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and 35 years in cattle ranching, throughout which fond memories kept his bond with Harris alive. “We ran match races at bush tracks in the South. I was just a kid following Russell around.”
In the late ’60s, their dads sent the boys to the Haymaker Sale in Oklahoma City to sell some yearlings, and while there the boys bought six or seven head of bucking horses. They started home in Bachelor’s dad’s grain truck with a cattle body on it.
“I was in 9th or 10th grade,” Bachelor recalled. “I’d had a driver’s license for just a few months—or maybe just had a permit.”
“About an hour out of Shreveport, I was tired,” Harris related, “so John said he’d drive. When we got to the city, he went to pull onto the off ramp and the horses shifted and turned that truck over in downtown Shreveport. They were wild as could be, and the police were running them all over the place. They finally used police cars to corral them, and hemmed them up in an alley, then loaded them up onto a gooseneck. The police chief took us to his house, and his wife fed us. We slept the night, got the truck fixed up and went on home.”
a taste of tHe Big time
In 1970, Harris caught the atten-
tion of trainer Charles “Bubba” Cascio of Tolar, Texas, by beating Cascio’s recent All American Futurity winner, Rocket Wrangler, in a Texas futurity. “He was just a green boy,” Cascio said jokingly. “I still say he was the only big, pimple-faced kid who ever beat me doing anything!
“He looked like he was only about 17 years old,” Cascio added of the 24-year-old Harris. “He had—and has—a lot of class; we’ve stayed friends a long time.”
Along with class, Harris’s loyalty has con- tributed to the respect and high regard others
Above—Some of Russell Harris’ original artwork.
Below—Russell Harris in his younger days at Los Alamitos in California, and enjoying some time off hunting.
SPEEDHORSE, July 6, 2012 49
courtesy Russell Harris
courtesy Russell Harris
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