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When
I told him I was going to the Grand National
Rodeo (which recently took place in San Francisco's
Cow Palace), my normally mild mannered friend fixed
me with a steely glare and said, "Do you know what
they do to those horses to make them buck
like that?" I said it was but a momentary discomfort,
something like an extra-tight jockstrap, and the
horses and brahma bulls normally live the Life of
Riley. "Sure -- you try having your testicles
in a wringer for a minute or so."
But
after a lifetime of not fitting in on either side
of the corral fence, I was able to shrug off my
political incorrectitude with Olympian ease and,
the next evening, decked out in white Resistol cowboy
hat, jeans and levi jacket and exquisitely well-worn
Mexican cowboy boots, I was settling into an excellent
box seat at the Cow Palace; settling in there alone,
but for the strangers around me, most of them in
Stetsons and Resistols-my wife refused to come along
on the same PETA-influenced grounds.
Me,
I'm a rodeo fetishist; an armchair cowboy. With
defiant satisfaction I consumed a PETA-incorrect
tri-tip sandwich, and took in Cattleman's Night
of this weeklong rodeo. The rodeo had its ripples
of cognitive dissonance: It was, after all, 1999,
an era when Montana cattle ranchers use little runabouts
similar to small dunebuggies ("Japanese Mustangs")
to herd cattle; when they consult satellite data,
communicate with outriders by palm pilots and cellphones--and
here at the Cow Palace both genuine cowboys as well
as "fellas who're mostly 'boots and hats'" are often
seen with petite little cellphones pressed to their
ears, the latest beepers on their hips in lieu of
pistols.
After
a baritone who ordinarily plays hockey for the San
Jose Sharks led us in the Star Spangled Banner,
and a couple and child dressed as pioneers, embodying
family values, drove a buggy around the arena, we
plunged without taking a breath into Team Penning.
In Team Penning a series of horseback teams "cut
out" yearlings, marked with team numbers, from a
small herd, separating them doggies from the rest
by horsemanship alone, driving them into a pen at
the other end. Best time, performed according to
rigid rules of riding and cattle handling, wins
a modest cash prize. I was enchanted; the cattle
were bewildered. All the evening's cattle were bewildered;
all the horses patient and confident. Then Miss
Grand National-a proud young blond (as they usually
are), with a long history in FFA and stock work
(as they always have), herself star spangled, trotted
a rodeo banner around the dirt-covered floor of
the arena as the "all around hands", the cowboys
working for the rodeo, set up for the bareback bronc
riding. Cowboys leaning back, kicking the air in
counterpoint to the horse's kicking, one hand on
the strap the other in the air, were soon riding
such broncs as "Ruby Moon" and "Honky Tonk Angel"
(perhaps a little joke about 'riding' in that name).
Along
the way we got to know Bob Tallman, the announcer,
"the voice of rodeo", who announces for "upwards
of 200 rodeos a year" and finds time to be a cattle
rancher himself. His announcer voice, projecting
from gigantic state of the art speakers at ear-splitting
volume, varies from a rich "Frankie Laine" drawl
to a lot of odd little Ed-Grimley-like "I must say"
asides; he seems deeply knowledgeable about rodeo,
but is doubtless helped by the little computer screen
in front of him which he constantly consults, to
add to his western-style database about cowboy contestants;
there was also the inevitable rodeo clown, dwarf
whose name I couldn't catch, a weary-seeming little
old pro who seemed genuinely surprised and pleased
to discover that some of the arena's hands had pasted
Playboy fold-outs inside his dented protective barrel
(painted to resemble a Coors can).
A
digital sign, sponsored by Copenhagen-Skoal smokeless
tobacco, scrolled out the cowboy's scores as the
broncs did their honest best to throw and shatter
them-much of Bob Tallman's info on the cowboys related
to their recent surgeries, how much hospital time
they'd had recovering from shattered jaws, crushed
knees, stoved in ribs; this was even more true of
the bull-riders, later. It was the cowboys, I mentally
told my censorious friend, and not the stock who
were at risk here.
Now
and then the dwarf rodeo clown runs on tiny little
legs to the center of the arena, engages--with the
aid of a headset microphone--in a bit of schtick
with the announcer, regaling us with props and a
weirdly microscopic pony, like something from prehistoric
times, which jumps tiny horsejump barriers; towards
the end the clown brings out a miniature pug dog
in a foam rubber fish suit, and chases it around
with a fishing pole: he's dog fishing, he says.
Sometimes rodeo imitates authentic Surrealism.
Some
of the riders had come all the way from places like
Oklahoma for as little as 6.7 seconds on their convulsing
steeds before being ingloriously thrown. Riding
broncs and bulls, wrestling steers and roping, is
an exacting science requiring microsecond calculation
and with risks that make poor battered Steve Young
seem on easy street by comparison. Riders are judged
not just by their ability to stay on, but by such
refinements as high kicking action, proper riding
position, correct spurring action, "the spot where
the steer wrestler's feet hit the ground after taking
hold of the steer, and a great deal more including
how savage the animal is-if it's not a dangerous
ride it counts against you. There are young "collegiate
circuit" riders here, and some, who walk with a
permanent limp and grim, set smiles covering chronic
pain, who seem nearer 55. I'm captivated as I watch
the broncs, and later the bull riders--each ride
is brief and so high-action and intense that if
I look away for a half-second I lose some essential.
Each ride pits a man against an animal far more
powerful than himself in a situation designed to
magnify confrontation; I'm forty feet from some
of the bulls whip-lashing across the arena and I
can see their eyes: these sons of bitches, still
sporting wicked horns, are truly enraged. As each
competitive drama plays out, a computerized PA system
plays exactly edited snippets of popular songs-not
just country western, but bits of Reggae, Buster
Poindexter singing "Hot Hot Hot" and even "Macho
Man."
The
21st century's cowboy may be electronically embroidered,
but rodeo continues to be about man versus nature;
man wrestling nature to the ground. Still, there's
something more: as is made clear by the uncanny
rapport of horsemen and women with their mounts
in the stock horse finals--in which we see exquisitely
noble horses, responding to verbal orders, racing
headlong at the opposite wall as if doomed to collision,
stopping on a dime, skidding with correct form,
doing 360 turns in place. Clearly, rodeo is also
about man in harmony with nature.
The
Cow Palace is an indoor stadium: the smell of horse-sweat
and cow-dung seems to congeal ever more heavily
in the air as the night goes on. But I don't really
mind.
Towards
the end, four reckless cowboy daredevils win extra
money by sitting at a foldout card table--a furious
bull is released and hooks two of them head over
heels into the air. The last one still sitting at
the table wins $200.
In
the parking lot, my grimy, tenderfootin' little
Geo Prism is almost crushed by any number of enormous
four-seater Dodge Ram pickups driven by drunk cowboys…I
took off my cowboy hat and envied their radically
politically-incorrect pickups…And drove home, whistling
"Ghost Riders in the Sky…"
Copyright
© 2000 John
Shirley All Rights Reserved
John
Shirley is the award-winning author of Black
Butterflies, Wetbones, "Really Really Really Really
Weird Stories", and Eclipse, among many others.
Eclipse, the first book of his cyberpunk trilogy,
has just been reissued, revised and updated, by
Babbage Press, http://www.babbagepress.com
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