Every Saturday night in the summer there’s a rodeo at Cowtown. It’s on Route 40 just outside Woodstown, not too far away from the Richman’s ice cream store. Cowtown isn’t a town, it’s a flea market/rodeo grounds, and Uncle Everett is there every night of the rodeo season. Carl and I are going along tonight, this humid evening in August, the day my sister is born. It’s been a heck of a day, not knowing what’s going to happen next, and now I’m going to watch cowboys ride wild bulls and horses under the evening sky.
I’ve been to the flea market before. Just a long shed-like building or two with people selling junk and T-shirts and used items that nobody wants anymore. Sometimes I find some decent comic books, but I prefer the Berlin Auction to this place.
The rodeo is right next to the flea market, its corrals painted a bright white with the Cowtown brand letters in red. There’s lots of horses and cattle and those scary-looking Brahma bulls behind the fences. The animals don’t seem to be all that wild as they graze on grass and hay, waiting to be ridden and roped. They seem to be just like the horses and cattle at Uncle Everett’s farm; the horses let you pet them, and the cattle are shy and skittish; afraid of the slightest movement.
I’m looking for some real cowboys, but these men and younger men look like the people who work the farms all over South Jersey. Sure, they’ve got the right hats and all, but they’re just guys in dungarees and plaid and denim shirts. A few of them look like the Marlboro man with leathery faces and deep channels in their skin, and they have funny accents even though most of them are from around here. I guess if you believe it enough, you’ll become a cowboy in time.
They all have little paper signs with numbers on them pinned to the backs of their shirts, so we all know who they are. There’s a few girls, too, mostly for barrel racing, whatever that is.
Around seven o’clock it all begins. There’ s a parade of all the contestants on horseback and lots of American flags. We stand for the National Anthem like at baseball games, and then it begins. At first it’s real exciting. There’s cattle wrestling and steer roping, but I start to wonder how much this has to hurt the animals. I’ve never seen my uncle twist the heads of any calves and throw them to the ground. I wouldn’t want my neck twisted like that, I’ll tell you. They rope the calves too and then slam them to the ground on their backs. Now I know that when I hit my back on that sapling tree when I was sledding that I thought I had broken it since it hurt so much, so it has to hurt these animals, doesn’t it?
The barrel racing is a break from the violence. The girls ride their horses in a pattern around barrels to see who can do it in the fastest time. This is a little more to my liking.
Of course the main events are the bronco busting and the Brahma bull riding, to see which riders can stay on these wild beasts as they buck and jump around the arena. You’ve got to admire these men as they hold on for dear life with only one hand. They’re tossed around like rag dolls, and they get thrown off and slammed into the ground, and they risk the chance of being trampled or kicked in the head. Their only protection are the rodeo clowns who use their bodies to distract the bulls. The clowns have a stack of tires they can dive into if they need to, but it’s just them out there, and those bulls are big and strong.
For a while I root for the cowboys, but it gets boring, and I notice that the saddles on the broncos look awfully tight, and the bulls have ropes pulled up under their private parts, and it just seems to me that if I was one of those animals I’d want to throw those guys off of me too.
My one consolation : the French fries are really good.
When is this thing going to end? It seems to go on forever, and I just don’t want to watch any more animals and men get tossed around. What is this, ancient Rome? Let’s go home already, I’m tired.
It’s been a long , long day this August the fourth of 1962. I want to go to bed and fly in my dreams.
The ride back to Clarksboro is an eternity, but we’re finally back at the farm.
It’s warm and humid, and I’ll sleep on the top bunk, close to the ceiling where it’s even hotter. Carl will be on the bottom, and Charlie will be in his own bed in the same room. I realize that hey, Carl’s birthday and our baby sister’s birthday are both on the fourth day of a month, and Dad and I have our birthdays on the twentieth day of a month. That’s pretty neat. I wonder if Whee-Zee was born on an eleventh day like Mom was.
A little sister, and new rifles and a morning stuck in limbo, and a night of ridin’ and ropin’ and veiled animal cruelty-some day, huh? I need some sleep for sure.
Hey, you know something? I don’t even know my new sister’s name!
You want to know something else?
Charlie doesn’t sleep with the hall light on.
What a day……
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