Brawley Group Wants to Add Last Call to Cattle Call : Celebration: Residents hotly contest a ballot measure that would allow beer sales at the city’s annual civic hoedown and rodeo.

Of cowboys and beer we sing.

Our tale begins with the organizers of Cattle Call, Brawley’s annual rodeo and civic hoedown, deciding that the city’s no-booze rule for public property is chafing them like a saddle with a rough spot.

Now into the political chute for the June 7 election comes hotly contested Measure R, which would add libations to the celebration for the first time in Cattle Call’s 38-year history.

Cattle Call officials argue that without beer sales, there will not be enough money to adequately maintain the Cattle Call arena at the west end of Cattle Call Drive, just down the block from the exclusive Stockmen’s Club.

What’s worse, events that would be quite popular in Brawley--tractor-pull contests, country-Western concerts, cutting horse competitions, Mexican rodeos, Cinco de Mayo celebrations--are eschewing Brawley in favor of rival venues, such as El Centro, where beer is sold.

In some cases, the events themselves are underwritten by the beer industry, which will not book them where the industry’s product is forbidden.

To boost Cattle Call, and generally uplift the ambient entertainment and cultural level in this Imperial Valley town of 19,000, Cattle Call officials asked the City Council to scotch the alcohol ban.

But in Brawley, where churches are strong and change comes slowly, one does not mess lightly with alcohol or Cattle Call. Confronted with a packed and angry house, the council refused to lift the ban, just as it had several times in previous years.

This time, however, Cattle Call officials persisted, and the council fashioned Measure R, which would allow alcohol both at the Cattle Call arena and a city auditorium known as Lions’ Center.

It is not as if Brawley would be sanctioning a libertine lifestyle. Permission to sell alcohol at an event would be tightly controlled by the city manager and police chief, who could yank permission, even from Cattle Call, at the first hint of rowdiness.

Measure R has split Brawley just as surely as the railroad tracks that divide east from west.

“This is the hottest thing going in Brawley,” said Louise K. Willey, 74, owner of the San Pasqual Land & Cattle Co. and an original Cattle Call organizer. “It just screams controversy.”

Willey and other Cattle Call officials think it’s time for Brawley to go modern. They say the city has little to fear from drunken rodeo patrons or tipsy cowboys.

For one thing, rodeo is a fast-paced sport. Few patrons who plunk down $9 for a box seat are going to waste much time with repeated trips to the beer stand, organizers argue.

“As far as the cowboys are concerned, they’re all business when they’re in the arena,” said feedlot manager and Cattle Call official Carson Kalin, 43. “They’re not going to get tanked up before they go roping calves, or riding bulls or team-penning.”

The opposition to Measure R is led by the Greater Brawley Ministerial Assn., school officials and ex-mayor Abe Seabolt.

Opponents fear that allowing beer at Cattle Call (and Lions’ Center) would send another mixed message to the youth of Brawley. How can adults tell kids that alcohol is bad, they ask, and then turn around and permit it to be sold at the city’s premier social/vocational/recreational event?

“We’ve lost a lot of our young people who run their cars into the (irrigation) canals in alcohol-related accidents,” said the Rev. Bob Rathbun, 56, pastor of the First Baptist Church.

“This is cow-and-farm country and there is a lot of beer drinking already,” Rathbun said. “We shouldn’t contribute to it.”

Located 10 miles north of Interstate 8, Brawley is a quiet lower-middle-class town with wide residential streets, large shade trees and several public parks. Trucks laden with sugar beets and carrots rumble down Main Street, and the lawn outside City Hall is adorned with a life-sized, fiberglass statue of a cowboy riding a bucking bronco, a gift to Brawley from rodeo legend Casey Tibbs.

The city’s most prominent landmark is the defunct Planters’ Hotel on Main Street. The only movie theater closed a generation ago and nothing has taken its place.

“Entertainment is nonexistent in Brawley,” said Cattle Call official Steve Stodelle, 43, general manager of Brawley’s country-Western radio station, KROP. “The high school had to go to Holtville for the senior prom.”

Stodelle and other Measure R sponsors assert that drinking is a fact of life in Brawley and that it makes no sense to let good entertainment slip away by continuing to ban beer. Don’t tell that to the anti-R people.

“Drugs are out there too, but we’re not going to start furnishing more spots for them,” said ex-mayor Seabolt, 58, a farmer and owner of an oil distribution company. “We have the higher moral ground,” said the Rev. Miriam Stump, 65, pastor of the First United Methodist Church.

That kind of superior-sounding attitude galls the Cattle Call organizers. “We’re not going to be pouring alcohol down the throats of children,” Willey said.

Brawley is the only stop on the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Assn. tour where the arena does not sell beer. The tour is underwritten by Coors and Seagrams.

Cattle Call officials worry that the failure of Measure R could ultimately imperil the rodeo. They are concerned about the event’s sponsors moving to a beer-friendly location and about the ability of Brawley to continue to pay adequate purses if new sources of revenue are not found.

Cattle Call began in 1957 as a steer- and calf-roping contest, a celebration of the beef industry to complement the celebrations in other Imperial Valley cities that extol cotton, carrots, sweet onions and tomatoes.

With financial support from the valley’s beef barons, Cattle Call has grown into a weeklong celebration each November with a dance, barbecues, a bluegrass festival, chili- and menudo-eating contests, mariachis, a 10-K run, a cowboy poetry recital, a whisker-growing contest and a Saturday morning parade. About 30,000 people from the Imperial Valley and elsewhere flock to Brawley for Cattle Call.

Last year’s parade grand marshal was Joan Embery of the San Diego Zoo. Past marshals have included Alan Hale Jr., the skipper on “Gilligan’s Island.”

Pretty is as pretty does in Brawley, and the Cattle Call queen is required to be proficient on horseback. Last year’s queen was 17-year-old Jill Moiola, whose family owns Moiola Brothers Feedlot.

As furious as the campaigning has been, both sides agree that Cattle Call is Brawley’s civic pride and joy and that what is good for Cattle Call is good for Brawley. The difference of opinion is over what is good for Cattle Call.

“You’ll not find any stronger supporters of Cattle Call than the members of this (anti-Measure R) committee,” said Chairman Howard Sullivan, 49, who is superintendent of the Brawley elementary school district and a dedicated Cattle Call volunteer. “That’s why we don’t want to see it degraded.”

Political campaigning in Brawley is done without consultants and opinion polling so it is impossible to gauge Measure R’s chances. If nothing else, though, the give-and-take has enlivened Brawley’s non-Cattle Call months.

“This campaign is the most entertaining thing Brawley has had in years,” said Kalin, the feedlot manager. “Except for Cattle Call.”