More than a half-century later, Les Hood was still rodeoing. At age 63, he won All Around Cowboy in the old timers division at the Belton Rodeo. But a lifetime of heavy smoking - “he lit one from the other” - slowly took its toll. In autumn 2006, the wiry cowboy with the infectious grin crossed a bronc he couldn’t ride - emphysema.
Shortly before he died, Hood gave his one-acre hilltop home to the Bell County Cowboys and Cowgirls Hall of Fame. The association had been meeting at a local restaurant - Schoepf’s Old Time Pit BBQ. Framed pictures and biographies of their latest inductees cover one dining room wall. Other memorabilia lies in storage. Thanks to Hood, they could look forward to their own home.
But there was a hang-up.
Les Hood left no will. He lived by the code of the West. A man’s word is his bond. A handshake seals the deal.
“He was still of the old school … if somebody told you something, that was how it was going to be. And you didn’t have to have a will,” said Charline Hood Adams, a niece who grew up traveling across Texas to watch Uncle Les and her father, Charlie Hood, rodeo in the 1950s and 1960s. “We couldn’t convince him. We begged him. He refused to do it.”
To gain clear title to Hood’s place, the association needs about $3,000 in attorney fees. Not exactly big prize money for today’s rodeo cowboys. Still, it’s money the young organization doesn’t have.
Standing in the living area of the home Hood lived and died in, Ms. Adams and association president Jay Killingsworth explained how Hood and others like him left their brand on the Bell County rodeo community.
“All of these people like Les … they’d be down there helping us kids out. And it was something I grew up around, and I mean you always looked up to ’em because you knew what they did,” Killingsworth said. “And at one time Bell County put out a pretty good string of cowboys out through here. At one time Bell County was known as the cowboy capital.”
Ms. Adams said she grew up in the back seat of a car, “going rodeo to rodeo to rodeo.” The group of cowboys from Bell County in which Les Hood and his older brother Charlie traveled also earned a statewide reputation.
“There was a whole bunch of them,” Ms. Adams said. “The whole gang, and they would go down in the Valley and different places where they went and everybody says ‘forget it, the Bell County boys are here.”
While Ms. Adams and Killingsworth reminisce, a hot breeze blows through a rear window. Broken glass lies on the warped wooden floor. Like a sagging old corral with broken planks, the house is in bad shape. The ceiling is falling. Mold grows between the exposed 2x4 wood studs.
As traffic rushes by on nearby U.S. 190, Killingsworth picks up the thread, stories he heard growing up in the shadow of Les Hood and others like him.
“This old guy, we called him Wolf Turner, and he was crazy,” Killingsworth said.
Speaking with a Western twang, Killingsworth plays the role of Wolf. “Hot dang, you couldn’t beat ’em when they was young and going. And you still can’t beat ’em when they get old.”
Killingsworth said the Bell County association has just achieved tax-free status. He hopes this will spur donations. A live auction and sales of barbecue dinner tickets at their annual banquet could bring them closer to their $3,000 goal. Twenty members will be inducted into the ring of honor that night.
Looking down the trail, after the association gains clear title to Hood’s old place, Killingsworth said they would take it one step at a time.
“There’s things that are going to have to be worked out … just keep plugging away,” Killingsworth said. “We got to get out and beat the bushes. It takes time to get there.”
