High On My List

Do you recall rodeos from generations past? I have had on occasion to travel Hwy. 2 a couple of times this last month and have noticed many pickups and horse trailers heading down the road. This made me think of earlier days.

I am not going too far back when I ask, if you remember cars pulling a single horse trailer, headed for the weekend rodeo. If you looked into the trunk of many of these cars, you would find bareback riggings, rope cans, etc. If you were successful, and rodeo was truly your event, you might even upgrade to a four-horse trailer and a pickup.

Usually you noticed pickups sporting an overhead camper if the family accompanied you on this outing. Of course you didn’t need many conveniences like a shower or cook stove, as you were probably on the road for only one or max, two days, as you needed to get home to get the haying or other life-sustaining work done before the next event.

Rodeo has become a true athletic sport, not the weekend getaway for the local cowboys that it used to be. Now we see fancy horse trailers and combined living quarters going down the highways as well as parked at the rodeo arenas. If you are a top rodeo athlete and chalk up more than an occasional placing, you make much more purse money than the occasional rodeo contestant of the past. Those were the days when there was hardly a pause between the last line of the *Star Spangle Banner [and] “OK cowboys, Let ‘r’ buck.”

With those memories, I must say that the rodeo is still high on my list of events. I cannot think of another sport that consistently promotes tribute to God, our military and our great country of America.