Rodeo de Santa Fe, YEEE Hawww?

My Cowboys Let Me Dowwwwwwn

You know I love cowboys. From my previous Substack posts. Tv cowboys, that is, from the 50s & 60s, The Lone Ranger, The Cisco Kid. Still, some of you don’t believe me. You think I’m just a poseur, just presenting cowboys as a convenient entry into Santa Fe, my new Southwestern home. You think I’m using my former boyhood heroes as false and empty idols just to entertain you and provoke you to think about more serious and “intellectual” ideas and subjects. To which I say, fooey! Just ask my sister, Alison, or my best friend from 2nd grade, Rick Reaper. Or look at this photo of me, at four years old, in my full-out Western gear:

Last September 2022, coincidentally and serendipitously, my family and I moved just two minutes off “Rodeo Road”, here on the Southside of Santa Fe, also just five minutes from the “Rodeo de Santa Fe”. Not the “Santa Fe Rodeo”, but the “Rodeo de Santa Fe”, a huge multi-acre property with a perfect old-school grandstand and dirt-lot arena, directly adjacent to the Santa Fe County Fair, both of which sit completely dormant for about 350 days a year, as far as I can tell, since I drive past them each and every day on my way to historic downtown Santa Fe, but which, for four days each season in late June, comes the national touring professional rodeo of cowboys and cowgirls, which sells out for “us locals”, and for all rodeo fans around the world, from as far away as Melbourne, Australia, Tokyo, Japan, and God knows where else on our country music-lovin’, Texas barbeque-eatin’ planet. Oh yeah!

Now this New York Jewboy has an early history of bringing his childhood fantasies of tv cowboys to “real life”. They’re all bad.

It’s 1970. I’m twenty-one years old, having just graduated from college, the University of Freezing Cold Buffalo New York, and while all my Vietnam War draft-avoiding friends are either going to med school, law school, teaching public school, or leaving the country, my sky-high draft lottery number of 297 (out of a possible 365) is good enough for me to enjoy the freedom to pack up my 1964 blue Pontiac Tempest named “Steppenwolf” with a camouflage-green-painted right rear fender - and drive him randomly up and down America without any itinerary - to every city I ever heard of, and then some, for six wild and wooly months of the alternative culture’s sex, drugs, and rock ‘n roll.

By month four, I’ve hit Mountain Time, the great American Southwest and Northern Great Plains. I’m in Cheyenne. Wyoming. I see signs on every street corner for my first-ever RODEO. Fantastic! I drive “The Wolf” directly over to cowboy Heaven, park, and buy a ticket for afternoon admission. I’m “psyched”, as we used to say back in the day. I immediately start walking around the grounds to get the lay of the land, to look at the wild steers, calves, and bulls in their pens, to see the “bucking broncs” being groomed for their moments in the sun, when they’ll see if, and how fast, they can throw the crazy cowboy riders off their wild, snorting backs. The broncs look a lot more fearsome than the ones painted on the mural of my yellow-painted childhood bedroom walls in suburban Westbury, Long Island.

Man, I’ve arrived! Real cowboys, at last!

All of a sudden, I’m surrounded. By a circle of say, fifteen pimpled teenage cowboys. They start heckling me.

Hey, faggot, get the fuck out of here.

Oh boy, here we go. As I say, it’s 1970. I’ve got long curly, tangled “Jewfro” hair, a la Abbie Hoffman or a Woodstock male centerfold, and these redneck Wyoming teenagers haven’t seen anything like it in person, only on the news and in “Time Magazine”, where it represents draft card-burning, East Coast war-protesting “commies” who threaten their very bronco-bustin’ lifestyles, along with their very existences.

C’mon, boys, I just came to see your rodeo. I’m a fan.

Who you callin’ ‘boy’, faggot? Whatasay we give this queer a haircut?”

They all hee-haw laugh in unison. A bunch of them pop out switchblade knives and hunting blades that I’m sure can gut a squealing pig or a ferocious brown bear. They start closing their circle in on me.

