The Lady Bull Rider of Asotin County

The young cowboy lays face down in the mud. If it weren’t for the high-speed twitching of his legs causing the fringe on his chaps to dance like pennants on a windy day you might think he is dead. Four paramedics and two clown-suited bullfighters race up to the trembling body to assess his chances. He is the first saddle bronc rider of the rodeo and has unfortunately drawn an inexperienced mare. The bronc was used to larger arenas than the one in Asotin. When the gate opened she bucked a sprint towards the opposite rail fence, which was closer than she expected. She realized her miscalculation too late and slammed on the brakes, tumbling the rider and losing her balance. An instant later the best place for the next hoof stomp was the back of the cowboy’s newly-arrived head.

A frightened hush grips the multitude. "Folks, don’t worry," comes the loud but calm voice of the announcer in the booth. "I know this cowboy personally. It looks like the horse only stomped on his head, which for him is probably the best place. I’m sure he’ll be fine. Fellahs how ’bout hauling that gurney out of there and let’s get the next rider up." In a few seconds the mess is gone and a new bronc flies out of the chute.

The rodeo has not gotten off to a perfect start. One of the flag carriers has fallen from her mount at full gallop, sullying the sponsor’s flag, mussing her coiffure and spoiling her professional makeup with a large gob of greenish horse manure. Everything stops while she remounts. Nobody laughs too loudly – it could easily be one of them next time. These are not soccer hooligans. The rodeo crowd is as polite a group of people as ever came together on the planet. They do not jeer.

Asotin is a small-town rodeo, sanctioned under the Pro-West banner. This is not the Marquis of Queensbury, crash-helmet and Jason-mask, slick-big-city, rich-sponsors, big-purse rodeo. This is the rodeo of Yore. It is bare-knuckled man-and-womanly knock-your-teeth-out rodeo and the stands are full of people who would be just as much at home competing in the events as watching them. It is their kids who are riding, and it is their grandkids who sit beside them on the splintery wooden benches today, who will be dragged through the dust by wild sheep tomorrow morning, and who will be riding the bulls themselves in ten years. In Rodeoland, life goes on.

Steer wrestling is an event that teams man and horse against bovine. The steer is held in a chute and released just as a flag drops signaling the legal start for the horse. The animals accelerate to about thirty miles per hour and the steer wrestler jumps from horse to steer, grabbing the animal under the chin and forcing it to the ground. A helper rides a second horse and keeps the steer from veering off the straight path, which would be unfair. Asotin seems to have some problem synchronizing the steer and horse release times, often allowing the steer to find the exit chute twenty feet in front of the cowboy, resulting in no score for most of the riders. Each time it happens, the crown sympathetically moans "Awww!"

The third bull rider draws "Just-Say-No," an immense and powerful Charolais. It is no match, and the cowboy quickly draws a choking breath of soft dirt as his face meets the arena floor. His job well done, "Just-Say-No" just says "no." He refuses the exit chute. He charges the rail fence, which suddenly seems foolishly skimpy and is instantly populated by all the pedestrians inside the ring. The rodeo photographers who just previously had been concentrating on their viewfinders suddenly become focused on surviving the next few seconds. "Off the railing!" they shriek in squeaky little-girl voices to the climbers who are perched on the outside and therefore are preventing THEM from climbing the INside. Bullfighters harass the bull, but he chases them up the fence, too. Two mounted cowboys lasso him, one from each side. A third spanks him with a lariat. He squats down and bellows. They try to tow him with the horses but he rolls over onto his back. "Rub his tummy!" comes the amplified voice from the Tower of Auditory Pain. Someone actually tries that, but the bull stays put. Eventually he tires of humiliating everyone, stands up and trots out the gate.

"And now folks" comes the announcer, "we have saved a special treat for you. One of our local cowgirls has agreed to demonstrate Ladies Bull Riding, something I would guess most of you have never seen. Let’s all give her a big shout of support!" A big shout does erupt when the young woman enters the arena on the back of a small, but vigorously-bucking bull. Since no other girls dared compete in the event it doesn’t matter a bit that she immediately disqualifies herself by holding on like hell with both hands for most of the short ride.

"What made you do it?" I asked her later. "I am confronting the soft bigotry of low expectations. There’s a rodeo glass ceiling that imprisons potential girl bull riders in the gilded tyranny of sexy outfits, cute makeup and fast horses. Women CAN ride bulls and now I’ve drawn the sword line in the sand. It starts here!"

"How did it make you feel when you butt-smacked the arena?" I ask.

"What a stupid question! I’m talking about the advancement of women over livestock and you ask me THAT?"

"I’m a journalist," I say proudly. "It’s what we’re trained to do."

Biffle French is a Vashon artist, writer and the National Rodeo Correspondent to The Vashon Loop