On our road, this sort of chaos was averted through the leadership of my friend Ludde, a seventy-year-old man who lives on seventy acres across the draw from Ranting Hill. He is, hands down, the toughest and most curmudgeonly guy I have ever met, which is another way of saying that he is my role model and hero. For many years now Ludde has been our Road Captain, and it is a role that suits him perfectly. He does not speak often, but when he does everyone pays attention. For example, while riding his big stallion out in the desert he is fond of mentioning to illegal off-roaders, wherever he finds them, that “this is my favorite place to shoot, because I’d never expect anybody to be riding here. Why, a fella could get himself killed.” You’d fear this guy even if he did not carry a twelve-gauge in a saddle scabbard by his right shin, which he does.
On another occasion, Ludde confronted a dirt biker who was shredding our road. The biker, who did not realize who he was talking to, cussed the old man out and tore off. Ludde climbed into his huge, white F-350 pickup and chased the motorcyclist for several miles along BLM roads at high speed, until the biker laid it down on a loose turn. Ludde left his truck idling and walked slowly up to the young man, who lay sprawled near his wrecked bike with a broken arm. Looking down with a warm smile, Ludde said, “Looks like your arm is bent funny, partner. Well, nice day for a walk.” With that, he cocked his buckaroo hat, climbed back into his rig, and drove contentedly home.
It takes that kind of grit to be an effective Road Captain. One time, a neighbor on the road to the south of us went rogue and drove overland across her property and some public land to use our road, because her own had become impassable. On the day the lady pioneered this route, Ludde intercepted her and explained that if she wanted to use our road she was welcome to, but she’d have to pay the same amount the rest of us do to keep it up. The woman not only refused but produced a .30-06 deer rifle, which she gripped while responding that she’d do as she pleased. Ludde didn’t blink. Walking slowly away, he said only, “We all pitched in and bought a little rock for the road. Let me know by morning if you decide to pay your share.” The next morning, Ludde had two end dump truck loads of road base deposited directly in the mouth of the makeshift driveway the woman had been using to access our road. I will spare you the math: this is a quarter of a million pounds of gravel. Ludde left that monster pile there until the woman learned what the rest of us already knew: you don’t mess with our Road Captain.
To be such a tough guy, Ludde is also good-humored, supportive, and flexible. Whenever a neighbor could not afford to pay their fair share, he would cover them until their cash flow improved. Once, he let a neighbor work off his road dues doing roofing work on Ludde’s barn, after which Ludde paid the man’s share. Another neighbor who has a big tractor contributes his share by doing ditching work along the road. Yet another never pays American dollars but always produces two loads of “rock” (shorthand for type-two road base gravel), which is a meaningful contribution, even though no money changes hands. Ludde understands that rock is the coin of the realm out here—a kind of redneck Bitcoin—and that it can be traded for almost anything. A neighborly swap might involve farrier tools, a case of whiskey, a calf, or a truck winch, and that is fine with Ludde, so long as the exchange ends in the common currency of rock, which then goes down on our road.
When I answered the phone yesterday evening, Ludde’s first words were, “I’ve got some good news for you, partner.”
“Let me guess. You didn’t shoot anybody today?” I replied.
“I’ve already told everybody else on the road,” he continued, ignoring me. “And more good news: this redneck promotion comes with a six-pack. Congratulations.”
“Ludde, please tell me this isn’t what I think it is. Please. What have I ever done to you? Haven’t I been a good neighbor all these years?” I asked.
“Yup. That’s why I have confidence in you, Captain,” he replied, only emphasizing the word captain a little.
“Listen,” I pleaded. “You were born to do this job. I don’t have the cojones to run this road. Why in hell would you want me?”
“Because you’re fair. Not very tough, but fair. And you’re one of the only folks on the road who hasn’t been threatened with a gun,” Ludde explained.
“Yeah, but that’ll change as soon as I’m Captain. These Silver Hillbillies will eat me alive.”
