Dusting Off My Rodeo Daze

I was heading back to Chicago after an extensive road trip and made a short stop in Cheyenne, WY long

enough to learn that I had just missed “The granddaddy of them all.” “You need to come back, it’s the biggest

and best rodeo there is.” was repeated everywhere from the diner to the western wear shop where I stopped

long enough to try on a pair of boots that I could not afford but was allowed to put on layaway with $10.00 in

cash. The boots eventually paid off and sent to my Chicago apartment. The next year I put them on and went

back to Cheyenne and so it began.

I had a 1984 Ford F150 pick-up truck with a stick shift on the floor and a cap on the back, my rodeo road

home. I stayed in a campground for about 8 bucks a night and cup of coffee was a quarter. I didn’t spend much

time there, only enough to crawl in and out of my truck and get a few hours of sleep in between time trials in

the morning and Coors Lite at night, not my beer of choice.

The daily routine was walk across the campground, shower and grab, about .75 cents worth of coffee and head

out to the rodeo grounds. The mornings were spent with the ropers and bull doggers who would see if their

times would qualify for the big show. A free lunch at the press trailer and then the back gates would open

roughly around noon. The cowboys would cross over and through to the “ready area”. The place where the

cowboys would do just that, get ready. Whether it would be stretching, praying or taping up and around and

over. I would flash my press pass and walk in. They weren’t really sure what to make of me. Was I a “Buckle

Bunny?” A term I came to know meaning a woman who was looking for a winning cowboy. The telltale sign

of rodeo wins were belt buckle prizes, brass and silver belt buckles holding up jeans. Or was I just a “Lady

Photographer” as I was often called. I knew horses so that helped and I earned myself a little respect. Perhaps

more in the knowing of horses than the fact that I was allowed into the arena during the bull riding events to

photograph. In order to be in allowed into the arena, you had to have on jeans (preferably wranglers, a western

shirt, cowboy boots and hat.” As I was told at the press trailer, “We don’t want someone in the background

wearing a Hawaiian shirt and gym shoes. “They weren’t to sure what to think of me in the arena. I often

wonder what I was thinking. The cowboys had 8 seconds wild to stay on their ride, whether it was a bull or a

bronc. I had 8 seconds to get the photo using a manual focus film camera.

Ah my twenties, the truck now replaced by a Prius those old Nikon manual focus cameras replaced by Canon

digital. The speed needed to run up and over the fence in under 8 seconds from a charging bull a bit faded, but

not my Kodachrome find. Slides filed away from my long-ago life.