Open the Gate into America’s Backyard Bull Riding
With the raise of a rider’s hand, the chute gate opens into the American Rodeo
No admission without a hat, is what should have been on the door. Not that any of the cowboys would have showed up without one, but spectators like myself would be obliged for the reminder. The sun flirted with triple digits that afternoon, it was a breeze that shot over the desert from somewhere out east that made the day bearable.
I walked through the open fence barely hanging on by a hinge as my eyes opened into a sea of straw hats bobbing over button up shirts, wrangler jeans and square toed boots. The cacophony of moaning cattle, groining chute gates, and all the sounds that come with leather men who spit tobacco crept over the lengthening of the day.
I bid the bull riders well and made my way to the arena to look for a photogenic perch. I acted like a human being, not like an animal to be hearded and did my best to not be in anyone’s way.
The dirt of the arena was far from any mountain from which it might have came. Rather it was dug from the earth and dried by the hot sun, when these bull riders fell, the injury was heard first by the ears, then the eyes. A bull can step on a head or a leg but the arena floor is the coffin’s belly that breaks the bone.
“Can I ask you gentlemen a question?”
A man says approaching me as I’m prepping my camera and doing my best to blend in with the country.
This question, in itself already a question, circled the drain in my mind, “What will he ask us?”
I awaited the dreadful question,“You’re not from around here are you?”
“Yessir, anything you’d like,” I said.
Here it comes, I thought.
I locked eyes under the brim of his straw cowboy hat and followed the faucet of his nose over the bush of his mustache. I cursed my pointy-toed boots (square-toe is what all the cowboys wear) for blowing my cover. I surely had been spotted and the ensuring question would wreck the bull rider’s reputation who brought me to this horse palace.
“You real good at taking pictures aren’t ya?” He asked noticing the 70mm-200mm lens slung over my shotgun shoulder.
“On my good days,” I said with a smile.
“Let me ask you something then, how come I can’t take pictures at night?”
“You’ve got to boost your ISO, my friend.” I answered.
“Well how come my pictures come out blurry in the day?”
“Well, now that’s the shutter speed.”
While the front lawn parking lot wrangled in vehicles with MAGA stickers, making a liberal man like myself apprehensive to talking to the local strange, right off the bat I was quickly reminded you should never judge a cowboy by his boots.
For many a folk the rodeo brings out the love of life, something undeniably western they can reach out and taste. Personified by animals and men and competition; a respite from daily hardships and feasting labor, turning the tools of livestock against the fastidious. But how did I find myself at a backyard rodeo? A patient of this western scene.
This particular tribe of people were a few hours north on the 5 freeway, into the backroads beyond the grapevine. Eventually we passed a gas station.
“There she is,” my driver, a bull rider entering the rodeo said pointing at a Chevron station, “That lets us know we’re close.”
Soon we saw a score of trucks and SUVs parked in the front lawn of a single story house on a modest parcel of land. Fathers, uncles and brothers dragged coolers and folding chairs, seating was not provided, as mothers, sisters and aunts dragged their daughters in one hand and a pocketbook full of spirits in the other.
Beyond the lawn you could already smell the bull shit, literally, and hear the moans of livestock blending with neighborly chatter. This arena was merely a game of chutes and ladders, two pens with bucking chutes leading out a maze of metal fences. All this hell and glory nestled right in the backroads of glorious Bakersfield, California; a city known for its police chases and fast-food fist-fights.
“Nice boots,” a woman said passing me.
The crowds are spilling in, the bull riders are paying their entry fees, $100 bucks to buck bovine. Open rodeo, winner takes all the prize money and the coveted belt buckle.
Ice cold pepsi colas and bacon wrapped hotdogs are exchanged for wrinkled green backs, as the scores of cowboys come together to learn who’s riding and who’s watching. The stock contractor arrived early that morning, so riding boys take a careful look at the livestock, imagining a thousand different rides with a thousands different outcomes, none of which would last more than a few seconds, and all of which ending in pain.
“Which bull did you pull?
“Oh, she’s a feisty one that son’of a bitch.”
A beautiful young woman with a rock the size of a marble resting on her ring finger is in charge of opening and closing the chute locks. By the end of each ride she opens the arena gate and runs across the chute to climb over the other side to safety before the bull can charge her. The rodeo clown ushers them inside, then she hops back over and slams the lock shut. By the end of the day, her face would be peppered with black mud and the onlooking cowboys would be envious of the man who placed that rock on her left hand.
Before long, well, long for the riders short for the spectators, the contestants enter the rodeo to the call of their name. Standing in a line the tradition commences with the Star Spangled Banner. A young cowboy brings out the American Flag, a great honor, and over the leaky speaker the horns begin to play the familiar tune. I shit you not, a rooster crowed two or three times during the commencement, I couldn’t help but crack a corny smile but also appreciate how simply perfect the croak of the chicken king made the moment stain my mind.
What might surprise you or perhaps not surprise you at all, is next the bull riders and the spectators engaged in a group prayer. The bull riders take a knee as the rodeo clowns place their left hand over their heart, all hats are removed and the amen of applause signals the start of the rodeo. The baptism was over, the arena was sacred and if anyone should be laid to rest they would surely go to cowboy heaven.
The young ones go first, they have a team watching over them, three for friends, often fathers calling their bluff, “Believe in yourself, Jimmy. You can do this.”
“Go ahead and sit on her cowboy.”
“Ride that bull Jimmy, ride that bull.”
A young man is a boy at best, a child in every sense of the word. Equipped with a vest, a helmet, gloves and a bull rope to yank themselves free, a lot can, and does go wrong, for these pups.
With the raise of a rider’s left hand, the chutes pulled open, the rodeo clown smacks their thighs and the gate is opened into the American Rodeo.
