Page 76 - 13 April 2012

74 SPEEDHORSE, April 13, 2012
THE EARLY YEARS
“I grew up in a family where we spoke Spanish. When I started kindergarten, I didn’t speak any English,” said Flores, who grew up in La Pryor, Texas, approximately 80 miles west of San Antonio. “It was prohibited to speak Spanish—they wanted you to speak English—but we were on our own to learn it. It was very intimidating and kind of scary for a 5 year old going to kindergarten.”
Flores set his mind to learn the new language as quickly as possible. While he worked hard dur- ing the school year, he worked even harder during summer breaks. Migrant work was his family’s livelihood, and Flores and his two brothers worked alongside his parents each summer.
“The whole family used to migrate up north to Nebraska and work on the sugar beets. Then from Nebraska we’d go to California and work there, then after those holidays we’d come back in September and go to school. I remember those years very well,” Flores said of his childhood years. “That’s what made our family so close. We worked all day and then we came home and my mother would cook on a little stove. We took a bath and would eat, and then we would read or write and draw pictures, and the next morning we were off to work again.”
During those early years, a school field trip took Flores to a classmate’s ranch. The image was forever engrained in his memory.
“When I got off the bus and saw a new station wagon, a large house, a sprawling ranch, and all the horses running around I
said to myself,
‘This is what I will dream about every night and work for everyday. I want to own this ranch,’” Flores recalled.
After learning a second language and devoting himself to his education, Flores graduated from high school—one of only
16 in his graduating class—and entered Pan American University to study music. An accomplished saxophone player, Flores was ready to make his life as a musician until fate stepped in.
BUSINESS SENSE
Just weeks before the end of the college semester, Flores’ brother, Israel, paid a visit while traveling from his home in California to a jobsite in Florida. They made plans to meet in Houston.
“When I got to Houston, he had already been here for two weeks, and he had been scouting the area and doing some little jobs and met a contrac- tor here,” Flores said. “He said, ‘There’s a lot of work here, we ought to stay.’ He was a little bit older than me, so I said, ‘If you want to stay here, we’ll stay here.’ We never left Houston.”
Flores has called Houston home ever since. With no more than the clothes on his back, $5 in his pocket and a childhood dream, Flores went to work with his brother. They opened a drywall business in 1969, and eight years later, started a drywall supply business.
“God gives every man the ability to dream. It doesn’t matter whether you are rich or poor, or what your race is. All men are equal when they sleep at night and dream,” said Flores. “Every night I dreamed of where I wanted to be in life, and everyday when I woke up I saw it as
my job to make my dreams from the night before come true.”
Flores couldn’t have imagined that one of his earliest childhood dreams would eventually come true. But as the drywall business
began to grow, Flores found out about a ranch that had come up for sale. And it wasn’t just any ranch, it was THE ranch...the same La Pryor
ranch he had visited as a schoolboy who didn’t speak English.
“Lo and behold, a few years later, that ranch came up for sale.
So my two brothers and I decided we ought to try to buy it. We ended up buying the ranch, which was something like 220 acres, and we tore down the old ranch house,” said Flores, adding with a laugh, “And I said to myself, you know, at one time I thought this ranch was absolutely beautiful, and here we are tearing the house down! We bought the ranch and tore the house down to build another house, and then at the other side of the ranch we built a brand new home for my parents to live in. They both passed away at that ranch. Everyone wants to do nice things for their parents, and I was blessed to be able to fulfill that dream before they died.”
The three brothers’ purchase of the ranch is proof of the family’s close-knit ties. To this day, Flores’ memories of that ranch are some of the best of his life.
“We all owned it together, the three broth- ers. We’d all go over there. We’d take our families and our kids and we all had our own bedrooms and the kids slept everywhere,” said Flores. “We built a big house, and in the back we had living quarters for people that visited us. We had tons of memories in that house of the family and the kids growing up...really good memories of the family.”
THE HORSES
It was also family that is responsible for Flores’ foray into Quarter Horse racing. In the early 1980s, one of his brothers received a racehorse as a birthday present. Soon, the whole family was involved.
“My sister-in-law bought my brother a horse, it was supposed to be a racehorse. I don’t think he ever ran. He was horrible. But he had a horse, so every time he worked, about 20 of us would go watch him work. You’d think he was working the All American win- ner,” Flores said with a laugh. “He was pretty but he just couldn’t run at all. But Israel had gotten this horse for his birthday, and we wanted to get horses, too. A few years later, my brothers and I partnered on some horses. We got to racing and had a little bit of luck. And here we are today.”
During those early days of racing, Flores recalls running horses with trainers James
Israel, Chicho and Rigo Flores with their father at the ranch in La Pryor, Texas in the early 1970s.
Stacy Pigott/Speedhorse
Stacy Pigott/Speedhorse
Courtesy Narciso Flores
Chicho Flores designed many of the buildings himself, including the beautiful stone and wood office.
Stablewood Farm includes two pastures of exotic animals including an elk herd and several varieties of deer.