It's the Fourth of July holiday and all roads lead to a rodeo arena somewhere.
As we honor America, our freedoms, and the price paid for both, I find myself also giving some reverent honor to the cowboy as well.
This particular holiday is his "Cowboy Christmas," the most lucrative run of rodeos for the season.
Rodeo rigs are progressively bigger, fancier, and technology has kicked rodeoing up a notch from the days of standing in a pay phone booth to enter a rodeo or find out when you drew up. While so much is different, much is still the same.
Rodeo roots run deep in the heart and soul of the American cowboy. It began as a good-natured competition among the working cowboys.
During more than a century, it has evolved to be a major league sport complete with television media coverage, sponsors and big money.
Today's rodeo, with the exception of the events themselves, resembles little of its beginnings on the open range. The cowboys have advanced to be defined athletes and fewer have ranch cowboy roots.
The addiction to the adrenalin remains the same as does the dedication to the competition.
One of the differences in the sport lies in the technology used to "phone home" reports from the rodeo (aka excuses, near death experiences at the bucking chutes, requests for money, etc.).
Instead of using a pay phone at the local honky tonk, the cowboy now sends a text message to a loved one's cell phone or an email from just about anywhere he is at the Advertisement time.
That's progress. And you will find that today's rodeo cowboy has no idea how anybody managed to get it done without all the current gadgets.
It has been said that rodeoing is an addiction and the only cure for it is more rodeo.
In two ever-popular songs, it is referred to as that "damned old rodeo." Back in the '60s, iconic Ian Tyson, a Canadian rodeo cowboy turned singer, penned a song called "Someday Soon."
The song lamented the love a rodeo cowboy has for the sport and the pain it causes those that love him. "He loves his damned old rodeo as much as he loves me." The song stayed popular for decades with new recordings of it by Judy Collins, Lynn Anderson, Chrystal Gayle, Suzy Bogguss and Chris LeDoux.
Garth Brooks recorded a timeless song about the sport called simply "Rodeo." The lyrics sum it up about as well as any written.
Well, it's bulls and blood
It's dust and mud
It's the roar of a Sunday crowd
It's the white in his knuckles
The gold in the buckle
He'll win the next go 'round
It's boots and chaps
It's cowboy hats
It's spurs and latigo
It's the ropes and the reins
And the joy and the pain
And they call the thing rodeo
She knows his love's in Tulsa
And she know he's gonna go
Well it ain't no woman flesh and blood
It's that damned old rodeo
Fourth of July rodeoing is defined by road-weary cowboys, tired horses, pickups filled with dirty clothes, fast-food wrappers and muddy boots.
A dashboard full of rumpled rodeo programs, Copenhagen cans, empty coffee cups, dusty sunglasses, gas receipts, a ball cap or two and a road map paints the classic scene.
For me, it wouldn't be the Fourth of July if I wasn't in the hot sun, beating rain or dusty wind waiting for the next rodeo event to move the entertainment along.
So that's what I do. However, now I carry a camera and put what I know of rodeo in print.
I don't suppose I'll ever be anywhere else but at a rodeo grounds somewhere on the Fourth of July. However, the option has crept into the recesses of my mind, only to be banished by the sounds of the National Anthem and the bucking horses kicking in the chutes in unison.
Let's rodeo!
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