“Comes with the territory, son. Besides, this isn’t noggin surgery. What did I do when old lady Jenkins said we should reckon each person’s dues by their distance from the paved road?” he asked.
“Nothing?” I guessed.
“How about when Matt wanted to figure dues by how many vehicles each family drives?”
“Not a thing,” I answered.
“And when Smitty complained about the weight of Roper’s flatbed? Or when Bill said he wouldn’t pay up until Janie did? Or when Jesse put buckshot into the side of the FedEx truck, because it was going too fast?”
“Nothing,” I repeated. “Not a damned thing.”
“Got the picture, Captain? Everybody pays the same amount, due at the same time, unless they make a swap or show up with rock. Simple.”
“I really don’t want to do this, Ludde, but you leave me no choice. Can I, at least, call on you for help when things get rough?”
“Nope,” he replied. “Now, you go share this good news with Hannah and Caroline. It isn’t every little girl has a daddy who’s a Road Captain. And drop by for that six-pack anytime.”
MY BUDDY TONY, who is also a licensed athletic trainer, fixes broken cowboys. Traveling from town to town, rodeo to rodeo, his job is to provide emergency medical aid and physical therapy to the young men and women athletes who are thrown by horses, kicked by bulls, or otherwise injured in a sport the L.A. Times reports is ten times more dangerous than football and thirteen times more hazardous than ice hockey. As an athletic trainer, Tony is specifically educated in sports medicine injuries, rehabilitation, and trauma triage. He has been in the business for almost forty years, and it is not unusual for him to treat cowboys whose fathers he treated back in their own rodeo days.
“Mostly small stuff this weekend,” Tony said casually, as he worked expertly on my lower back. “In team roping, a cowboy got snared up and it yanked his thumb off. Tried to sew it back on, but it didn’t take. Similar thing happened to a chute boss a couple weeks ago. That one was just the tip of the finger though. Took us awhile to find it. Put it in a saline bag and gave it to him to take with him to the ER. Not sure how that one turned out.”
“Man, Tony, that sounds brutal,” I replied, cringing as I flexed my fingers.
“That’s nothing. A month back, a cowboy got stomped by a real big bull, so I went in to help him. I’d just got his head and neck immobilized in my hands when that bull turned and charged me,” explained Tony, in an oddly calm tone of voice.
“Damn, what did you do?” I asked, sitting up for a reply.
“Nothing you can do. Spinal injury. Can’t let the kid’s head go. Clown got the bull’s attention and the bullfighter veered him off at the last second, so it all worked out. Got the cowboy on a backboard. Unconscious, but he came to later,” Tony said, in the same unaccountably cool tone.
Six weeks later, Tony has arranged for a press pass allowing me to attend my first rodeo: the Reno Rodeo, which is advertised as “The Wildest, Richest Rodeo in the West,” and where more than a half-million bucks of prize money will be won. I arrive at the livestock events center early and wander through a dizzying labyrinth of concessions. Bridle and saddle outfits are numerous under the big tent, as are stands selling beautiful Mexican blankets, colorful beadwork, and finely crafted turquoise and silver Navajo jewelry. There are fringed buckskin jackets and delicately braided lanyards and big silver belt buckles. The smell of dust and leather is in the air. A woman is being fitted for spangled chaps in one booth; in another, an older man is airbrushing pastel coyotes
onto the foam faces of trucker caps. Nearby, a sign reads, “Horsehair belts made in America, not in mainland communist China.”
A young woman walks by in sequin-encrusted jeans and a tight tank top emblazoned with the slogan “Huntin’ and Lovin.’” She heads into a makeshift cantina where a country band is belting out a ballad that includes the memorable line “Tennessee whiskey got me drinking in heaven.” Centered above the louvered, swinging saloon doors is a large oil painting depicting George Washington, American flag in hand, heroically crossing the Delaware. At first glance, the patriotic image resembles Emanuel Leutze’s famous 1851 painting of the scene, until I look again and notice that the father of our country is tricked out in full cowboy regalia, from buckaroo hat to batwing chaps to stylishly tooled leather boots.