C’mon, guys, I never been to Cheyenne before. You don’t wanna give it a bad reputation, do ya?

One of the pimplier, tougher ones growls,

We just wanna give you a fuckin’ haircut, bellbottom boy. Maybe scalp ya!

Oh, yeah, I forgot to mention, I’m wearing my favorite pair of extremely wide, gray bell-bottom jeans. It looks like it’s not gonna be my, or my Jewfro’s, day.

I rush at what I think is the weakest part of the circle. Two or three of the boys throw me down to the ground at the center. I feel like I’m fresh meat in the film, “Lord of the Flies”.

They’re all just about to pounce when - a strong, rough-looking, full-fledged cowboy, an adult, pulls the two or three boys on top of me - off!

What the fuck you boys doin’? I don’t like the look of this fucker any more than you do. But he came an’ bought a ticket to see our rodeo. Now you get the fuck off him and let him do that, ya hear me? Now get the fuck back to work!

The boys cower and split up. And I get up off the ground and scamper out of the circle, and right out of Cheyenne, Wyoming. To this day, I don’t know who the tough cowboy was, whether he was a direct descendent of Wyatt Earp or Marshal Matt Dillon from tv’s Gunsmoke, but all I can say is that that dude saved my hair, my ass, and probably more, at my first and only rodeo.

Until yesterday in Santa Fe, New Mexico. 2023. Fifty-three years later. Not one to hold grudges, I’m still excited to give it another shot. I go online to the Santa Fe Rodeo and order three tickets, one for myself, and two for my reluctant wife and son.

Rodeo? What’s a rodeo, “Pak Trules”? (That’s what my son calls me, “Pak Trules”)

They have no interest whatsoever.

The tix are $55 each, plus $16.50 each for handling, plus tax, totaling $243. That’s a bit steep for a blue-collar rodeo, don’tcha think? I do. I call the rodeo directly.

What site did you go to, sir? says a very friendly, homespun kinda gal.

I tell her.

Oh no, sir. You went to Santa Fe Rodeo. You need to go to Rodeo de Santa Fe. There are a lot of scammers out there. Here’s my direct cell phone number. Let me know if you have any problems.

I told you upfront, “Rodeo de Santa Fe”! Not “Santa Fe Rodeo”. I go online. Order the tix. No problem. Twenty-five bucks each. No service charge. $82.50, including tax. We’re all set. I’m excited. Rodeo redemption, baby! Here I come.

Back to 1970. Now I’m in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, at a cowboy bar, just outside of Grand Teton National Park. I’ve just spent the previous night in sub-freezing temperature, half-covered in frost, in a random camper’s extra sleeping bag, after I’ve gotten lost on a trail after sundown, due to a slight overdose of psilocybin mushrooms. The Wolf did not have a tracking device to “call home”, and I had no cell phone, sleeping bag, or any other practical means to take care of myself, besides “the kindness of strangers”, to quote Blanche Dubois and Tennessee Williams in “A Streetcar Named Desire”. I’d spend the next week holed up in Billings, Montana over the Sawtooth Mountains with a brutal, frost-induced flu, but tonight, I’m tossing down a few shots of hard local bourbon for damage control.

This time it’s not teenagers though, who don’t like my Jewfro or bellbottoms (not much time to change attire on the road back in the day). It’s a couple of full-grown “men”. Cowboys, that is. What they have in common with the rodeo teens though - is these motherfxxing long-blade hunting knives, but this time, they have a different agenda when they push and drag me out of the Jackson Hole bar.

We don’t like your type, around here, son. We don’t like yer hair, or yer face, and we don’t like what’s in yer pants. In fact, do you know what we do to steers around these here parts after we brand ‘em?

No, I don’t. And I really don’t want to know, guys. How about we just go back in the bar and I buy you both a couple of good stiff drinks?

