Walking along the banks of the Truckee most days in late morning you might feel as though time has warped back to the early days of Reno when buckaroos would come into town from the ranches of the Great Basin for rest and recreation and maybe a little music.
There he is- a cowboy- walking at a brisk pace from his home in Midtown to Idlewild Park and back. Old time music, coming from a modern music box hanging on his side, gives first notice, along with the beautiful vintage banjo hanging on his back, that Robert, often known as “Grandpa Rabbit”, is on one of his nearly daily walks along the river.
With his well-worn black hat and jeans or work pants tucked into a pair of roper cowboy boots, it would be easy to mistake Robert for one of Reno’s earlier residents. And he comes by the cowboy title honestly.
Robert grew up in Siskiyou County in far northern California on a family ranch with five siblings. His parents, who farmed in the south, migrated to the West after World War Two from the Missouri Ozarks and northern Alabama.
“A ranch is a ranch,” he laughs. He grew up listening to his mother play accordion, piano and organ. “I lived with my grandparents in Alabama for two years, he says. ”I was ten years old when I started playing banjo with my grandfather.”
“You know the first time I came to Reno I was passing through for the Summer of Love in 1967. It was small then, of course. I actually had a friend who came through in 73 and ran out of gas. He wound up working as a dealer in a casino and never did leave and maybe with the price of gas now we should see the population rising even more quickly,” he suggests with a smile.
Robert ended up living all around Nevada and Oregon and raising a family, working at times as a restaurant chef and always back to ranching, cattle and sometimes dairy cows.
“With dairy every day the milk is coming in, so you make quicker money than waiting on beef cattle,” he points out. “When I was retiring, I spent so much time up here seeing my grandkids that my daughter said I might as well stay “
He is proud of the banjo he is carrying. “It’s a 1912 body,” he indicates, showing the beautiful instrument. He saw it on an auction site and it was being ignored because of a crack in the neck.
“Somehow I ended up getting it,” he laughs. With a new neck and skin, the five string plays sweetly now.
On most days he stops to play for anyone who wants to listen, sometimes along the river, but nearly always at Idlewild Park where the ducks gather to hear him play.
“People thought I looked like a Disney character so they started calling me ‘Grandpa Rabbit’. I just love playing for people,” he adds and then says slyly “if people enjoy it that’s great. And if they don’t enjoy it, I enjoy annoying. I sometimes like to sit and play on my neighbor’s porch on a cul de sac and if strangers make the wrong turn they think ‘I saw that movie’ and turn back around quick.”
Since his skinhead banjo can’t handle if the weather is too cold or damp, there are days when Robert gets his walking in with just the music player on his back sending out cowboy songs of the past. “Back in the old days people carried a lamp to warm up the skin,” he says. “But I can’t really carry a lantern these days.“
Reno may be outgrowing its Biggest Little City nickname, but rest assured, buckaroos still walk the streets and the ducks approve.