When I was about 17 or 18, I lived away from home as a roommate with riding instructor. She was also my trainer and ran the barn where I worked.
During the week, our lives pretty much revolved around horses. Feeding them, cleaning stalls, riding, giving lessons, taking care of boarders, and doing all the other things that needed doing around a busy horse barn.
Weekends were a little different.
Our house had a way of becoming a gathering place for the local cowboy crowd.
I say "cowboys" somewhat loosely.
Most of these guys had regular jobs. But they also had farms, cattle, and horses. When work was over, the boots went on. Some of them rode bulls in the local rodeos.
And when rodeo season came around, apparently they needed to practice.
So somebody built a mechanical bull.
Sort of.
You Have to Picture This Thing
There was no motor. There were no electronics. There certainly wasn't an OFF button.
The "bull" was an oil drum—the same general kind of barrel we used around horses practice rings for barrel racing.
The barrel was suspended between four enormous wooden posts that went way up into the air. I think they were telephone poles. Attached to the poles were these massive springs, with chains along with ropes and whatever other bits of engineering the men had come up with.
I don't remember exactly how they built the thing. I remember looking at it.
And I remember thinking it was very high.
The ropes were the important part.
A man would get on the barrel with a bull rope, settle himself in and put one hand up just as if he were sitting on a real bull.
Then four men on the ground took over.
This is where things got interesting.
Four Men Were the Motor
They would start pulling the ropes and get the barrel moving.
Up.
Down.
Back and forth.
Higher.
And higher.
I swear that barrel could get eight or ten feet in the air. Maybe memory has added a foot or two over the years, but from where I was standing, it looked like it could launch somebody into the next county.
Then somebody would give his rope a hard jerk.
The barrel would shoot one direction.
Another guy would jerk his.
Now it went the other way.
Pretty soon all four of them were working against the poor man sitting on top, trying their best to throw him off.
Which, of course, was the whole point.
Eventually he would go flying.
They had piled hay and wood chips underneath to make the landing soft.
Well.
Softer.
Then everybody laughed, somebody else climbed on, and they did it all over again.
Then for some reason I wanted to try it.
I don't know why.
I really don't.
I don't like heights.
They knew I didn't like heights.
This should have told me something.
I climbed onto that barrel anyway.
At first, it wasn't too bad.
Then the barrel started going higher.
And higher.
And higher.
I started screaming.
This apparently encouraged them.
So up I went again.
I don't remember displaying any great rodeo form. I don't remember keeping one hand beautifully raised in the air.
I remember holding on.
And screaming.
Eventually they took pity on me and let me down.
I guess that was a win. I didn’t FALL off. I was too busy hanging on.
I did not become a bull rider. I painted them instead.
Rodeo Season
It really was a lot of fun.
On weekends everybody would gather at the house. There was beer and probably some other stuff, and the guys would take turns riding the barrel. Some of the women would ride it too, although a lot of us were perfectly happy just watching.
Especially me after my one attempt.
Then when the rodeos came around, we'd all go watch.
The same guys we'd watched getting thrown off an oil drum in the backyard would climb into the chute and get on a real bull.
And that was a whole different thing.
I haven't thought about that crazy homemade bull in years. When I started remembering it, I actually wondered if I had remembered it right.
An oil drum?
Huge springs?
Four guys standing around pulling ropes?
Surely nobody thought this was a good idea.
Turns out, they did.
Apparently, it was a thing.
And apparently, for one very short ride, I was crazy enough to try it too.
Rodeo Season
It really was a lot of fun.
On weekends everybody would gather at the house. There was beer and probably some other stuff, and the guys would take turns riding the barrel. Some of the women would ride it too, although a lot of us were perfectly happy just watching.
Especially me after my one attempt.
Then when the rodeos came around, we'd all go watch.
The same guys we'd watched getting thrown off an oil drum in the backyard would climb into the chute and get on a real bull.
And that was a whole different thing.
I haven't thought about that crazy homemade bull in years. When I started remembering it, I actually wondered if I had remembered it right.
An oil drum?
Huge springs?
Four guys standing around pulling ropes?
Surely nobody thought this was a good idea.
Turns out, they did.
Apparently, it was a thing.
And apparently, for one very short ride, I was crazy enough to try it too.
