I love the pageantry of the rodeo!
The rodeo is ridiculous in many ways but if you put on your rodeo filter and drink a few lukewarm beers in plastic cups, things start to cancel out. The heat bears down and the dust cloaks your sunscreen; the smells hover of burning hot dogs and popcorn and manure and hay. The snorting, the sweat, stomping hooves, the lowing cattle in the holding pens–it’s all the fiber of my memories in Texas, and to immerse the boys at an early age in these textures is to paint a layer of experience that will bring others into sharp focus. I know I can’t expect to find a real John Grady Cole at the Rowell Ranch Rodeo but that’s okay; he’s somewhere where these cowboys end and Damon begins, right about here:
I still don’t understand how Damon can hate horses as much as he does… as much as I love them.
I think this boy of mine loves them, too. Would you take a look at his face in these pictures? He studied these guys all afternoon and when the heat was just too much, Chas holed up under the blue shade of an oak tree, right beside the roping calves, and played toy horses. And just like Chas, there was a Mama horse and her baby. Everything else was trivial.
Isn’t it, though? I mean, times two (maybe times more someday)…
I’ve been playing this game, myself, for a long, long time.
