Famed cowboy cartoonist called Kerrville home

Published in the Kerrville Daily Times on April12, 2025

Original Drawing of the Cowpokes by Ace Reid

Advice is often given to aspiring writers that, to be successful, it’s best to write about what you know and what’s in your heart. The same can be said to aspiring artists.

In my role as executive director of an art center, I often encounter artists who try to paint an image to be provocative, to illicit a strong emotional response from the viewer or just simply to attract a buyer. These artists often ignore their internal artistic voice or what’s in their heart, not realizing they are selling both themselves and the would-be art appreciator short. 

Today I am writing about an artist who based a successful career on what he knew — what he saw growing up and what he felt was the truth of the American cowboy. That artist was Ace Reid, the creator of the successful Cowpokes comic and Western humorist.

Asa Elmer "Ace" Reid

Asa Elmer “Ace” Reid Jr. was born in the Texas Panhandle in 1925, near Clarendon. When he was 3 months old, his family moved to Electra, where they owned a 10,000-acre cattle ranch. 

Young Ace Reid grew up around cattle, horses and cowboys. He was familiar with what it was like to be a cowboy — the hard-scrabble life they led, their outlook on life and sense of humor. 

From a very young age, Reid took pencil to paper to draw the world around him — the cowboys and animals on the family ranch.

He once described his youth in an interview saying, “I just hung around the brandin’ pens listenin’ and sketchin’.”

It was when he was in second grade at Electra Elementary School that Reid’s artistry gained its first notice. He won a schoolwide art contest with a drawing of a horse and a rider. His father is quoted in the Feb. 5, 1953, issue of the Kerrville Mountain Sun that he never got Reid “to help roundup a stray because the boy wouldn’t leave his drawing board long enough. “

Reid graduated from high school in time to serve in the Navy at the end of World War II. He was a machinist’s mate aboard the USS Lanier, and it was aboard the ship that his cartooning career began. Reid developed a cartoon for the ship’s newspaper titled “The Sorry Salt.” After the war, the “Sorry Salt” in those early drawings evolved and became “Jake,” the main character in the “Cowpokes” cartoons.

After his time in the Navy, Reid returned to Electra to work on the family ranch and attended the University of Kansas, Mexico City College and the Abbott Art School in Washington, D.C. In 1948, he worked for the West Texas Journal in San Angelo, where his cartoons became a regular feature.

He married Madge Parmley, the daughter of Electra’s town doctor, on Sept. 11, 1949. Madge had attended Tulane University, Sophie Newcombe College, Midwestern University and William and Mary College in Virginia. A gifted humorist and artist in her own right, she once quipped that she “Majored in Campusology.”

Madge and Ace Reid started their early married life in Electra and eventually moved to Wichita Falls. In 1952, they started to travel around Texas to find a place to call home. They fell in love with Kerrville and received a warm Hill Country welcome when they arrived. 

“When we drove into Kerrville several weeks ago, we knew ‘this was it’,” Reid said in a 1952 interview. “We love the beauty, the friendliness, the climate and in addition are very happy over the compliments we have had and the orders we have received for ‘our typical Western cowboy portrayals.’”

The couple bought several acres off Harper Road and established a ranch and studio where Reid could continue to develop his cartoons, starring Luke and Jake, the cowpokes on the Draggin’ S Ranch. In 1953, it was announced that the San Antonio Express would be carrying Reid’s cartoons depicting ranch life, and soon his career began to take off. By 1955, his work was appearing regularly in 30 papers in eight states.

It was the honesty in Reid’s depictions of life on the ranch that resonated with his audience.

“I have always liked to draw, and when I began to notice what other Texas artists did to the typical cowboy when they pictured him as a ‘dude’ or ‘drugstore’ cowboy, I just made up my mind to paint a cowboy like he really is,” Reid said. “You know, nothing is so ’onery lookin’, bowlegged or whiskered as an ol’ West Texas cowboy.

“Now mind you,” he added, “I’m not saying these artists aren’t more artistic than I am. I am just saying that their cowboys aren’t the real thing.”

Reid said that he was 21 years old before he saw a fat cow. The lean livestock and hungry-looking cowboys that are the hallmark of Reid’s work reflect the years of drought and hard work he witnessed growing up during the Depression. The authenticity of the characters depicted often remind readers of people they knew in real life — they were relatable characters who found humor in spite of hard times.

At the peak of his career, Reid was syndicated in 400 newspapers across the Western and Southern United States. He often expressed frustration that his cartoons didn’t stir much interest east of the Mississippi River.

“I forget what parallel it is that goes up through East Texas, shaves the edge off Oklahoma and right on up to the North Pole, but the people on that other side are completely different,” Reid said.

Several times throughout his career, when his attempts at syndication in eastern states were rejected, Reid considered putting hard hats on his characters and have them walk around on steel girders to see if he could spark interest in Pittsburgh or New York.

Ace was known as a friendly, larger-than-life man who enjoyed the company of others. Even though he had a wonderful studio on his ranch (that Madge designed), it was too isolated for the gregarious artist. The studio location was considered “way out of town” in the ’50s and ’60s, and there just weren’t enough people stopping by to keep Reid happy. He established an office in downtown Kerrville on Jefferson Street, where he worked on books, calendars and prints featuring the Cowpokes. Even when he was working on a deadline and his secretary, Kathy Laurie, was trying to keep his friends and fans from disturbing him, he would welcome visitors cheerfully with a “Who’s that out there? Tell ‘em to come on in!”

Original Ace Reid Drawing

In 1961, Reid was diagnosed with leukemia and five years to live. Many believe that the cancer’s origins could be traced to his service in the Navy. His unit landed at Nagasaki shortly after the second atomic bomb decimated the city. In spite of the grim prognosis, Reid lived another 30 years. In his book “Ace Reid, Cowpoke,” biographer John Erikson said of Reid, “…dying wasn’t in his plans.”

Ace died on Nov. 10, 1991, at the age of 66. At the time of his death, he was the largest self-syndicated cartoonist in the world with 350 newspapers and periodicals running his Cowpokes cartoon. His wife, Madge, and their son, Stan, still reside in Kerrville. The Cowpokes calendars featuring Reid’s work are still produced and can be ordered through saltysshop.com.

I’ll close this column with a quote from Omar Barker, a writer for The Saturday Evening Post, who said of Reid and his Cowpokes: “Cartoons are for laughs, grins and chuckles. Reid’s ‘Cowpokes’ delivers on all three counts. There is also an authentic reality in their cowboy humor that I’ll bet a dollar to duck fuzz you won’t find in the work of any other living cartoonist who draws cowboys.”