Daily Dose of Sultnpapper 11/29/17> With perfect being 0.00 ; then 0.00052 is damn near perfect

A fellow member @unmentionable wrote a post that had to do with “culture” and how Quebec is a French speaking culture. Well culture is alive all over the world and here in Texas there is no shortage of culture either.

So, on Tuesday as I was traveling to San Antonio, I passed a couple one ton dually trucks pulling livestock trailers on Interstate 10 near Luling, TX. The first trailer had a couple horses that were fully saddled tied in the back; these were no doubt working horses, as the saddles had plenty of dirt and a lasso on each one. The second truck has about a thirty foot gooseneck trailer loaded with cattle, squeezed in pretty tight so I don’t know how many, but is was fully loaded. Each truck was being driven by a cowboy complete with his felt cowboy hat.

While ranching is itself a culture, we aren’t going to discuss ranching per say. We are going to discuss the culture that ranching led too and the attempts to kill that culture, that being rodeo.

In order to understand rodeo and the culture that it became you first have to know the roots and history of it. Roping is really the backbone of rodeo, being able to lasso a cow or calf was necessary when ranches would move cattle from place to place as far back as the 1600’s on the land that would ultimately end up being America. Catching a cow with a lasso takes a lot of skill and a good horse.

Being able to train a horse to be ridden also was a necessity, and that entailed being able to stay on the horse while it was bucking and kicking trying to eject the rider from the saddle, this was known as breaking a horse to ride. The actual breaking was the horse giving in and accepting the rider, it broke the spirit of the horse, nothing else.

So what started the sport of rodeo was in fact necessary skills for the time and was indeed part of the culture of the Southwest area of the country where cattle were being raised as a food source.

The first actual rodeo took place in Pecos, Tx. in 1883, where cowboys from several ranches both big and small competed against each other to show off their skills in roping and bronco riding, bronco riding being the bucking horse competition. Prior to that first rodeo a man named William F. Cody, also known as Buffalo Bill, had staged a similar type competition known as a “wild west show” in Nebraska on the 4th of July in the year 1882.

Cowboy work itself was seasonal work, cattle drives were normally in the spring and fall of the year; this left the cowboy without work and with plenty of time on their hands not earning any money. Buffalo Bill was a good promoter and took a bunch of cowboys back east to show off their skills in these Wild West shows to paying audiences. The sport of rodeo evolved from these shows.

The first actual rodeo was in Pecos, TX. and was free to spectators, but gave prizes to the winners, and in Prescott, Arizona the first rodeo to charge admission took place in 1888. The sport of rodeo was now in gear as we know it today. A big step forward took place in 1929 with the formation of the Rodeo Association of America; the association implemented standardized rules, points system for scoring, monitor judges. They also were instrumental in establishing a fair practice in advertising and awarding prize money to the contestants.

There has been several organizations pop up over the years in rodeo, each one catering to a certain segment of the different cowboys. Women have been in rodeo since the early 1940’s and all women rodeos were quite popular in the 40’s and early 50’s.

The rodeo contests include; bull riding, bare back riding, saddle bronc riding, bull dogging, team and calf roping. Women’s barrel racing and chuck wagon races are two other events that can also been seen at rodeos as well.
The bucking type competitions require the rider to stay on the animal 8 full seconds, there is also a scoring component that is used by the judges to determine who wins prize money. The other events such as roping and bull dogging are timed events as well, with the fastest time being the winner, these events also have some other rules but this explanation is “rodeo 101” not a graduate course.

So, we have looked at the roots of the sport, and some of the history that has taken this sport to culture status. Now, let’s look at who wants to tear apart the culture of the cowboy and Texas; that would be PETA.

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals is what the acronym, PETA, stands for. PETA is the largest animal rights organization in the world according to their website. They boast having 6.5 million members. That is a lot of folks, by anyone’s standard of measure. The sad part is that whoever is running that organization is filling their members full of BS. They paint a story of how every animal is being abused and mistreated at the rodeos, and that my friend is a blatant lie.

In my younger years I spent a lot of time at the rodeos. Rodeos in Texas are an annual tradition with most every county fair in the State of Texas. The major cities of Fort Worth, San Antonio and Houston hold stock shows and rodeos each year as well that raise millions of dollars in scholarship money for the youths involved in agriculture. (I feel I might be starting to get off track, please bear with me as I compose my thoughts.)

Okay, I’m back.

Like I was saying earlier, PETA would have you believe every animal is mistreated. The fact is that the people who provide the animals have several thousands of dollars invested in these animals and they are given the utmost care. Stock contractors, as they are called, breed the bucking stock animals to buck and kick. It is not uncommon for a real good bucking bull to fetch upwards of $100,000. One of the best bucking bulls ever to compete was a bull named “Bushwacker”, his owner turned down a $700,000 offer for him. Last I read, semen from Bushwacker sells for $5,000 per straw, which is enough for a breeding. Do you seriously believe the owners of these animals are going to mistreat their proverbial “golden goose”?

