Cattle Lassoed by Changing Times
“Appy Jack” Switzer can keep his 20-year bragging rights as the cattle baron of Lake View Terrace for a few more weeks.
A proposed housing development is forcing Switzer to close the gates of his 31/2-acre ranch--the last in the community nestled in the foothills of the northeast San Fernando Valley--and move his eight longhorns.
Several dozen friends and neighbors rallied Saturday to say goodbye to Switzer and the herd, which some residents consider neighborhood pets.
“I don’t know what I’m going to do when they leave,” said Hattie Star, who has lived next to Switzer’s “Pet Ranch” for more than 20 years. “I look out my window and see a Texas longhorn standing on a hill. How many people in Los Angeles can say that?”
The tiny herd will be moved to a 4-H facility in nearby Shadow Hills. Switzer, his family and neighbors are pleased the gentle cattle--despite their fierce-looking horns--will be treated well.
Switzer leased the land on Kagel Canyon Street at Brussels Avenue from a doctor in 1980 for $75 a month “all on a handshake--no paper,” Switzer said. When the doctor and his partners sold the land recently, Switzer knew he would have to get rid of his herd.
It will be a bittersweet parting, he said.
“It’s gotten to where I can’t do it anymore,” Switzer, 69, said of the endless work required to care for the animals. Two strokes have slowed him down considerably, he said.
Somewhat tuckered out by Saturday’s farewell rally, he eventually greeted the steady parade of well-wishers and passersby from behind the wheel of his blue 1963 Mercury Comet convertible, decked out with fuzzy dice hanging from the rearview mirror and a serape covering the dash. He had come to California in 1961 in a car much like it, said his daughter, Terry Switzer.
An Oklahoma native, Switzer has been a hobby rancher in the San Fernando and Santa Clarita valleys since he arrived and took a job on the assembly line at the General Motors plant in Panorama City.
He worked at the plant until it closed in 1993, tending his livestock before and after his 6 a.m.-3 p.m. shift.
He appears every bit the suburban cowboy in his tan Stetson, silver and turquoise rings and watchband, western shirt, corduroy jacket, jeans and boots. Plexiglass shields mounted on the fronts of his two pickups and his car all bear his moniker--Appy Jack.
“People see his Appy Jack signs and think the ‘H’ fell off,” his daughter said.
But that’s not how it happened.
“I rode my appaloosa through a horse show at Hansen Dam, and Homer Harris from Tennessee yelled out, ‘Here comes old Appy Jack,’ and it stuck,” Switzer said.