Fugettaboutit, Pardner

NEW YORK PRESS: Published Aug. 10, 2011

Paris Parrish and Khayr Pitts trot side by side into the sunset. The two men sit tall and proud in their saddles, backs straight, horses at a steady pace. Parrish is in full cowboy regalia: a long black trench coat that drapes down his horse’s flank, an ornate collared shirt, a black cowboy hat. When he turns slightly, his sardine can-sized silver belt buckle glistens in the waning sun. Pitts is in jeans and brown cowboy boots. In their saddles they clop steadily past a Getty gas station, a McDonald’s and a construction site marked off by a graffiti-ridden wooden fence. They turn onto a side street and march proudly past rundown houses and the tall brick buildings of a housing project. This is Brooklyn.

People in the neighborhood still haven’t gotten used to seeing the cowboys in the streets. Parrish says he was riding through East New York one day when a man stopped him. “Yo! I gotta stop and take a picture of this,” the man said. “You don’t see this every day in the ‘hood.”

“I don’t know why,” replied Parrish. "We ride through here just about every day.“

Off they go—out the side of the stables, across the Belt Parkway, past the Getty gas station and into Brooklyn. A typical day with the Federation of Black Cowboys.

"To me, it’s not new,” says Pitts. “I’ve been doing it all my life.”

The 26-acre Cedar Lane stables, home of the Federation of Black Cowboys, sits on the border of Howard Beach, where JFK airport is located, and East New York, a rough Brooklyn neighborhood. It’s right off the Belt Parkway, a major thoroughfare that circles Brooklyn and Queens. The property is barely visible from the road but bustles with activity inside, like the secret back room of a bar. Men in stiff jeans and wide-brimmed hats roam the grounds in muddy boots, tending to horses housed in rows of stables or riding them around a large corral.

Parrish and Pitts have been coming to these stables since they were kids growing up in Brooklyn. They are now among the youngest members of the federation, an aging group of Southern transplants, many of whom grew up on farms and ranches.

Parrish is only 21, but hefty enough to be a nose tackle on a football team. He started coming to Cedar Lane when he was very young—6 years old, he thinks— and has mastered stable life. He can saddle a horse, muck a stall and repair a roof with the best of the old-timers, the Southern men who taught him the trade. He’s lived in Brooklyn his entire life, yet has adopted certain characteristics of his cowboy mentors—he speaks politely, with a touch of country vernacular, and says things like “purdy” when he means “pretty” and “yes sir” and “yes ma'am” when speaking to strangers. Every once in a while, he’ll pause to hock a stream of spit from his chewing tobacco into the mud. He considers these cowboys his family.

“Me and my brother were raised right here,” he says, referring to Pitts, who isn’t actually his brother at all.

Parrish grew up in Brownsville, a poor neighborhood bordering East New York. By his own admission, if it weren’t for these stables, he might be in prison now— or worse.

The Federation of Black Cowboys, a nonprofit group formed in 1994, has about 30 active members, many of whom are retired working men.

Jessie Wise, one of its founders, is 70. He says that early on they were just a bunch of guys who loved cowboys and wanted to be organized. They formed the federation and its mission soon evolved to teaching urban children about horsemanship and the history of the black cowboy.

“We were the original cowboys,” Wise says, referring to the slaves who took care of horses and cows in early America.

The federation gives barn tours, holds rodeos and competitions, visits schools and gives pony rides all over the city. Many members become mentors to the children who come to the stables.

Keisha Morse, president of the federation, says that as cowboys started spending more and more time with the kids who came to the barn, a sort of kinship developed. Some of the kids latched on to the cowboys. “We serve as surrogate family members,” says Morse, who jokingly calls herself the “mama” of the group.

Around 2004—nobody remembers quite when—the federation decided to invite some of the kids who hung around the stables into their group, starting a subgroup called the Junior Feds. About 13 kids joined, and some, like Parrish and Pitts, have stuck around ever since. Parrish is now the secretary and safety officer for the federation.

