In the beginning
Don’t you wonder how the various events in modern day rodeo got started?
As was told to me, rodeo events were supposedly based on things that happen on your average run-of-the-mill ranch, but in all my years of running cattle I’ve never once had to ride a bull, or jump off a speeding horse on to the sharp horns of a renegade steer. If I did so, it was purely an accident and not something I’d ever do on purpose while sober.
Certainly team roping is practiced on your average ranch and it’s easy to imagine how it was invented. Two cowpokes, Smarty Pants and Rum Dum, are prowling the country when Smarty spotted a calf with screwworms. They are a long way from the nearest corral or squeeze chute, so Smarty says to Rum Dum, “I got an idea. I’ll throw this here rope and catch that calf around the horns and you come along and scoop up his heels and we’ll stretch him out.”
“Duh, okay. But what do we do then?”
“We’ll worry about that when the time comes.” Surprisingly, Smarty made the head catch, although it was illegal by today’s standards, but Rummy, who couldn’t rope a fence post standing still, threw twelve empty loops before Smarty got tired of chasing after the calf over hill and dale with his arm extended, finally said forget it, and let go of his leather lariat it took him one month and a cowhide to make.
As a result, Smarty and Rummy spent all their spare time roping a dummy, which sparked a multi-billion dollar roping industry. But when the ranch owner found out his cowboys were roping the stock he fired them both because he’d rather have
When the feather-brained Rummy came out of his coma in the hospital six months later he said to his Smarty friend, “Gee, that was fun. I can’t wait to try that again!”
And the PBR was born.
Bronc riding could have been invented when Smarty dared Rummy to ride an unbroke wild stud horse with a notched tail and fire in his eyes with a saddle, no bridle, bit or reins, and by hanging on with only one hand. Which raises an interesting question: was the saddle invented by a roper for something to tie to, or by a saddle bronc rider for something to hold on with?
Another thing I’ve never had to do as a rancher is buy a $100,000 lightning fast horse and run around three barrels as fast as I could without knocking one over. Barrel racing must have been invented by two bored Oklahoma oil princesses wearing bright silk shirts and skin-tight Wranglers® who saw three barrels of crude standing in a field and decided to race around them.
There is one rodeo character that I definitely see evolving from daily activities on every ranch in America. Anyone who has ever sorted cattle in an alley or been in a corral with a mad charging bull, or an overly-possessive brood cow, can totally relate to the rodeo clown in baggy jeans who has to run for his life and scale a six foot fence so he won’t be shish-kabobbed.