The American Royal livestock show is held each October in Kansas City, MO.  Some of the nations best cattle are on exhibit and will be showing for the title of Grand Champion by breed and Grand Champion steer.  The quality of cattle is deep and the competition is fierce.

When I was a child we would head up to watch the show every year and it was such a good time.  It was always cold and spitting snow, it used to take place the second week of November.  We had fun watching the show and seeing my parents visit with friends they only saw a few times a year and telling stories about the good old days.

My dad worked for years at Blue Sky Angus Farm in Kearney, MO.  The picture above is the Best 10 Head at the Royal in 1963.  He is the third cowboy from the left. Blue Sky was a big deal back in the day.  They travelled all around the country to the major national shows with their big string of Angus cattle.

Time moves on and my dad has been gone since 2016.  In my lifetime I saw the show change, time touches everything.  I can only imagine what my dad saw in his lifetime.  Fortunately for us, he recorded some of his thoughts.  He cherished these memories and also had a great sense of humor.  I'm so glad he wrote so much down.

Here is a little story my dad wrote in 2015 after his last trip to the American Royal.

"I took a little trip today, I went to Kansas City.  The fall air crisp, clear and cool.  The farms and fields real pretty.  Past Oak Grove where when I trucked, the place I used to stop to check the steers and heifers to be sure one wasn't down on top.  Then through the city the Benton Curve down the twelfth street viaduct.  But it wasn't till I turned left onto Genessee that I received quite a shock. 

The stockyards were gone, there was nothing left as I remembered them.  No trucks or packinghouses or boxcars without end.  Just steel and concrete everywhere where once stood pens of wood, holding cattle by the thousands when the price was good. No hogs now roamed the alleys or walked up the ramps to doom.  To feed a growing nation, through bright summer and winters gloom. 

On down the street by the Exchange where cattle buyers gathered, they laughed and talked and ate their lunch, while tired horses stood out tethered.  Where the crews that fed the cattle could come in from the cold and have a meal, a drink or two while cattle were bought and sold.

And farther past down the avenue where the mule barns once had stood, was now just a parking lot, no hint of brick and wood.  The north and south and east gate are now just memories in time.  Victims of our progress, for the real estate is prime.

But the American Royal, tis still there and comes alive each November.  It's still quite a show and a grand old time, but nothing like I remember.  The faces and names are different now, the building large and bold and you have to look really hard and close to find anything of old.

The Golden Ox is closed now, with the hotel and the bars; where the herdsman at evening gathered before the show ring wars.  The places there are gone now where once Ed Fowler stood and argued with Harl Jackson as to whether his bull was really good.  While others like Dick Maurer or little Eddy Roth just listened on the side line or spilled beer on the table cloth.

All those men that I once knew have went on to different circumstances.  Some are in pine boxes while others still go to dances.  But down in the barn the men there now have the spirit I remember- for after all it's getting fall - the Royal comes each November. 

The show cattle there still stand in rows, quietly munching hay.  While worn out kids nap and dream of the championships they'll win on show day.  And in the arena after a hush the crowds still clap and cheer as the judge makes his decisions, and slaps the champion steer.  

So I suppose after all not much has changed on that fabled piece of land.  Where cowboys and girls come from far and wide to try to make their stand.  I guess I'll stop now boring you with things that I remember but I might come back next weekend for the darn thing lasts almost to December."

~ Gordon "Ferg" Ferguson