Winter Waxing Cold Moon
The Rodeo! Began with a bang. Fireworks and laser lights. The first event was bare back bronc riding. These horses rear back, jump off, all four hooves off the ground, then plunge back to the sawdust. It’s a brutal experience for a rider though the horses seem to enjoy it.
After this big men with horses went after one poor calf with ropes, hoping to stop it–the header–and bind the rear feet with a lasso, the footer. Must have been hard because most of the teams failed.
Somewhere in here Ruth said, “Granpop, this is fun!”
Next came the saddled bronc riding. This was very similar to the first event only with saddles. Punishing.
Then came a horse and rider against a calf. The rider lasso’s the calf, hops off the horse and ties three of the calves feet together. The horse pulls on the rope to keep the calf subdued. This too proved difficult since most missed.
Barrel racing had barrels with Qwest painted on them. I thought this was appropriate because the contestants had to run in circles to win. Just like dealing with Qwest. The barrel race horses were fun to watch because once they’re around a barrel, they really dig in an move.
The last event of the evening involved grown men attempting to stay on the backs of large bulls. Just why they do this was not explained, but it takes the whole bronc riding thing and put a lot more weight behind it. This too must be hard because only cowboy stayed on the bull the required amount of time.
There were some novelty events. Mutton busting involved children from 5-7 trying to stay on sheep as they run around the arena. Most fell off immediately, but one 7 year boy held on while his sheep ran all the way across the arena.
Another children focused event had 12 tweens, girls and boys. 12 calves were let loose and each kid that caught and subdued a calf would get a calf to raise and have an opportunity to show it at the next Western show. In this instance all the kids received help from adults and all got a calf.
While I was in Mexico City in the late 90’s, I went to a bull-fight at the Plaza del Torres, the largest bullfighting arena in the world. Though it was, in a sense, more violent than the rodeo, the bulls die, I liked it better. It had a sense of ritual, of grace, even elegance while rodeo seems almost entirely brute force applied in difficult circumstances–riders on bucking horses or bulls, ropers chasing down and wrestling calves to the ground.
Maybe rodeo is too young as a sport to have much ritual, but to me, it lacked the gravitas of the bull ring. Why does this matter? Well, again, to me, the rodeo seemed about imposing human will on animal nature with cattle ranching as the context. Bull fighting, on the other hand, is a ritual involving life and death, even art. It takes the bull and its death with great seriousness with the context of Celtic culture as the back drop.
