Ex-Cowboy Fixes the Wagons, Takes to the Trail : Hobby: One minute he has his hands around the reins of an 1880s wagon pulled by two draft mules. The next he is sitting alone behind the joystick of an ultra-light airplane buzzing along the treetops.

Forest Schmidt has one foot in the past, one foot in the future.

One minute he has his hands around the reins of an 1880s wagon pulled by two of the biggest draft mules a city boy has ever seen. The next he is sitting alone behind the joystick of an ultra-light airplane buzzing along the treetops of his 40-acre ranch east of Paso Robles at 55 m.p.h.

“I’ve always been a cowboy,” admitted Schmidt, a strong, wiry 6-footer who spent his entire life working with his hands as a rancher and oil field worker.

The wagon he rode down San Marcos Road near his home on a recent spring-like day--showing off at the request of his visitors--is one of five owned by Schmidt and his wife, Jean. It was a broken-down old wreck that the rancher rebuilt into mint condition about five years ago.

“When you grow up a poor rancher, you learn to do a lot of things for yourself,” said the 74-year-old Schmidt, standing in the workshop in his barn decked out in blue jeans, cowboy boots, flannel shirt and leather gloves. “If it breaks, you learn to fix it.”

Fixing wagons and taking them on trail rides has become an obsessive hobby for the Schmidts. They spent a week retracing the Donner party’s trail last year as part of a 12-wagon group.

Dressed in authentic period costumes, the wagon train riders crept along at 15 miles per day along dirt trails, camped outdoors and visited the cemetery where many members of the Donner party ended up.

“When you’re riding along at three to four miles per hour, you really get to see everything,” said Schmidt.

Last August the Schmidts took another five-day wagon trip along trails near Placerville, through what Schmidt described as “some wild country.”

Schmidt said the first four days were rough but enjoyable. But the last day the weather turned downright hot and nearly baked the costume-clad travelers.

The wagon that Schmidt rode on those trail rides--the first wagon Schmidt decided to renovate five years ago--was like an old friend. He found it rusting in a field during a trip back East while visiting relatives. It was the same wagon the family used for working the ranch when Schmidt was a boy.

“This was my dad’s wagon in Missouri,” said Schmidt, who moved to California in 1957 to work in the San Ardo oil fields and raise cattle on 4,000 leased acres south of Lake Nacimiento.

“We used it like a tractor,” said Schmidt, who has three grown children of his own now. “It was an old wagon back then.”

Schmidt put what was left of the wagon on a trailer and hauled it back to the Paso Robles ranch where he has lived since 1959.

He removed and cleaned the ironwork--the backbone of the wagon--and saved what wooden pieces were salvageable, including the oak hubs and some of the running gear.

The other wooden parts Schmidt reconstructed in his shop or had built by local craftsmen.

The Weber wagon Schmidt first renovated is not the oldest in his collection, however. He is currently putting the finishing touches on a Clapp wagon, built in Auburn, N.Y., before 1880.

Schmidt has two other fully restored Weber wagons, eight to 10 that he has yet to start renovating and a barn full of parts he has saved from wagons that were too far gone to be rebuilt.