Ben “Gump” Meyer is the quintessential Iowan cowboy.
He’s painfully courteous, not afraid to splatter his denim shirt with a bit of mud and he never quite gets past the “n” in words ending with “ing.”
He also travels with Three Hills Rodeo and manages the care of the 30 bucking horses and 19 bulls used in its show, feeding them, watering them and cleaning up their mountains of excrement with the help of eight other hands.
“You’re never really off duty, I guess you could say,” he said.
The untrained horses used each evening have been conditioned through years of careful breeding to react distastefully to cowboys’ intrepid attempts to ride them, Meyer said.
Despite all this, some so-called “bucking horses” still refuse to buck.
“You can’t make them do what you want,” he said.
Meyer puts these horses to work for riding purposes, instead.
He began his work with Three Hills Rodeo immediately after graduating from high school.
He met David Morehead, owner of Three Hills Rodeo, while riding in high school rodeos.
Morehead’s first impression of Meyer’s rodeo skills wasn’t a positive one, but after a friend informally adopted Meyer, Morehead realized he was wrong and began to grow closer to him.
“I’ll tell you how good our relationship is,” Morehead said. “I can be just as mean to him as I can my own kids. You’re always the meanest to the people you love the most. Strangers, you’re nice to them because you want to make a good impression.”
Twelve years of employment and friendship later, Meyer’s family now extends past Morehead and includes a pregnant wife, who lives in Iowa.
The summer season and constant shows keep Meyer on the road, but even while spraying horse feces off concrete almost 400 miles from home, he pauses to remember the good.
“I’ve met a lot of people from east to west,” Meyer said. “If I was driving today and broke down, any where in the world, I think I could call somebody and in an hour or two, they would be able to come help. That’s worth a lot to me.”
Danielle Grady is a writer for BSU Journalism at the Fair, a Ball State University immersive-learning project placing 25 student journalists at the heart of the Midway to tell the weird and wonderful stories of the 2014 Indiana State Fair.
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