“The ones that strayed away got in trouble, and the ones that stuck with us are men,” says Wise. “We had a girl that stayed with us. Now, she’s a mounted cop.”

It´s a Sunday morning. Parrish is in the same place he is every morning: at the stables, mucking stalls. He does his job with ease, using an “apple picker,” a plastic rake-like device, to pitch old hay and manure over his shoulder into a large green trash bin behind him.

The back portion of Cedar Lanes, where Parrish works part-time, is an unkempt area of run-down stables and assorted abandoned items. A small slope by the stables is littered with seven car tires, the disembodied metal scoop of an excavating machine, a cluster of stray chickens, a cat and a couple of neglected apple pickers. The combination of mud, hay and manure creates a potent smell— earthy, but not vile.

These stables are a far cry from Brownsville, where Parrish still lives, an inner-city neighborhood mired in gangs and violence. “I was a terror as a child,” he says. “I used to fight every damn day.”

One summer day, when Parrish was very young, maybe 8 years old, he was about to get into one of those fights. He was riding his bicycle down the street with some friends when another group of kids started taunting them. He jumped off his bike, ready to throw down.

At that moment, a man riding a horse down the street—it isn’t as uncommon as it sounds—saw the beginning of the fight and rushed to break it up. It was Jimmy Parker, a friendly man who ran a business giving pony rides at block parties and street fairs. He recognized Parrish, who had been to the stables before, and brought him home.

“He rung the bell and told my mother what happened,” Parrish recalls. “She said, 'I’m gonna talk to Jimmy and tell Jimmy that he needs to bring this boy to the barn every day he can, because we don’t want him to turn out like everyone else.’” Parrish’s mother called Parker, and Parker agreed to take the boy under his wing. That summer, he brought Parrish with him to the stables every day. He let Parrish feed the horses and muck the stalls and even paid him to pick up the manure on jobs at birthday parties or block parties.

“When you get in some parts of the ghetto, it’s like, either you’re with them or you’re not,” Parker says. “Paris would have been with them. He’s a very nice young man, but going with the wrong kids makes him do the wrong things. With the right people, Paris is a perfect gentleman.”

For Parrish, the Federation of Black Cowboys were the right people. Parker is not a member of the federation, though he leases a stall at the stables. But by hanging out with Parker, Parrish soon got to know federation members like Wise.

“I’ve been a father figure to him,” Wise says. “I take him everywhere I go. I taught him how to drive.”

Parrish and Wise became close. Beauty, the black Belgian Morgan cross that Parrish takes care of and rides, is Wise’s horse, though Parrish claims ownership. For Parrish, all of the cowboys are family.

“I’ve got a lot more fathers and mothers than the average kid would have,” Parrish explains happily. “Everyone adopts me as their son. I’m just that lovable.”

While Parrish mucks stalls, Pitts lunges a horse named Nitro. Lunging is a form of exercise for the horse, he explains. Pitts twirls in place, holding a rope attached to the horse, while it gallops around him like a racecar circling a track.

Pitts, 22, is shorter and slimmer than Parrish. He grew up in East New York just a few blocks from the stables. He lives in Queens now, but is proud of his Brooklyn roots and has a tattoo of the Brooklyn Bridge on his left forearm.

Pitts has been going to the stables since he was practically a toddler. A family friend would bring him to take pony rides and throw hay to the horses. His love grew from there. Although he was involved in other activities—Boy Scouts, football, baseball, boxing, swimming—he couldn’t stay away from the horses.

He met Parrish at the stables when they were about 13. They both worked for Parker on his pony rides. “We grew up together,” Pitts says. “We know everything about each other.”

Unlike Parrish, Pitts isn’t at the stables every day, although he tries to go as often as possible. Pitts works nights as a home health aide, making it difficult to get to see the horses. He studied animal science at SUNY Cobleskill, but left after two years. He plans on returning to school soon to study biology and education.

When he talks about the federation, he echoes Parrish: “It’s one big family.”