Now that’s funny, ain’t it, Al? He wants ta buy us a coupla stiff drinks. And we… we wanna cut off his stiff fuckin’ pecker, Or at least his tiny little balls.

I still remember Al’s name from fifty-three years ago. That’s funny, isn’t it?

What’s not funny at all is how fucking serious and mean these two son-bitches look. And what their intentions are for my privates.

How ‘bout I buy you guys a whole bottle of the best liquor they got in the bar? Whatever you want. In fact, make it two bottles Whatever you want.

The two steer-fuckers look at each other. One says to me, as my knees knock against each other.

You serious, son? You got the cash?

Yeah, just walk me over to my car. No problem.

They give me the once over. Look hard at each other, wink, and that’s why… I still have my two testicles today!

We park on the fairgrounds at the Rodeo de Santa Fe 2023. It’s Saturday night. Sold out. I’ve rounded up Surya and Exsel, my wife and son, early, so I can stretch out my red sweatshirt over three bleacher seats in the second row of Section B a full hour before the Main Entrance Parade at 7 pm. I want to make sure we get good seats. As I say, they have little to no interest in being here; this is sort of a late Father’s Day present - to myself. At least I want them to see the action - the bull riding, the bucking broncs, the calf roping, the rodeo clowns risking their lives to distract the furious “animal athletes” from pounding the fallen cowboys.

I’ve saved more than enough time to walk around the rodeo grounds, to get some food (Exsel’s main interest), some beer (mine), and to see the animals in their pens. But its a pretty flimsy array of stalls and pens. I mean, this is “the Rodeo of Santa Fe”; I’ve waited fifty-three years and eight months (since I’ve been in Santa Fe), to get myself to another rodeo. But I have to say, this is a bit underwhelming.

Exsel gets his barbeque brisket, Surya and I get two Coors (natch!), and we settle down in Section B onto the hard bleachers. A guy comes around selling kettle corn and I yell out,

Over here, man! But you gotta throw it to me - like in Brooklyn.

He does. At least no one has anything against Brooklyn or New York here, and hell, I’ve long since lost my Jewfro. Besides my head is covered with my “Santa Fe everyday cowboy hat”. I fit in.

They have a pre-show event called “Mutton Busters”, where an array of 4-7-year-olds try to ride wild and frisky sheep to see how long they can stay on before the sheep violently dump them to the ground. Most of the youngins stay on only about 2-4 seconds, but the winner manages to strangle the poor lamb for about seven full seconds and gets almost to the center of the arena. It’s both cute and sadistic at the same time.

The parade starts on time, with the announcer, who’s a real pro, reciting a “rodeo prayer” that I swear is about ten minutes long, during which he blesses all cowboys and cowgirls everywhere, the U.S. military and all their families, the U.S. border patrol, all our hardworking American politicians, all doctors, lawyers, and Indian chiefs, everyone in Santa Fe and in all of New Mexico, all our relations, you get the point. Then two native-born Santa Fe community college girls sing the Star Spangled Banner, a capella, during which Surya elbows me to take off my cowboy hat, after which everyone in the grandstands cheers their Western-swinging heads off. Everyone, perhaps, except me.

The “first act” barrels out of Gate 4. It’s a crazy cowboy trying with all his might to stay on the back of a wild, furious, and kicking bull. The announcer tells us,

Folks, no one has stayed on the back of one of these animals all week. Tonight is the last chance for these cowboys. The first man to do it will win himself $11,000 and earn himself a place right into the national championship!

Four cowboys in a row come out of four different shoots on four different furious, kicking bulls. Not one lasts more than four seconds.

Sorry folks, no winners tonight!

The crowd moans in defeat.

