Meet Your Neighbor: Ken Raye

BATON ROUGE, La. (WAFB) – Ken Raye takes us back to the Old West, to the days of gunslingers and cattle drives. It’s all he’s ever known.

He’s one of a handful of ranch hands across the country who aren’t deterred by the fact that we haven’t ridden horses to work in nearly half a century. Ken makes custom riding saddles for rodeo riders and cattle ranchers.

He’s a man who seems to have been born 100 years late. “Compared to 100 years ago,” Ken says from under his cowboy hat. “There aren’t as many of them because we don’t travel on horseback.”

To enter his tack shop in Zachary, Louisiana, is to step back in time. Cowboy boots hang from a high banister. Most belong to Ken’s children and friends. Thick sheets of leather are scattered across most of the flat surfaces. And knives and leatherworking tools hang from every wall.

The knife slicing through a hide the size of half a cow tears the silence. Ken’s nervous hands pull and cut the dozens of pieces that will form a $5,000 saddle. “People buy a nice horse, they pay $20,000 to $30,000 for a nice horse,” Ken says. “Then they want a saddle that fits and won’t hurt them.”

That’s where Ken comes in. Mass-produced saddles cost $600 to $700. “My materials cost more than some saddles,” he says. His most expensive saddles cost more than $7,500. “I can sit here for about a week at a time, sitting and pecking. If I have a few saddles with tools on them.”

Time has a way of catching up with us. “About a month or six weeks ago,” Ken says, “I had to buy my first pair of glasses.”

And the habits of the past seem to fade into the dusty paths of our memory. Even though we travel by truck instead of by horse, Ken hopes we never lose that Western way of life. “It’s just real, true, honest,” he said. “A lot of integrity. No matter what you do in the Western industry, you have a certain amount of dedication. It just teaches you a lot more responsibility.”

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