The same goes for the bucking horses, the numbers in dollars aren’t quite as high because there are more breeders that specifically breed bucking horses than bucking bulls. The bucking action of the animals comes from the genetics, the DNA, not from some gimmick device or “hot shot” cattle prod as PETA would lead you to believe.

The fact of the matter is that in the year 2000 when PETA was really making a big stink about rodeos the PRCA, Professional Cowboys Rodeo Association, conducted a study regarding animal injury at rodeos. The study encompassed 57 rodeos that season, each animal out of the chute or gate is known as an exposure. That year at those rodeos there were 71,743 exposures, of that, 38 injuries to the animals occurred. When you do the math; that equates to an injury rate of 0.00052 or one five-hundredths of one percent. Is this really a cause for concern? I don’t believe so. I would be willing to wager that far more cowboys were injured at those 57 events in both actual numbers and in a percentage basis as well.

Where is the cry for the unethical treatment of cowboys?

Well sadly enough there has been a cry, and the cry ended up ruining one of the best rodeos the State of Texas had ever known. Starting back in 1931 and continuing until 1986 the State of Texas held a rodeo each year on every Sunday in October in Huntsville TX. The lone exception was in 1943 because of the war and in 1950 it was held, but in Dallas not Huntsville.

Before we talk about the “unethical treatment” of the cowboys let’s talk about the rodeo itself.

This particular rodeo wasn’t open to any cowboy wanting to compete in it; you had to earn your way into the system in order to participate. What system is that you might ask? The Texas Prison System, that’s right, unless you had been convicted of a crime and currently serving hard time as your punishment you stood a snowball’s chance in hell in competing in this rodeo.

Lee Simmons was the director of the prison system back in 1931 and he came up with the idea as entertainment for the prisoners and employees of the system. The initial crowd in the stands was small, mostly inmates and some town folks. After a couple years the crowds grew to 15,000 people, by the late 70’s and early 80’s the crowds had grown to over 100,000 people attending the open air rodeo stadium that had been built exclusively for this event. The tickets were hard to come by too; I remember some years that I couldn’t get a ticket, 1981 and 1984.

I did attend what would end up being the last ever Texas Prison Rodeo in 1986 on the last Sunday in October, it wasn’t that it was announced to be last, it just happened to work out that way.

The rodeo had several “special” events for the inmates to compete in that you wouldn’t find at a regular rodeo, the most popular being the “Hard Money” event. That event put 40 inmates in the ring, dressed in red shirts, along with one mean bull. The bull had a tobacco sack tied between his horns with $50 cash in it. The inmate who managed to remove the sack from the bull was the winner and got the money. The crowd also contributed to the money pool, so even though there was only $50 in the sack, sometimes the inmate ended up with around $1,500 after the donation money was added.

The rodeo was so popular with the inmates that tryouts to participate had to be held each year. The event would normally only have around 100 inmates that could participate. The inmates were not the only entertainment; the prison system booked well known singers for the intermission break as well. Some of the performers are legends including, Johnny Cash, Buck Owens, Tom T Hall, Dolly Parton, George Strait, and Willie Nelson.

Tanya Tucker was scheduled one year to play the event, she showed up and because it had been raining she decided she wasn’t going to play, the rain had stopped, but she wasn’t going to get her boots muddy walking to the stage in the middle of the arena floor. It just so happened that she also was playing an event the next weekend in Houston, a Halloween Ball, well that got cancelled too due to lack of ticket sales. It was suggested that the lack of sales for that event was a backlash at her for her prior week’s decision to not perform in Huntsville, which is 60 miles north of Houston.

All the civil rights stuff of the late 1960’s and early 70’s were causing major problems for the State and it’s Prison Rodeo, but they managed to keep it going until the final performance in 1986. The official reason given for shutting it down was that the arena was no longer structurally sound and needed expensive renovation in order to continue, and the state just didn’t have the money.

The truth of the matter was that the pressure had gotten to the state from the federal government and that federal money was going to be withheld for things like education. You won’t find that in the official history on the Texas Prison Rodeo, but I have a friend in Huntsville whose father was deputy director of the Walls unit at the time, he said that was the real reason. He explained that the event was very profitable, and that the repairs that were “needed” didn’t amount to a whole hell of lot of money because a substantial portion of the repair work could have been done by the inmates. He said that while the public was disappointed, it was nowhere near the levels of that of the inmates.

Rodeo as a sport has been and will continue to be under attack by groups like PETA, but rodeo is and will continue to be a part of Texas culture, and it should be. So the next time you hear PETA spouting off on how the rodeo animals are mistreated just remember 0.00052 .

I’m not saying that rodeo is perfect; because it is not, but does that number justify the killing a culture for it?

Until next time,
@sultnpapper
#theunmentionables