Having been forewarned that even with my press pass I won’t be permitted behind the chutes unless I’m wearing boots, jeans, a western shirt, and a cowboy hat, I’ve done my best to cobble together an acceptable uniform—though a quick glance around this place makes it clear that I’ve missed the mark. My jeans are Levi’s instead of Wrangler, my shirt has buttons rather than snaps, and my boots are pointed-toe instead of being square-toed ropers. My belt buckle is laughably puny. I don’t even own a cowboy hat, so the next order of business is to acquire this indispensable part of my costume before the event begins. I settle on an inexpensive, black felt cowboy hat that is steamed and fitted to my noggin by a woman who smiles politely at the fact that I’m so obviously out of my element. It likely wouldn’t matter if I were the best-outfitted fake cowboy in Reno, because I’m busy recording my observations in a leather-bound journal. Nothing will out you faster in any alien social environment than writing—a gesture that amounts to a public confession that you are a cultural anthropologist and not a member of the tribe.
Soon enough I find Tony, whose home away from home is the forty-foot-long, fully-outfitted sports medicine trailer sponsored by the Justin Boot Company. Stepping up into the trailer I’m suddenly immersed in a welter of cowboys and a nearly equal number of athletic trainers, hurrying sideways past each other in the trailer’s narrow aisle as they come and go, receiving and giving treatment before the event begins. The cowboys and cowgirls look incredibly fit and strong, and they are surprisingly young. I’ve been told that in several rodeo events, twenty-three passes for old, and as I glance at the injuries being treated here I begin to sense why. While there are plenty of stitches and scars in view—not to mention eggplant-colored bruises, swollen knees and ankles, and cowboys so thoroughly taped up that they look like aspiring mummies—it is also evident that many of these athletes suffer from head, shoulder, neck, and spine injuries.
The cowboys all seem to know each other, and although they will soon be in fierce competition, they are friendly and sociable in the trailer. The liveliest of the young men being worked on is the rodeo clown, an energetic, charismatic, irresistibly droll kid who is already sporting full makeup. His clown smile, which is painted on, does not obscure the genuine smile beneath it. “Rather not say what I get paid to live or die in that barrel,” he says with a wide grin, referring to the essential prop that is often the only object standing between his fragile body and the hulking mass of the bull. “Don’t mind the rolling so much, but that bull flipped me twice last night,” the clown continues buoyantly, rubbing his neck and grinning. “Tonight I think I’ll just relax in there until the show’s over,” he says, to no one in particular. “Not a bad little roundhouse I’ve got. Keeps me out of the rain. Rent’s cheap. Gettin’ so it feels like home to me now,” he continues, now flirting with a barrel racer who is receiving knee work. “Room for two, cowgirl. You ever seen my barrel? Come by after bulls, and I’ll show you around in there. Nice and cozy!” Everyone laughs, including the girl.
Spirited banter is clearly part of the culture of this community of athletes, but the clown may also be warming up his public persona. His fascinating and important job is to protect bucked cowboys from enraged mustangs and bulls by helping to distract the animal while the so-called bullfighters work to distract the bull from the fallen rider. The clown uses his barrel strategically, as an island of safety for himself and the bullfighters. But not only that—the clown must execute remarkable feats of athleticism and courage while also somehow making the audience laugh. Only a special combination of agility, strength, and speed allows him to protect the riders—as well as the bullfighters and himself—from being kicked, stomped, or gored. That comedy is part of his charge seems an extravagant demand, but one that may be as necessary as it is required. By smiling his double smile in the face of death, the clown convinces the gasping spectators that, however difficult it might seem, it is possible to face fear with humor. It is a perilous job—the clown’s courage and his foolishness are the two sides of a thin coin that must be flipped and made to land on its edge.