Back to 1970. It’s the end of my trip. I’ve gotten over my Grand Teton flu, and I’m in the sacred Black Hills of South Dakota. In fact, I’m in Wild Bill Hickok’s famous outlaw town, Deadwood, long before David Milch ever gets there decades later to film his great HBO series with Al Swearengen and all the other bottom-of-the-barrel, delicious scumbag characters. I have two cowboy strikes against me from Cheyenne and Jackson Hole, but now I’m doing the most patriotic thing I’ve ever done in my life, driving the Wolf to see George, Tom, Abe, and Teddy at Mount Rushmore, just a few miles out of Deadwood.

The problem is I’m racing against the sun before the national monument closes, and there’s an old green Rambler in front of me going fifteen miles an hour. I honk my horn at Ma and Pa Kettle but they don’t speed up, so I hit the pedal to the metal and cross the double yellow lines to get me and the Wolf to Mt. Rushmore…

… which we never do because… about three minutes later, I suddenly see… in the Wolf’s rearview mirror… a flashing red light. Oh shit!

It’s Sheriff Deadwood Dick McGraff. Wild Bill Hickok’s current replacement. The Kettles have apparently pulled off the road and phoned the Sherriff who’s driven ten miles out of town to pull me over to the side of the road and pull me out of The Wolf. He searches my glove compartment, finds some prescription drugs, and then handcuffs me with my hands behind my back.

Son, you know you were reckless drivin’?

No, sir. I was doin’ the most patriotic thing I’ve ever done in my life. Goin’ to Mt. Rushmore.

That may be so, son. But you crossed double yellow lines and you were speedin’. I’m gonna have to take you in.

…which Deadwood Dick does… after which he locks me in jail. In Wild Bill Hickok’s jail. In Deadwood, South Dakota. Next to a four-hundred-pound Sioux Indian. (I don’t think “Neck” cared whether he was called “Native American”, or not, in 1970.)

Deadwood Dick tells me,

You’ll see the Judge to make your plea this afternoon, and I won’t cut yer hair off as long as ya keep it clean.

He brings me into the dayroom where about ten other “bad men” are sitting around watching tv, which suddenly broadcasts the overdose death of Jimi Hendrix at age twenty-seven, September 18, 1970. The announcement is greeted with various:

Faggot!

Hippie nigger!

The group’s eyes do a slow motion, simultaneously, turn… toward me, standing there with my Jimi Hendrix Jewfro. Oh boy! It’s definitely “a day to remember”.

An hour later, I go see Judge Lance Pederman, a severe-looking, scarecrow of a man in a long black robe behind a kitchen table.

I explain my case to him in detail, about the Kettles and the sunset, and George, Tom, Abe, and Teddy at Mt. Rushmore, until the stiff-necked Judge gets impatient and cuts me off,

I don’t have all day, son, guilty or not?

Not guilty, Judge!

He bangs his gavel and sentences me to $1000 bail or six months in jail until the next trial available - next March.

“But Judge, I don’t have a thousand dollars or even the $100 bond. I…”

“Bailiff, take this longhair ruffian back to his cell.”

Strike three, I’m out! On my “Cowboys Become Reality” 1970 personal grail.

I spend the weekend in Wild Bill Hickock’s jail with “Neck”, my mountain-sized Indian cellmate, and we’re chained together twice a day for exercise in the “day yard” (driveway) with all the other murderers and mother-rapers and father-stabbers, and the father-rapers and mother-stabbers, just like in Arlo Guthrie’s Alice’s Restaurant Massacre… until the first thing Monday morning, when Sheriff Deadwood Dick McGraff comes to my jail cell and says,

Trules, ya gotta a phone call.

He brings me across the driveway from the jail to the courthouse, about thirty feet, and hands me the phone.

Miraculously, it’s the Bank of Westbury, New York, my hometown, coming through for me big time. Because you see, on Friday night, I gave Deadwood Dick my bank’s info, where…. I had exactly $109.50 left in my account… which they promptly wired to the one and only Deadwood, South Dakota bondsman, early Monday morning, to get me “outta jail”, just like in the game Monopoly, but in real life…. after which, I jumped directly back into the Wolf, hightailed it out of Deadwood, and bid the Black Hills of South Dakota a very fond, relieved, and permanent farewell… but where, until this very day, I am absolutely positive that I’m still WANTED, DEAD OR ALIVE… for jumping bail and never returning for my 1971 trial!

