I miss the rodeos of my youth in my hometown and the local rodeos I attended as a spectator or later as an aspiring bareback bronc rider. Those were for me in the early 50’s to about the 70’s. They were smaller and less professional, I’m sure, but they were fun. More fun, I think, than they are today.
Take the rodeo in my hometown, for example. Almost every citizen helped organize the rodeo. Not just the members of the Meagher County Rodeo Club, but also members of the American Legion, the American Legion Auxiliary, and other groups. Virtually every business donated money or services of some kind. They all helped organize the rodeo and parade every year.
My family and cousins sat under the bleachers like other families. A staircase led up to the wooden bleachers. The floor was about three feet above ground. Most of us brought old car seats to sit on, some left over for the following year. Each family had their usual place where they gathered. The individual areas were separated by blankets that hung under the bleacher floor.
Other people backed a pickup truck or cattle truck up to the fence on the other side of the arena. People sat on the boards of the corral, behind the lasso track, near the saddle pens, and just about anywhere they could see the rodeo.
The rodeo was started in the 1930s. I have seen pictures of Model Ts parked in a circle to form the arena where the rodeo was held. Back then, cowboys rode in their own saddles. There was no rodeo association “tree” that saddle bronco riders must use today.
I remember my father telling the story of tying a short wooden stick to a McClellan saddle to create bucks when riding a horse that might buck. I have seen some old saddles that had extreme bucks to do the same thing. It was quite common, I have heard, to tie the raincoat over the front of the saddle to make riding a rough horse easier.
For a while my father had a tight-fitting saddle he called a “bear trap” that curved around the upper thighs to keep you in the saddle through just about any storm a horse could throw at you.
Nearly all of the area’s cowboys tried their hand at riding wild horses, dogging steers, lassoing calves, and team tieping, which is a little different from team roping because both competitors’ ropes were tied to the saddle horn. After catching a steer, the header would begin to dismount, balancing on his left foot in the stirrup while his horse continued to pull the steer until the heeler caught him. When the steer was on its side, the header would tie its front legs to a short piggin’ cord with a square knot, then raise his hands to signal “ready.”
When I first started rodeoing, this was the team roping event. It soon evolved into today’s team roping. I have read that team tying is done at ranch rodeos and other organized rodeos as an additional event to keep team tying alive.
There was bull riding, but a portable fence made of snow fencing was erected in our arena to make the arena smaller.
In our community there were roping teams for married couples or for men and women and barrel racing for children, divided by age. The first time I competed was in calf riding, not sheep riding.
Some of the other competitions were cutting horse competitions. For a few years, when we were still using wild horses, we had something we called the “Mad Scramble.” Six bareback broncos with riders would compete at the same time. My first bareback ride was in that Mad Scramble. The horse I was riding, a paint, fell. One of the other broncos jumped over us while we were both on the ground. As it happened, almost directly in front of the area where my family was sitting, under the bleachers.
Often the rodeo would last until the sun was almost down. I remember one year when the judges of the top six saddle bronc riders had flashlights in their hands during the last few rides.
One time, it started snowing during a horse race on July 5. The snow had a slight pinkish tinge as it fell and quickly melted because the wind had blown over the red slate hills in the area the day before.
Yes, I miss those old small town rodeos.
RIDE EASY, PARDS…..Vic
