Ask the vendors how long they’ve been working booths at the National Western Stock Show, and they count in decades. 

Patty Lewis, who runs the higher-end Rockin P Ranch, has been coming for 29 or 30 years. For leather outfitter Monte Lindquist, this would’ve been year 37. David Webster, whose booths sell housewares, massage products, “different things like that,” he started working the NWSS when Gerald Ford was president, and he’s the third generation of his family to do it. 

Working the stock show is a family tradition for April Harris, too. She’s the daughter of shoeshine and stock show mainstay Brother Eli. Her family’s been there since 1958, when the American flag had 48 stars. They might’ve missed one year, somewhere in there, but otherwise, her father, her uncle, her cousin, now her – they’ve been there, shining shoes and remembering faces. April hasn’t missed the stock show as long as she can remember. 

This year shatters those records. The pandemic forced stock show to cancel for the first time in decades, shuttering the booths and silencing the rapid-fire twang of the auctioneer. It means the loss of tens of thousands of dollars for the vendors. But it also means Harris won’t see the familiar faces of customers and fellow vendors alike. 

None of the six vendors who spoke with the Gazette questioned the need to cancel the show. It was the right thing to do, several said. But that doesn’t make it easier.

“It’s like missing a family reunion,” Harris said. 

She became a partner in her family’s Stock Show Shines in the mid-2000s, and she took over when Father-Brother Eli died in 2013. She’s expanded the businesses in recent years, branching out to Greeley’s Independence Stampede and Wyoming’s Cheyenne Frontier Days, among others. All that were scheduled after March were canceled. Frontier Days had withstood world wars and economic depressions. But it couldn’t withstand COVID.

Harris has a 9-to-5 job as a receptionist, which has been a lifesaver. For a while, she’s wanted to start a website, taking shoes and bags by mail, shining them and shipping them back. But the pandemic’s making it more of a paramount desire.

“I tried to get a couple of partnerships going, but those didn’t quite work out the way I was hoping,” she said, referring to efforts to have a standing shine spot. “So I’m hoping if I can get the website set up, that will give me some residual income throughout the year.”

Webster, who travels across the country and multiple booths that sell those housewares, said he took half a million dollars out of his retirement account to keep his head above water. Losing the Denver show, one of his biggest, will cost him tens of thousands of dollars. When he heard it’d been canceled, he was “almost number because everything else had been canceled anyway.” 

“I don’t even know how to put it into words, it’s just been devastating for me,” he said. “Not only is it the business part, but this has been my life. I’m the third generation doing. I’m 66 years old. My family has done this for almost 100 years. It’s like taking a whole life away from you.”

That sentiment was universal and often unprompted. 

“After doing this for so many years, you build relationships with customers who come back and support you year after year,” said Monte Lindquist, whose leather business has six booths at the show. He started with handbags back in 1984. “It’s nice to see their kids grow up, and their kids are now bringing their kids. Even the vendors, you grow up with your vendors, you grow old with your vendors. It’s like an extended family.”

Lindquist said his business would survive this. He didn’t plan for this, obviously, but “shows go up and down every year.” Though he’s learned to budget, this loss will hurt.

“We will miss a lot of money,” he said, laughing. “I don’t want to say how much, but when you do something for 36 years, you wouldn’t go back if you didn’t make money.”

“My first reaction to the cancellation? ‘Oh s–t,'” laughed Matt Wright, whose Extreme Instincts booth and business sells custom knives, guided fishing trips and survival classes. 

Each year, the Denver show accounts for a third of his business, as much as $20,000. The event has downstream effects, too: Lookie-loos may peruse at the show and buy online later or refer friends to Extreme Instinct. It’s hard to put a number on it. He’s still making and selling his knives, and he was leading a fishing trip when he got word the show was canceled. It’s created “trickiness” financially, and the impact extends into the intangible.

“It’s such a big part of our year, seeing the people who’ve become good friends, people who we’ve seen for the last 10-plus year,” he said. “It’s just mind-boggling to know it won’t be bringing this community together, not just sales-wise but just the camaraderie that comes from being there.”

Like Webster, Patty Lewis takes her wares on the road. She was in Houston with her high-end western wear for a show down there back before everything closed down; several days in, the organizers closed it down. That hurt: She’d stocked up her inventory and brought it down to Texas.

Unlike other vendors, she has a physical location in Ouray. Even still, the National Western Stock Show accounts for 50% of her income each year. She’s grateful vendors got months of advance notice. But still. Asked what the cancellation meant to her, she used the same word so many others did: devastating.

“We’re going to just have faith in God that he’s going to take care of us,” Lewis said. “Somehow, you have to make it, don’t you?”