It's only fitting for my first post to be a bull rider's story, however this tale is going to be a bit different from the rest because this particular bull rider will be staying anonymous. Being that some of the activities that were participated in were most definitely illegal (jumping the Mexican border).
I sat down with him one day and we got to talking about the crazy good times he used to having traveling up and down the road back in the 90's and early 2000's. Back when the shirts were bright, the bulls were rough, and the cowboys were tough. We talked about a variety of topics and when asked what his favorite prorodeo he had ever attended was he took a moment to think and finally responded with:
"I liked pretty much all of them, they were all a good time." But then after a couple of minutes of contemplating he said, "You know I think maybe my favorite rodeo I'd ever been to was Del Rio. Del Rio was always a good time. I went there for the prorodeo and the PBR so I got to go have a good time there twice a year. They used to have a bull riding series down there with these badass buckles that had bull skulls on them made by Bob Berg and I really wanted one of them buckles. The closest I ever came to winnin' one of them, I was making a badass ride, the bull was rank, tryin everything to get me off. I got him rode, got off thinking I made a hell of a ride. I was definitely gonna win that buckle then I hear the announcer say something about, "Oh he may have touched him," and I thought to myself "You gotta be kidding me. That announcer don't know what he's talking about, there was no way I touched that bull." Long story short I ended up with a no score and I had a dirt mark on my free arm so I guess I must’ve touched that bull.
But anyways Del Rio was always a good time. I’d enter for the first performance and not enter any of the other rodeos around that time just to stay down in Del Rio for the whole weekend to party and have fun. One year, I was about three days drunk in and they had this catwalk across the top of the bucking chutes I was sitting on and I look down and there was this bullfighter called Smurf and he was always doing crazy things. Anyways, there was this one time I look down in the buckin chutes from the catwalk and I see Smurf getting on this big ol' bull whose horns were real far apart on his head and Smurf's getting on this bull backwards. He's on his belly facing the bull's butt and Smurf is hanging on to this bull by the flank strap and he’s got his legs wrapped around those big horns and I think to myself "Am I really that drunk or is he really on this bull backwards?" As I’m watching Smurf get situated that bull just ain’t having it, he’s getting pretty wild in the chute and then Smurf calls for him. And he rides that damn bull for the full 8 seconds and as soon as he heard that buzzer go off he lets go of the flank strap and that bull launches him about 10 yards away and to this day that's still the most badass backwards upside down bull ride I've ever seen.
And like I said earlier we’d stay that whole weekend in Del Rio to have a good time and we’d hop the border to Mexico and go to this bar across the border. And this one time I was standing in the line for this bathroom waiting and I get almost to the bathroom door and I just hear this guy yell,” You mother******, I’ll beat your ass” the Mexico cops come out of nowhere to break up this fight. They ask what happened and that guy said he was yelling at this Mexican guy because he had pissed all over his new ostrich quill boots and that he was gonna beat this guy up. The police just wasn’t having it and you know they’ll throw you in jail just because they can. So I tried real hard to not get into to much trouble down there cause I didn’t want to spend time in a Mexican jail. I had some buddies tell me one time that that jail down there was just four big walls with barbed wire around the top and no roof. They told me there was a donkey in there and then I had another guy tell me the Mexican jail had whores in there and you know I wasn’t real interested in spending the night in a jail with donkeys and whores.”
As I sat and talked with this man, listening to his wild stories, I said to him, "There's no way those things actually happened." He looked me dead in the eyes, a slight smirk came across his face and he responded with,"Kid, this shit is so wild there's no way I could come up with that on my own." We'll never know how much of his various tales above were of truth and how much were drunken exaggeration but they do say that truth is stranger than fiction.
Until next time,
~Emery Mask
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