Rodeo Daze – Ride with the pros
Pork threads and crooked shoots used to be a part of my everyday life. Rodeo clowns were constant companions and lamb hunting became one of my favorite things. For a year, I spent days, nights, and weekends on the PRCA trail with the best runners and riders from all over.
Originally from Pecos, Texas years ago, the rodeo has become synonymous with America’s Wild West heritage and the reputation has been well-earned. The competition includes unpaid athletes who need those dollar prizes to keep going.
As a national spokesperson for the Adolph Coors Company, he lived on the road and attended one event a week. Peter Coors wrote my check and his new passion was rodeo so I saddled up. For forty-six weeks straight, I rode professional rodeos across the country, from Albany, New York to Poway, California.
Twelve cases of beer, Coors, of course, were delivered to my hotel room every day to give away out of “goodwill.” Host hotels often booked me into their best rooms and renamed them “Bridle Suite”. I held press interviews from my living room many times.
One day, we were lining up at a rodeo in Rock Springs, Wyoming, to ride “circle 8”. Clay or Jake leaned in and said, “Lane is in Cheyenne.” When we finished the opening routine, Lane was dead.
Lane Frost had been my friend at the rodeo. His last interview was with me in Santa Maria, California and I saw snippets of that interview on the news over and over again. Then they made the movie “8 Seconds” and tried to do his life justice.
The movie didn’t touch on how deep the friendship was between Lane and Tuff Hedeman. I was with Tuff at the next rodeo in Fort Madison, Iowa, and he showed up, ready to ride and do the press tour. Tuff and I were auctioned for the benefit of some charity. We both had to dance with someone who had bid for us. “How are you here?” Asked.
One month out of the year, I took an alcohol awareness trip. The goal was to balance promoting beer with fair warning of its danger. No press was reserved and I was sent to Indian reservations, mainly in New Mexico and Arizona. A visit to the Navajo reservation in Window Rock, Arizona, was enough to get the full impact of the handicap of alcohol use among Native Americans.
So the lives of Native Americans have been wiped out by alcohol ethanol due to its inherent trait of never having consumed “fire water” before the white man brought it from Europe. We brought the strong drinks when we got to develop and settle in the territories that would later become the fifty states. The evidence of alcoholic damage is evident and powerful when one visits the reserves.
In an age when family events are rare, the rodeo still attracts the attention of all ages. There are two types of competitors, jockeys and ropers, and it is exciting to see a horse and a rider compete as one in the arena. I will never forget the year I spent “hitting the road” with all those proud horsemen and my brief exposure to the harm done by ethanol beers to our Native American population.
For now, SherryD
Formerly Miss Coors Rodeo
