From Start To Finish

Since this is my first post on our new renamed blog, Saddle Makers Insights, I wanted to take the time and introduce my self to what I hope turns out to be a lot of followers. My name is Bob Trezona, I’m 66 years old, I’m from Hamilton, MT. and I’ve been building saddles for the better part of 31 years now.

There are very few people that know my name because I have always worked under my company name, Bitterroot Saddle Company. I’ve never advertised my Company name because I’ve always been booked out so far that all that would do is get me in more trouble than I already am. So here I am, almost 67 years old and no one out there knows who I am and probably only 10-15 other saddle makers have ever heard of me or my business so your first question should be, what in the world could this guy have to say that I could learn anything from or be slightly interested in listing to. Well I’m going to pass on two pieces of wisdom that I received from my Dad and the other from one hell of a good Cowboy by the name of Fred Talbott from Joseph, Oregon. My Dad had a saying that was very simple but so very true, “Book Smart and Common Sense Dumb.” Fred use to tell me when we were talking horses or equipment or jobs that you were going to be doing on horseback “I want you to listen to everything that everyone has to say about those three things because you will either learn something that will come in pretty handy or you will learn something that you never want to do.”

Looking back on my life those sayings have served me well. I would like to take just a minute or two to explain what I have done with the past 66 years of my life so you can understand why I might have some things that would be worth listening to and then you could decide whether they would be of any value to you personally. I was born in 47 on a small 40 acre farm in Northeastern Oregon in the town of Enterprise. It was Ranching and Logging country and if you were going to live there you were going to support yourself by doing one of those two things. So I hired on with a big ranch in the summer of 1960 and have been supporting myself with horse and livestock related work ever since.

The only break in this line of work was a 4 year hitch with the Army as a Helicopter Pilot flying in Viet Nam. I might mention for several reasons that this didn’t end well. I was shot down for the last time on Thanksgiving Day 1968 by an RPG-7 through my fuel tanks which created one hell of a fire that I managed to stay in for what the Doctors guessed was about 45 seconds. The only reason I’m mentioning this is that we hope to do many still pictures and video segments doing reviews on many products and showing people how to do things and you are going to notice that my hands and face aren’t exactly like everyone else’s. I’ve had about 70 surgeries to put me back together as good as they could so I guess what it boils down to is what you see is what you get.

So when I got out of the Hospital in 1970 and the Army I tried to start my life over with many breaks for more surgeries until about 1982. From 1970 until now is when I gathered the knowledge that I would like to share with you folks that are interested in what I have to say.

The last thing I would like to mention before I end this first Post is that it is very important to me to share some of information that I have learned over the past 45 years with my followers, but I will try my very best to post something every week but being a one man band, being booked out close to two years on my saddle orders and running my online store I’m working 7 days a week as it is. So like I tell my Web Master (without her constant help, none of this would ever happen) please don’t give up on me, I’m doing the best that I can!!! Bob