As event time approached, the cowboys thinned out, giving me a chance to talk with Tony and the other athletic trainers and emergency medical staff in the trailer. They are genuinely nice folks, serious about their craft, and honestly concerned for the well-being of the rodeo competitors. It is also clear they must accept that there is only so much they can do to help.
“Everybody out there rides hurt,” Tony explained, nodding toward the arena. “This isn’t basketball or baseball, where if you’re injured you surf the bench while you heal. To win, these guys have to ride. If they miss events, they don’t earn prize money, and if they don’t earn, they’ve got no shot at the national championships in Vegas. We patch them up the best we can, but when we see them in a week at the next rodeo, they’re gonna be out there riding again, hurt or not. That cumulative trauma is real hard, especially on muscle tears and concussions.”
Although the rodeo was now in full swing, Tony explained that we’d be going out to the arena only for the events most likely to result in injury: saddle bronc and bulls. Once the steer wrestling and team roping events had concluded without serious harm to the competitors, we made our way through grandstand security until we stood immediately behind the chutes in anticipation of the saddle bronc competition. From this vantage point, just feet away from the action, the physical intensity of the event was palpable. The sheer power and muscular strength of the horse became obvious when it began to resist its confinement in the chute. Rather than taking wildness out of the animal, as Old West bronc busters once did, wildness had been put into these animals, which are carefully bred and selected for their desperate resistance to human mastery.
The first bronc was wrangled into its chute and mounted by a short, solid cowboy, who worked hard to get astride the animal and keep from having his legs crushed between the horse’s flanks and the surrounding chute rails. The cowboy wore a padded safety vest spangled with sponsor patches, but no other protective gear. His arms were completely wrapped in athletic tape. He struggled to achieve a fiercely tight grip, which is an absolute necessity in this sport, because during the ensuing adventure, the cowboy has only his one-handed grasp of a simple rein to prevent him from being launched. Once in position on the horse with his fist bolted to the rein, the stout cowboy used his free hand to slap himself repeatedly in the face in hopes of releasing a bracing rush of adrenaline that would help prepare him for the much greater rush that was about to come.
When the gate swung open, that bronc exploded out of the chute with the speed and power of lightning released from a bottle—bucking, diving, and spinning all at once, the cowboy pitching forward and back in a wild motion that looked as if it could in a matter of seconds destroy a spine for life. The bronc bucked so violently that when the rider’s hat came off it shot straight up into the air a dozen feet or so, giving a clear indication of the sheer vertical force produced by the bucking. The centrifugal force of the bronc’s simultaneous spinning was made evident in the next second, when the cowboy did not fall from the horse but rather flew sideways from it, as if shot from a cannon.
This scene was
repeated, with few of the cowboys remaining aboard the whirling broncs for more than a few seconds, but each of them riding with a rhythm and beauty that even an uninitiated spectator could easily appreciate. As the young men were tossed, one by one, into the arena dust, I was amazed that every one of them managed to stand up and walk away under their own power—though several did so slowly, and one had an obvious limp. At one point, a cowboy who had been violently pitched took a long time getting to his feet. I asked Tony if he was going to help the kid. “Cowboy code,” he replied, without looking over at me. “Have to let him walk out if he can. I go in for him now, he’d never trust me to work on him again.” The young man tottered out of the arena, and then pulled himself unsteadily into the medical trailer. I would later see him, perfectly cheerful, with stitches holding tight a fresh laceration on his forehead.
With the conclusion of the saddle bronc competition we returned to the trailer, where Tony worked on a few more injured athletes while the tie-down roping and barrel racing events continued apace. On the small, closed-circuit television monitor inside the trailer I could see—during a break in more serious action—the “mutton busting” spectacle, a comic interlude in which young kids hold tightly to the backs of sheep, which are then released to run the arena until the kids, unable to hang on any longer, fall into the same dust where the pitched bronc riders had lately sprawled.
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