![]() Instead, Piland and Berg proposed he use their ropes. Not much later, Allen Bach came along and asked for some pointers on starting a rope company. Several 15- and 16-hour days would follow, as they continued to operate strictly on trial and error. Barry gets a lot of credit for sticking with me and making it work.” We had to roll up our sleeves and make it work. But we had such a hefty debt on top of that, we couldn’t shut it down. “We did the books and realized we’d lost our initial investment. “We came over here one day to possibly shut the shop down,” recalled Piland. It had taken three or four years to develop a good line of head ropes (the Bad Boy) and a good line of heel ropes (the Omega)-and they were unprofitable years. We still sell it, and it’s our second-most popular three-strand rope.” “So he always made his a little different and marked it with a ‘BB.’ When his ropes came through, the kids in the back started calling him ‘Bad Boy Barry Berg.’ And Bad Boy stuck. “Barry liked to use a special little head rope,” said Piland. ![]() Back then, he was unwittingly responsible for the name of their first successful head rope. ![]() Still, he was quite an engineer and we took a chance on it.”Īfter about a year, Barry Berg joined the team. We had a machine built by an experienced rope-maker, but he’d never made a rope on it. “It’s not like there were books to buy about how to make team ropes, and our competition was not going to tell us anything,” said Piland. Stephenson, Piland and a third partner, Joe Mathews, started from a remote spot about 80 miles north of Laredo, and were at a serious disadvantage. The handicap system was just hitting, and we realized how many weekend ropers would come out and start roping if they knew certain boys wouldn’t show up and take their money.” “He’d been to the NFR and had just won the George Strait for the second time with Rich Skelton. “Cactus Ropes was Jack’s idea,” said Mike Piland. The iconic rope company founded by a bonafide pro team roper celebrates its 25th anniversary this May. The CB handle for NFR team roper Jack Stephenson was “Cactus Jack.” Imagine being in the truck with guys like Dee Pickett or Mike Beers or JD Yates and rodeoing not with cell phones, but CB radios.
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