the barrel man, who tells me his job distracting 1,500 pound bulls by ducking into a barrel, is“ like being in a car wreck without a seatbelt or a steering wheel”.
One of the other clowns, the 21-year-old bullfighter Rowdy Creed who hails from Wolfe City, tells me rodeo is in his blood,“ I had an uncle that did it. I kind of just grew up around it.”
Lots of kids get their start in rodeo at an early age. By 6 p. m. a long line is forming at the mutton busting sign-up table. It is not by accident that Adrian Mojica, a 5-year-old from Greenville, is first in line.“ He tried yesterday but we were too late and there were limits on the number of riders. His daddy almost cried,” Mojica’ s father, Jose, says about himself.
Behind the chutes again I watch other scenes unfold from my perch. Ethan Griffin, 5, hangs like a cowboy angel on the fence below me and checks over the bucking stock with his dad. Soon after he will be run over by a feisty ram in the mutton busting but his dad is first to dust him off and fix his busted hat.
A junior steer riding contestant, Brady Williams from Quinlan, rosins the bull rope he’ s tied to a fence near the bucking chutes with his father, Jim, and a golden sun, just over his shoulder.
Entered in her first rodeo tonight, a nervous young barrel racer named Shelby Silvia from Nevada, Texas and dressed in a stars and stripes button down shirt, is encouraged by a troop of experienced horsewomen“ 40 Something Cowgirls” who have come from Wylie to lend her their support and ride in the grand entry together. One horsewoman among them, astride a
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