As good as I once was
by Julie Carter
Aging isn't any easier on a cowboy than it is for anybody else, but it usually takes a cowboy a little longer to recognize it.
Let me tell you about a cowboy and former bronc rider named Shade. Recently Shade fessed up to realizing that his "young man dreams in his fluffy middle-aged body" didn't always make for good choices. Not uncommon among men, but hard to swallow at any rate.
Shade explained how difficult it was to shed the disease of rodeoing and riding broncs even when you knew better. "Lots of guys I traveled with and even me, up 'til a year or so ago, wouldn't even watch a rodeo on TV. Couldn't watch, not while there was any chance we might could still get on one somewhere."
Shade says he's finally now to the point he can watch the bronc riding without the urge to start jogging, doing pushups and sit-ups to get back in riding shape.
"Depending on my level of sobriety," he says, "my armchair quarterbackin' goes from just judging the bronc ridin' to, well I'll tell ya, once in a while one will get to me. The other day I was watching one and that sucker blowed out and bucked and I mean really bucked. About the third or fourth jump I went to liftin' on my beer can and chargin' the front end of my recliner."
Shade was pretty sure he would have scored in the 90s.
Shade and his old rodeo partner take turns craving the old days and once in a while, they both get the itch at the same time.
"We will watch a rodeo on the old boob tube and we get so disgusted at those no-toe-turnin'-out, hangin'-in-the-back-Dssuckers," Shade said. "And it never seems to occur to either of us that as good as we remember our careers, there ain't a world title between us."
When Shade quit rodeoing, he sold his bronc saddle.
"You can't have that stuff around or you get to thinkin' you have to try using it again," he said. "My buddy still has his, a Hamley Gold Seal. He also has a jake steer (roping dummy). Now two or three times a year when he's particularly disgusted at the no-tryin' suckers on TV, or if he sees a spectacular ride, he will drag out the Hamley and put it and a lead rope on the jake steer. Then he'll drag it all closer to the ice chest and have at it until he gives out. Then he will just sit there for hours."
Just this spring, Shade attended a rodeo where he saw what he described as "some good buckin' horses wasted" by cowboys that didn't get them ridden right.
"I called up my ole pard and told him, 'Man, we could start now and still take the Turquoise Circuit,'" he said. "It was so terrible that, at my old obese age, I was sure I could still ride better than what I saw."
Shade's pard put it in perspective for him.
"Shade, you gotta slow down," Pard said. "I know what you're sayin' and I thought the same thing. So I drug out the Hamley and the jake steer."
The ice chest wasn't mentioned but undoubtedly was a given.
Shade got excited. "Oh yeah, right, you're gittin' practiced up and gittin' ready."
Pard replied, "No, not really Shade. The jake steer is learnin' some new tricks."
"Say that again pard, you broke up."
Pard repeated, "The jake steer learned some new tricks. It's swappin' leads now. Bucked me off."
"Man pard, that ain't good," Shade responded.
"No Shade, it's not good," his pard lamented. "Maybe we better stay home."
That defining moment when maturity forces the reality of "the mind is willing but body is incapable" comes for us all. Sometimes it stays, taking up residence in our daily decisions. But for a cowboy, it frequently leaves town just long enough for somebody to do something stupid.
It's just how it is.
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