The Fourth of July Rodeo in Jackson, Wyoming begins with John Wayne’s slow spoken rendition of “You Ask Me Why I Love Her,” over the violins and swelling chorus of “America The Beautiful.” Then the girls on horseback come out –the Rodeo Royalty— each with a great flag. The Stars and Stripes is first, on a stunning horse with a stunning rider — around the ring several times. Then the Wyoming Bear Flag and flags of sponsors, whipping in the horse-run wind. The Star Spangled Banner is sung, a capella, to the usual effect of heightened emotion and grimaces at mis-hit notes in the nearly unsingable tune. And then the big bulls bang out of the chute with reed thin men barely aboard, some of them just out of high school.

A Rodeo isn’t something you want to see again and again if you’re not from the country. It’s hard to get the fine points of riding a 1,200 pound testosterone pumped animal with a sharp object strapped into soft parts goading him to a fury. Some of the riders stay on 8 seconds and bail, others barely make it past the gate. The eight-second horn sounding to them, I suppose, like a big Bronx cheer. The announcer always asks for a round of applause, small compensation for tough guy ignominy. Clearly some have an easier ride, the bull lashing and kicking in a relatively straight line, while others execute tight circles whipping their hindquarters in impossible projections of mass, a quarter ton landing and a quarter ton rising simultaneously. I suppose it’s like championship golf: not all bulls are equally ferocious but over a season the best rider will have the best total rides.

The men’s names are all Cody and Wyatt, Hugh and Tyler. I don’t know if they are rodeo names or everyday names. Lots of these cowboys come from rodeo families –“His daddy rode the bulls for fifteen years. His mama took top honors in barrel riding in ’82” — so perhaps they are named, six months before birth, with aspirational names of the mythical west. The bulls have names too: Freak on a Leash, Dr. Feelgood, Swamp Rat. Their county of origin is announced with special inflection, “Abilene! Texas!”, “Right here! in Jackson!, Wyoming!”

Following the bulls comes team calf-roping, a roper at the head and another trying to get a loop beneath both lifted feet of the skittering calf. Time counts. Twelve seconds is announced. A whoop goes up from the crowd. The next team misses the head; the crowd groans. A woman head-roper gets her calf and her partner gets one hind leg. Good work. The announcer goes on, streaming information about the riders, their cowboy heritage, their string of ribbons and broken bones together with nudges and reminders to patronize the sponsors. Frank Carmody’s head looks like it’s about to snap off while we hear about “the best fly fishing in the great mountain west at a ranch you won’t be sorry to spend a week at!”

…to be continued…