The story of the cowboy strike in 1936 at the Boston rodeo is a well-known bit of rodeo history. It is also no secret that the Cowboys' Turtle Association was the forerunner of the Rodeo Cowboys Association and today's Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association. But Gail Hughbanks Woerner charts new territory by telling the whole story about how professional rodeo got it's start. From the men and women who were the pioneers to the behind the scenes struggles to keep the dream alive.
One of America’s unique contributions to world culture, the cowboy has captured the imagination of people everywhere. In The Cowboy: Six-Shooters, Songs, and Sex, eight renowned western writers report on what the cowboys really were like and what they are like today. Contributors detail how the cowboys lived, loved, and died, how they fared when ranchers switched from running cattle to entertaining dudes, and how the media have depicted the cowboy.
Published for devotees of the cowboy and the West, American Cowboy covers all aspects of the Western lifestyle, delivering the best in entertainment, personalities, travel, rodeo action, human interest, art, poetry, fashion, food, horsemanship, history, and every other facet of Western culture. With stunning photography and you-are-there reportage, American Cowboy immerses readers in the cowboy life and the magic that is the great American West.
Published for devotees of the cowboy and the West, American Cowboy covers all aspects of the Western lifestyle, delivering the best in entertainment, personalities, travel, rodeo action, human interest, art, poetry, fashion, food, horsemanship, history, and every other facet of Western culture. With stunning photography and you-are-there reportage, American Cowboy immerses readers in the cowboy life and the magic that is the great American West.
One of the best tie-down calf ropers ever to come out of South Texas, Juan Salinas grew up on a 15,000-acre ranch near Laredo, with the finest of horses to ride and hundreds of head of cattle to practice on. He roped in Texas rodeos large and small from the mid-1920s to 1935. From 1936 to 1946, he followed the national rodeo circuit, competing from Texas to New York's Madison Square Garden. At the time, few if any other Mexican Americans competed in rodeo, and Salinas drew a lot of attention. Salinas also operated his family's Texas ranch, where he ran cattle and raised prize roping quarter horses. In this account of his life and career, Salinas's nephew, Ricardo Palacios, recounts the many tales his uncle told him--tales of friendship with Gene Autry, going to Sally Rand's wedding reception, riding on the Rodeo Train, and sponsoring seven-time world champion tie-down calf roper Toots Mansfield. He also narrates life on the range, with his uncle riding across a pasture at full speed, gingerly holding the reins and a thirty-five foot coil of rope in his left hand while swinging the roping loop overhead with his right hand as he chased a three-hundred-pound calf for the throw. The story of Juan Salinas is also the story of the people of Mexican origin who live on the ranches of the South Texas brush country. Strong, rugged, independent, and hard-working, they knew social and economic success that has all too seldom been chronicled. Tio Juan was the family cowboy, the hero, the rodeo star, and Palacios tells his uncle's story with warmth and admiration. In 1991 Salinas was inducted into the Rodeo Hall of Fame of the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum. He was also named Rancher of the Year by Laredo's Borderfest and won the Ranching Heritage Award given by the King Ranch and Texas A&M-Kingsville. In 1993, he was inducted into the LULAC International Sports Hall of Fame. These were, Palacios writes, "fitting tributes to a champion and fine additions to his collection of trophy roping saddles, silver trophies, and champion's buckles."
"Rodeos" presents a fascinating history of this Western American institution,rom its rugged beginnings on the ranch to today's very lucrativerofessional circuits. This book captures the mystique of the cowboy and hislace in Western folklore, from the early days when groups of cowboys fromeighboring ranches met to settle arguments over who was the best aterforming ranching tasks to the multi-million dollar prizes and endorsementswarded to professionals today. Experience first-hand the energy, electricity,nd exhilaration of the rodeo through stunning colour photography andintage illustrations that tell the stories of these courageous and athleticodeo characters, and highlights of important moments throughout rodeoistory.
When asked in an interview what he most liked about rodeo, three-time world champion saddle-bronc rider “Cody” Bill Smith said simply, “Horses that buck.” Smith redefined the image of America's iconic cowboy. Determined as a boy to escape a miner's life in Montana, he fantasized a life in rodeo and went on to earn thirteen trips to the national finals, becoming one of the greatest of all riders. His story is a genuine slice of rodeo life—a life of magic for those good enough to win. This book will delight rodeo and cowboy enthusiasts alike.
Rodeo people call their sport "more a way of life than a way to make a living." Rodeo is, in fact, a rite that not only expresses a way of life but perpetuates it, reaffirming in a ritual contest between man and animal the values of American ranching society. Elizabeth Atwood Lawrence uses an interpretive approach to analyze rodeo as a symbolic pageant that reenacts the "winning of the West" and as a stylized expression of frontier attitudes toward man and nature. Rodeo constestants are the modern counterparts of the rugged and individualistic cowboys, and the ethos they inherited is marked by ambivalence: they admire the wild and the free yet desire to tame and conquer. Based on extensive field work and drawing on comparative materials from other stock-tending societies, Rodeo is a major contribution to an understanding of the role of performance in society, the culturally constructed view of man's place in nature, and the structure and meaning of social relationships and their representations.
