5/23/2011

How the bola tie got its name.


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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