lovig kids enjoyed having a real, live clown for a friend. . . . Buddy wasn’t just fun, he was hilarious, as all good
clowns are, and he made them laugh. But when he was drunk, things got pretty crazy. During the rodeo, when Buddy was in town, no day was complete without a fight . . .”

A reasonable person might believe that everyone mellows by the time they pass beyond middle age – particularly if over the years they’ve suffered numerous major injuries to their body. However, they’d better make allowances in Buddy’s case.

A few years ago, Hugoton sheriff, Ted Heaton was having an evening meal at a local restaurant with his family when “an awful ruckus” arose outside in the street. The sheriff rushed outside to find his father jabbing one of his crutches at another person who had crawled under a pickup, trying to use it to shield himself from Buddy’s blows. Heaton’s other crutch had been splintered previously in the altercation.

When I later inquired of Buddy what the fight had been about in a recent nursing home interview, he said he’d forgotten the exact circumstances. “But the guy needed to learn some manners.”

Dick Koppitz of Hardner, Kansas remembers an incident occurring about forty years ago when he was standing in the confection stand line at an indoor rodeo in Fort Worth, Texas. Someone from behind Koppitz touched a lighted cigarette to his bare elbow. Koppitz instinctively whirled around in preparation to deck the owner of the cigarette only to find himself face to face with a broadly grinning Buddy, whom he’d known since childhood. It was typical Buddy Heaton type of humor, said Koppitz.

Later that same evening, there was an announcement over the public address system by the rodeo emcee for Buddy Heaton to report to the center of the arena. Immediately in response, there was a loud yell from high above the audience at the very back of the stadium, and some dare devil swung down on a rope anchored to the arena ceiling. The Tarzan-like entry was vintage Buddy Heaton.

With such antics, Buddy has landed several bit-parts for himself and his buffalo in the movies. One or the other of them has appeared in the movies, “Bus Stop” (with Marilyn Monroe and Don Murray), “How the West Was Won”, “Desert Sands”, “The Saga of Andy Burnett, the Buffalo Hunter”, and the TV show, “Wagon Train”.

In 2005, Harold Loyd “Buddy” Heaton was inducted into the Kansas Cowboy Hall of Fame. The well deserved honor was a long time in coming.

Today Buddy resides at the Western Prairie Care Home in Ulysses, Kansas. He’s had several bouts with cancer and also had a major stroke recently, but he enjoys talking with people about the good old times. He would also like to find a writer who would be interested in writing his biography.

Anyone who would like to stop by and shoot the breeze with Buddy is welcome, and one might want to remember that he is especially fond of strawberry milk shakes. But one word of advice: if Buddy gets a roguish look in his eye, puts a $100 bill on the night stand, and tells you that you can have it if you can get it from him – I wouldn’t try to take the money.