The Rodeo de Santa Fe 2023 rolls on. The next event is “calf ropin”, where a wild-eyed cowboy on a well-trained, tear-assing horse comes racing after an innocent-looking calf, leaps off his horse onto the calf, throws the calf to the ground onto its back by almost breaking its neck, and then ropes its four feet together at lightning speed, after which he triumphantly strolls back to, and mounts his horse. The whole event, from start to finish, takes less than fifteen seconds. The winner is obviously the fastest roper. That is, unless the cowboy and his horse “over-project” and hurtle right by the skittish calf, which is simply running for its life, in which case the cowboy scores a “no pointer”, and he has to walk back to the pen from the center of the ring, like a humiliated and defeated bullfighter, his cowboy hat hanging down his brow in outright shame.

In fact, there’s a lot of mano a mano, a lot of pride, and a lot of humiliation in the rodeo. It’s man against beast. Cowboy versus cowboy. The “animal athletes” are huge, powerful forces of nature, who have been bred especially for this kind of rodeo competition. In the case of the bucking broncs and “raging” bulls, which toss their human riders off like so many ticks or flies, the typical animals range anywhere from fifteen hundred to eighteen hundred pounds, outweighing their human cargo by at least fourteen hundred pounds. The ratio in steer wrestling is less; the ornery animals are typically six hundred and fifty pounds, but you can easily see, not one of them wants to have its neck twisted off its four-hooved feet by a pumped-up testosterone-raging cowboy.

Surya can’t watch the brutality. Exsel is just disinterested; he’s just come for the barbeque. And I… very soon lose my “rodeo enthusiasm” that I’ve sustained for over fifty-three years.

The truth, I easily discover, is that… I’m not a cowboy. Not even close.

Sure, I love to wear the hat. I have two, a Stetson from “Zimmerman’s Western Wear” on Main Street in Gallup, New Mexico, the other, my “everyday Santa Fe hat” from "The Five and Dime” on Santa Fe’s Central Plaza.

But believe me, there are some “real beauts” that are far better than mine at the Rodeo de Santa Fe 2023.

And they’re on the heads of the real cowboys and real cowgirls. And on the heads of the real fans of the rodeos all over the rest of the world. Not on the head of this New York liberal Jewboy who fell in love with Lash La Rue, Cheyenne Body, and Brett Maverick - on tv - in the 1950s. These folks in the stands at the Rodeo de Santa Fe have been coming here for years. They’ll be back again next year. They believed every single word that the slick announcer intoned in his ok, maybe five-minute-long prayer, blessing America as the greatest country in the history of the world. They didn’t have to be elbowed by their wives to take their hats off and place it over their hearts for “The Star Spangled Banner”. When their favorite country song came blasting over the loudspeakers, they didn’t have to be prompted to clap and sing along. They knew every word.

So… welll…

I don’t think my love affair with “cowboys” is over. But we did leave the Rodeo de Santa Fe at halftime. And Sunday morning, I did wake up with the slightly bitter taste of disappointment in my throat.

Childhood memories live eternally in a special place in a grown-up’s heart. Both men’s and women’s. We each have our own. Playing with toy soldiers on the shag bedroom carpet, with Barbie and Ken up in the chilly winter attic, fishing with Dad up at Lake George over the summers, the first cookies we baked with Mom, maybe not having enough to eat, when Grandpa died that lousy Sunday afternoon… you tell me. They just don’t die and fade away.

Me? I’ll always remember my tv cowboys.

And those memories will still live fondly, and forever, along with my two decks of Davey Crockett cards, buried deep in my childhood camper trunk, stuffed away on the top shelves of the garage… here in Santa Fe.

Love from back in the day,

Trules

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