A Cowboy and a City Girl- A Truce of Two Cultures

Hello, I'm the above mentioned City Girl, and my boyfriend of 8 years is the Cowboy. I grew up in a modest city of approximately 500,00 people in fabulous California, while he was raised in small towns in dusty and desolate (I can call it that, because I lived in the area for a few years) west Texas. It was more like a village than a town, and in his childhood it was a town/village that had as few as 15 people...but he assures me the whole county had 130 people living there at the time. He said the last in a calm and slightly positive tone, like one would use on a spooked dog, the earnestness of his statement shining from his face.

Okay, just meditate a minute on that little nugget of fact, you citified readers, you. 15 people in the town. Maybe, maybe 130 people in the whole county. I've been with the man for 8 years, and still my brain stutter-steps if I think about that too hard. How does that even happen? What does one do with their time? I can't even process this smoothly. My street growing up had more people living on it than his whole town. 

Now, growing up in the 80's we didn't have internet and all that entails. We had a VCR attached to a colored TV that we had to ask to use, mostly non-electronic toys (I had a Speak & Spell, which had a magical wizard living inside, obviously. How else could it talk to you in that creepy-ass robot voice?), and we played outside with something called "friends" a lot. Where he grew up, he had a black and white TV with 3 channels, the antenna for said TV was box springs from a mattress on the roof, and sometimes the bathrooms were situated outside. He was lucky if his friends lived 20 miles away!

Whew! Wasn't that a trip? Now re-gather your broken and scattered mind and come on a journey with me titled "How A Little Boy From The Middle Of Nowhere Becomes A Bull Rider."

We have established (during my earlier histrionics) that he grew up in a desolate area with not a lot to do. But you know what? That is a determination made solely by the citified girl who is writing this piece. My boyfriend had the freedom to really explore his surroundings. He rode horses. He worked with his grandpa and uncles on ranches, herding and separating animals for various reasons at different times of the year. Working with cattle and goats was a huge industry in west Texas at the time (behind the oilfield and farming), and where you find livestock, you find The Rodeo.

I've been to a few rodeos in California and North Dakota, with and without my boyfriend. If you have never been, it's an amazing experience. I encourage everyone to go just once, even if you've never set eyes on a horse in real-life before. Men and women, girls and boys, doing amazing things with ropes and barrels, horses and cattle. My boyfriend grew up around the rodeo, which was described by him to me as "almost as exciting as Christmas". He grew up taking part in an event in the rodeo that is tailored for little kids: Mutton Busting. The ingredients for this rodeo dish are as follows: You need 1 unshorn and very smelly sheep, one kid, and a chute for the sheep and kid to burst out from. You take the sheep, put the kid on its back in the chute, tell the kid to hang on for dear life, and let the sheep race out of the chute. The sheep tries to run out from under the kid, the kid tries to hang on, and the sheep always wins. It's 3 seconds of some of the most endearing cuteness you will ever see on this earth. So I think it is safe to say that if you are a kid, growing up in the middle of nowhere with an exciting festival called The Rodeo, and this great happening being almost as exciting as Christmas...I guess that little kid might, just might, look at the adult bull riders and wonder if they too could do something that great.

The breakthrough to bull riding came in his 9th year while he was visiting his grandfather on a ranch his grandfather was working. The grandpa challenged his grandson, actually, by saying "Why, you can't even ride that little steer over there. I don't know why you think you could ride bulls." This old fashioned smack-down taunt resounded through his little boy mind. A steely resolve begin to flow through his little boy veins, shepherding a thought from the dark recesses of his mind that became much more than a mere thought and morphed into a pure, unadulterated feeling that only children can truly know. "I'll show grandpa!" So he hopped on that yearling steer. And so that steer ran madly around the corral, a little boy clinging for dear life, so afraid, but so determined. After he had fallen off, and picked himself back up, his grandfather gave him a look and remarked, "You might make a bull rider after all."

Thus, a bull rider was born.

To be a bull rider is to know fear. To know the fear and in turn make friends with that fear. To know the fear so very well that you can take it into your hands and forge a weapon transmuted from that fear into pure determination. Go on YouTube and look up a bull ride. When the bull is in the chute and the cowboy is getting settled and pulling the bull rope tight, there is a pause before the gate of the chute is opened. Every frantic activity behind the chute is stilled, and every person behind that chute is waiting on something quite mundane; a nod from the cowboy. But for that cowboy to give that nod, his permission for the chute to open and his dangerous dance with the bull to officially begin, first he must forge a weapon of pure resolve from abject fear. Once he has completed his task, he gives a nod, and the bull explodes into the arena. Each and every time he rides, he must perform this Herculean undertaking and forge his weapon anew. I think that this is why bull riders quit, actually. Because of age, injury, or the fear becoming too great or their will becoming too small, they cannot make this alchemical  transmutation any longer.

This happened to my boyfriend in his late teens due to a car accident that injured his left hand, his dominant hand. He could no longer let loose of his bull rope once his ride was done, which would hamper his ability to dismount the bull, and leave him open to serious injury or even death. But bull riding is still in his heart, and for him, watching bull riders at the rodeo is still a lot like Christmas. I don't truly understand this passion, but what I can understand is how growing up in the wilds of west Texas gave him a strength of character that takes my breath away. I may be a city girl, living in my city world, but I couldn't live without my cowboy.