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Photo by Terry Kraus Ron Schaefer misses the people of the valley and spent most of last week catching up. Click for larger view

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Many of you probably remember Ron Schaefer. He used to own what is now Obies’. He did snowplow, and towing. He later ran an auto supply place, and with the help of some other people built the Rye Colorado City Saddle Club riding arena. He volunteered at the fire department. And he worked at being a cowboy.

Schaefer took a trip down memory lane last week, spending the better part of a week in the community. We managed to get him to sit down and hold still long enough to catch us up on what he has been doing since he worked and lived here.

Schaefer’s two pack a day cigarette habit caught up with him. After all, according to Schaefer, a cowboy always has a cigarette in his mouth. He had COPD, and began having trouble breathing at the Colorado City altitude.

In 1991 he became a drifter of sorts. He ran various dude ranches: Yellowstone Park, Chandler, Arizona, South Dakota, Cheyenne and Cody, Wyoming. Schaefer loves to talk and, while working at dude ranches, he discovered he got paid more to talk than work.

One of his last stops was at Steamboat Ranch. The breathing problems were made worse when he got kicked by a horse. He was injured at the sternum and his knee was practically twisted inside out.

He and wife Cheryl, married for 26 years, moved to an Arizona border town with a population of seven. Schaefer described that there were two white folks. Everyone else had a 'heavier tan' and his Spanish improved while he lived there.

For seven years he ran a ranch of 300 acres that leased 300,000 additional acres. The Buenos Aries National Wildlife Refuge was right on the Mexican border and there was a daily migration across the border: illegals, coyotes, and cartel members moved back and forth.

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