Hang On for Ride of Your Life

There are certain events that are uniquely American--a World Series, county fairs, stock car races, bowl games, quilting bees, hog-calling, poker-playing.

But, I have to think the most American of all is the rodeo.

You go to a rodeo and it’s like stepping back into Dodge City, circa 1880. You get the feeling Geronimo is out there on the loose. You close your eyes and you can almost hear the wagon trains creaking, the yips of the coyotes.

It’s the Old West. Where men were men--and women were glad of it.

Everybody’s got a ten-gallon hat and boots. The only things missing are the pearl-handled revolvers. It looks like a street scene from Laredo 1889. A camera call for “They Died With Their Boots On.” The women all look like schoolmarms or Miss Kitty.

You figure Wyatt Earp is in there some place. All the young cowboys look like Billy the Kid. You figure everybody here is named “Buck” or “The Ringo Kid.” Or “Hopalong.” A rodeo should be covered by Zane Grey, not somebody who grew up in Connecticut.

These people come from a long line of people who grew up in bunkhouses or riding shotgun on the noon stage out of Abilene. Great-granddaddy was a gunfighter who probably survived the O.K. Corral shootout.

They just have that look about them. When their ancestors arrived, the plains were black with herds of bison, the buttes were alive with smoke signals and if you stole a horse, you hanged.

A rodeo is not a contrived sporting event. Nobody hangs a peach basket on a sour apple tree and blows up a pig bladder. You don’t mark off a diamond or a gridiron or sand traps. You just get on a wild horse or a bull and do what comes naturally. It’s as elemental as Christians vs. lions, man against beasts. It’s rooted in practicality--you rope and hog-tie steers, throw calves to the ground as though for branding, and you break wild horses to the saddle.

Bullriding is a little inventive, but you figure the cowhands had to have something to do on a Sunday afternoon when the saloons were closed or the pay gone.

But, probably, the classic of the rodeo, the most cowboy event of all is the saddle-bronc riding. This indigenous sport probably dates back to the days when they brought in the range mustangs who had run free on the plains since the days of the Spanish Conquistadores and were probably as wild as mountain lions and had to be as painstakingly tamed as a tiger act.

Bullriding was a stunt, but bronc-riding had a useful purpose. It’s probably the essence of rodeo. You have to remember that the man who was arguably the most famous rodeo performer of them all, Casey Tibbs, was a bronc buster. And the first Western movie star was Bronco Billy Anderson.

Guys who would climb on the back of a thoroughly angry, ears-flattened, 1,200-pound bronco with a tightened body cinch and a resentment of that intruder on his back are the same guys who jump out of airplanes over enemy territory, wrestle alligators, climb in 240-m.p.h. Indy cars and get in fights in bars. Some of them are as wild as the horses they’re on.

But Craig Latham runs more to Gary Cooper than Butch Cassidy. Where Craig grew up, there weren’t any buildings higher than one story, and he still calls people older than he is “Sir” or “Ma’am” and hardly ever says anything harsher than “Heck.”

His wife is a teacher, and where he comes from in Wyoming, a “small” ranch is just shorter than Rhode Island, and he was on a horse before he could stand up. The Lathams had been in Wyoming since Sitting Bull’s war parties roamed it and the nearest neighbors were bighorn sheep. The family spread when he was growing up was a “mere” 25,000 acres, and the river that ran through it was the Powder--or the south fork thereof.

It was lonely country. The only noise at night was the wind and the wolves. Craig headed out for the bright lights of Casper as soon as he got old enough. When he picked a college, it was one which had rodeo scholarships (Panhandle State).

Rodeo is slow to find the big money. You can get rich on horseback in this country but coming out of a gate at Santa Anita or Churchill Downs, not a chute at Cheyenne or Calgary.

Craig Latham came into the National Finals Rodeo (the Super Bowl of that sport) at Las Vegas last week, as the best in the business at his event. A Star. And, he had $84,704 to his credit. For the year. Barry Bonds makes that much standing in left field chewing bubble gum all night. Michael Jordan gets more than that on a slow day. And he’s retired.

Craig makes his money 10 seconds at a time but aboard a hate-crazed cayuse who will leap stiff-legged 20 feet straight up in the air and come down with such deliberately bone-jarring intensity that he can loosen teeth and dislodge spinal disks with one movement.

Craig looks like every Billy the Kid they ever put in a movie. Except he’s no wild young gun hand hankering for a high noon fight. Riding saddle broncs calls for a measure of patience and planning. “It’s harder than it looks,” Craig assures you. “It’s like getting thrown out of a second-story window.”

No one ever said it looked easy. NFR broncs are not just your run-of-the-mill equine outlaws picked at random. They are as carefully picked as Mafia dons. Sometimes for the same reasons. They’re ill-tempered brutes who earned their places in this lineup by throwing little girls at bridle paths or kicking the back of stalls or rearing up when anyone approached with a rope or rein. Just in case they might feel a twinge of equine kindness, their hindquarters are tightly cinched to keep them ballistic.

These are not horses named “Flicka” or “Black Beauty” or “National Velvet.” These are called “Midnight,” or “Widow Maker,” or “Satan,” or “TNT,” or “Who’s Next?”

You don’t get scored on form on horseback if you win the Kentucky Derby. But you do if you want to win the saddle-bronc competition. You don’t just stay on the horse, you have to look good doing it. You don’t gentle him (or her), you keep the horse shaking with rage.

The other night, at the rodeo in Vegas, the broncs unseated six of the first eight riders. They posted a “no score” with two others. Then, Latham got on the back of a black legged terror called “Shotgun.” And, when he got off him, you could have fed him sugar. And Craig got 86 points.

At week’s end, he was second in money won for the year ($121,209) and second in the NFR standings with $36,506. He was leading in average score per ride and favored to win the competition by today’s finale.

So, when you start hunting for sportsman of the year, you might want to take note that this most American of athletes, a bronc rider, is leading the way in that most American of sports, the rodeo. Yippy-ki-yay!