SATURDAY NIGHT AT THE WESTERNER

Summer holidays—what do real people do?

By Julie Carter

Years ago when summer arrived with its major holidays on either end of it and the Fourth of July in the middle, never once did I plan for a picnic, a vacation or a backyard barbeque.

Summer meant rodeo season. It meant spending hours on the phone getting entered in the rodeos, thousands of miles of driving, and dragging in on Sunday night to be back to work on Monday. My rodeo friends and I often wondered what real people did on the Fourth of July.

While we were mucking around in the mud after a summer downpour at the rodeo grounds, washing off the barrel horse’s leg gear with nearest water hose and hoping it would dry before it was time to compete again, real people were no doubt sitting on a backyard deck eating grilled delicacies and laughing over memories of trips to Cancun.

That same water hose washed down children, dogs, horses and muddy boots. It usually was attached to a hydrant accessible only by mucking through a standing lake of water in the same corral the bucking bulls were penned. They watched you slip, slide and likely fall in your attempt to hurry just in case they were in a bad mood.

While we were driving all night from one night rodeo to get to another one that started in the afternoon on the other side of the state, real people were slumbering soundly in a their beds in a five star hotel anticipating the next day’s round of golf at a seaside resort.

While we spent the weekend trying to pass for civilized beings despite being rumpled, tired and nourished only by two-day old cold burritos from the cooler, real people planned massive food get-togethers with friends and relatives.

Get-togethers for the rodeo crowd were at the gas stations on the road to the next rodeo and perhaps some short conversation at the hamburger stand at the rodeo grounds.

Ranching offers about the same version of the holidays. It’s not uncommon to have a cattle working scheduled on a holiday because you know everyone will be available. The neighboring ranchers don’t vacation on holidays either.

My life after rodeo resembled rodeo life so much I didn’t ever get a chance to see how “normal” people live. I moved right from arena dirt to corral dirt and 5 a.m. starts –not to drive to a rodeo but to drive to the pasture.

Earlier this spring a friend of mine was so excited. She’d been invited to a “Wildflower Party.” She was completely charmed by the idea. The invitation said it was a “celebration of Texas’ bountiful and beautiful wildflower display and would include cocktails, dinner and dancing to a live band.”

What was most intriguing about the invitation was that it didn’t include instructions to bring a shod horse and be there by 5 a.m. for breakfast. She said she could only conclude that the hosts either had no faith in her cowboying abilities or had already shipped their cattle.

While I am sure there is a certain amount of romanticizing of reality when I think everyone spends their holidays sitting on a beach, sailing boats, or napping in the shade of a well manicured yard, I probably won’t ever really know.

I still look for some arena dirt, hot sun and miserable weather for my holidays. But now I use the event to pay me through the use of my pen and camera instead of me paying someone to spend 18 seconds in the spotlight.

For a look into rural America at its best, see a rodeo this summer. And remember, while they may not always look like it, rodeo cowboys are real people too.

Julie can be reached for comment at jcarter@tularosa.net

© Julie Carter 2005

Do you know what I mean?

By Larry Gabriel

Normal people communicate with each other just fine without grammatical precision or elaborate definitions, but not all speakers are "normal".

It's getting more difficult to understand natural resource discussions partly because someone keeps changing the meaning of the words.

Do you know what I mean when I say, "roadless" or "pristine" or "biological diversity" or "healthy forest" or "sustainable farming" or "endemic" or "democracy"?

Maybe you do, but I assure it is not the same as what some other people mean when they use such terms. We can no longer find out what some words mean by looking in the dictionary.

When John Adams said, "Remember democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide. (John Adams, letter to John Taylor, April 15, 1814)" he was talking about direct rule by the people which was widely condemned because it was not a government of law.

When politicians say "democracy" today they usually mean a constitutional government of law run by elected officers chosen by citizens in open elections. In Adams' day that was a "republican form of government".

Many of these terms are infected with a large dose of "social justice" and subjectivity.

For example, "biological diversity" does not mean more things with different traits. It means more things that are of the kind the speaker wants.

A "healthy forest" need not produce more timber, more water, cleaner water, fewer fires or more recreational opportunity. It is one that "looks" the way the speaker wants.

A "sustainable farm" need not provide a decent living to its owners. It is one that uses resources in a manner that is "fair and just" to all people on the planet to the extent taxpayers can afford to subsidize its operations.

An "endemic species" is not one that has been there for a thousand years. It is one the speaker wants to be there and has a circle drawn on a map around its primary population center.

"Pristine" does not mean original and unchanged. It means an area where the roads and other improvements lack sufficient political clout to protect them from removal.

"Roadless" does not mean an area without roads. It means an area where roads can be closed and in which a "road" is not a road at all unless it is maintained by the federal landowner.

A "promise" spoken by a federal officer does not mean he will do it. It means if his boss approves and the policy does not change and there is money to be found and they are not diverted by a higher priority, the government will do that…maybe.

The last one is my "favorite", if you know what I mean.

Larry Gabriel is the South Dakota Secretary of Agriculture


I welcome submissions for this feature of The Westerner

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