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| Exhibit A |
Out here in the western USA, the preferred male neckware (and
in some cases, female too) is the bola tie. Some folks call it the
“bolo,” but this is incorrect. If you want to adopt our traditions
and live amongst us, get it right. This is a matter of mutual respect and good
manners.
I have heard folks ask about the origins of the name –
what does it mean? Much of our “cowboy” tradition in the west came to us
courtesy of other cultures - Africa, Spain and finally, Mexico. Modern
cattle arrived in what became the western USA in 1540, along with the Coronado
expedition. Some of the Don's cattle made an escape in the southwestern
lands he was exploring (y tambien algunos de los caballos ) and these became
the ancestors of the ones we now call “Texas Longhorns.”
Many of the hands who worked with these early American
steaks-on-the-hoof were “buckaroos” from the Spanish and Mexican tradition –
that moniker in fact comes from the Spanish “vaquero.” Is there nothing
that is uniquely American? No, Virginia, there is not, not much
anyway... We all came from somewhere else, todos. And we brought our good stuff with us!
Like barbecue...
Many of the cattle raising traditions of Spain and North
Africa were handed down to these early Mexican and Tejano cowboys and they in
turn passed the traditions along to us over the years – the “lariat,” for example, and
the practice of branding and “round-up;” these were ancient old-world practices long before the
first rodeo in this country. ¡Es verdad, amigos!
So if you transplanted old Harley Joe onto a cattle ranch on a
Kenyan savanna, or maybe in Morocco, he might just feel right at home
there – at least in the sense he would see cowboys doing some of the same
things he saw back home in the Hill Country, so he might not feel quite so foreign.
He could pitch right in and lend a hand, because he'd already know the basic
drill.
One of the tools of the cowboying trade in those old Spanish
times was the bola. It was a braided cord (not anything lightweight, but like a heavy-duty lariat); the
examples I have seen had three separate lengths of lariat, each one perhaps three
or four feet long and all connected together at one end, each strand
dangling with a weight attached to its end.
A cowboy who had an impulse to cause a running steer to stop and hang around por un momento would whirl the bola above his head
several times to gain some momentum, then fling it off in the direction of the
animal's legs. If the gaucho's aim was true, the bola would entangle
itself among those flying limbs and bring an abrupt halt to the
leather-bent-for-hell-procession. Then the cowboy could tie up those dangerous
legs (just like down at the rodeo) and do whatever else needed to be done at
that particular time. Nothing further need be said about that at present.
Where those earlier traditions were practiced, Harley
Joe might see a Spanish cowboy competing in a calf-roping competition just like
down in San Antonio -- using a bola instead of our usual rope, or
lariat. The look of the thing would be much the same though.
If you look at Exhibit A, the modern bola tie, Diné-style, you
will see that it looks kind of just like you might expect a real bola to look – it's a small
version of a lariat with “weights” attached to the ends. And that is how it
got its name. It is missing the third length of rope and the weights are transformed into little decorative tips on the end of its two cords.
It reminds us, some of us anyway, of the
vaqueros' bola (or the Argentine "boleadora"), a tradicionál tool of
the cattle business, although admittedly, many westerners do not know its origins
either (except my cattle-ropin' sister). Some think it's something those
crazy Texicans came up with on a dull Saturday night. Wrong!
We add the decorative clasp, maybe with a nice piece of
turquoise, to bring it up short around the neck when Miss Bobbi Jo requires
such and there you have it. Some of us would say this little bit of
“old-world” inspired treasure has a very classy look to it. I mean, if
you must wear a tie at all – it might as well look as fine as this one does…
We do things our own way, out here in the Wild West.
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