A cowboy’s horse, Parrish explains, is an extension of its owner. “Your animal is your lifeline,” he says. “If your animal is well and healthy, you’re well and healthy.”

Wise describes the lessons the young feds have learned from the stables in a similar way. “You have to be responsible. If you have a horse, you take care of that horse. You make sure they eat, make sure they don’t stray off or get into trouble. It teaches you to be a strong man.”

Parrish and Pitts take meticulous care of their horses. Before going on a ride, they groom their horses as thoroughly as they might prepare themselves before a date.

For example, when Pitts prepares his horse Zeus, a golden brown mixed-breed Quarter Horse, he starts by brushing down the horse with a curry comb, a circular device with saw-like teeth that pulls off extra hair and dirt. He then runs a hardbristled hairbrush over the horse to catch any leftover particles. Once the horse’s body is thoroughly cleaned, he sprays him with Pepi, a sweet-smelling conditioner that leaves a glossy sheen on the coat. Afterward, he uses a regular comb to get the knots out of Zeus’ mane, tail and forelock, the tuft between the horse’s ears that falls over his forehead.

Zeus is almost ready to go out, but there’s one last, important step. Pitts reaches behind the horse and carefully braids his tail. He loops a piece of blue string around the end of the tail and ties it into a big, floppy bowtie, so the horse looks like Eeyore from Winnie-the-Pooh.

It´s hard to feel like a real cowboy in New York City. Clomping past a bodega is nothing like romping through an open field. That’s why federation members often travel south to join other cowboy associations on trail rides in the spacious areas of Virginia and North Carolina. These are weekend camping trips at which the cowboys dance, party, barbecue and ride their horses.

“Down there you have to ride hard to keep up with the boys,” says Parrish, who has been on several trail rides. “Being a New Yorker, there’s a reputation we have to uphold: city slickers can ride with the big boys.”

But sometimes the federation invites the Southerners to come to New York. When the country boys come to the city, they play by city rules.

“They’ve got fields that stretch from here to Bed-Stuy, and there are no cars to worry about” says Parrish. “You can ride any old way you want to—don’t worry about hitting nobody or running into nothing.”

It’s different in New York. “We ride in the streets.”

Morse says that meeting cowboys from up and down the East Coast has been an education for young members like Parrish and Pitts. The cowboys share tips and techniques for horse care, which often differ from region to region. “For every incident, injury or issue you have for a horse, you might have 20 different ways of addressing it,” she says. “That’s how they broaden their knowledge about horses.”

Once the horses are groomed, they must be saddled and equipped. Parrish throws a striped blanket and a red pad over Beauty’s back before fitting her with a heavy saddle. He tightens a girth underneath the horse to make sure the saddle doesn’t come loose and pulls the bridle over her head.

Pitts, who is equipping Zeus, looks over at Parrish with concern. “You going to go on the street with no brakes?” “What?” asks Parrish.

“You ain’t got no chinstrap,” says Pitts. “You think I’m stupid?” asks Parrish, grinning. He pulls the chinstrap from his pocket and attaches it to the horse’s headgear.

“I have brakes,” says Parrish. “But she doesn’t ever go past first gear.”

“Mine likes to play football,” quips Pitts, whose horse is much younger than Parrish’s. “She’s a linebacker.”

It’s doubtful that the horses will go much faster than a trot, but accidents do happen. In 2006, the horse of a 13-year-old boy returning to the stables from a ride in the streets lunged into traffic, striking a yellow cab and sending the boy to the hospital.

The pair quickly disappear into Parrish’s car, which has a pair of Air Jordans in the back and a cigar on the dash, to grab their cowboy gear. Parrish dons his trench coat, known as a duster, and his floppy black hat. Pitts puts on a riding shirt and his cowboy boots.

Latoya Turso, Pitts’ friend who has been hanging out for the day, steadies herself for her first big horse ride. She’s going to sit behind Pitts in the saddle. Her clothes are normal—a black jacket with a white hooded sweatshirt underneath. She looks nervously up at Zeus. They’re ready to ride.