The Brutal Bull Named "Sermon"
IN THAT TWILIGHT SEASON between pimples common sense, I began a quest for courage. In the ranch country of western New Mexico, rodeo was more popular than football or baseball. During the summer months, this sport born of the boredom and recklessness of wild, young cowboys supplied us with recreation, socialization, and competition. There was something for everyone. The girls competed in barrel racing and pole-bending, the boys roped calves and rode broncs and bulls. In the hierarchy of rodeo, bull riding was the sport that separated the boys from the men—at least, that was the way we saw it then. I longed to find out if I was yet a man. My heroes really have always been cowboys. Larry Mahan, Freckles Brown, and Jim Shoulders inspired courage and perseverance in me and my peers. I determined to follow in the boot prints of these legends of the professional rodeo circuit. I was fifteen years old in the summer of 1974. I was a little old to begin riding bulls, but it had taken years of relentless pestering to secure my mother's signature on the release form for the Catron County Rodeo. I'd practiced for months on anything I could climb onto—big calves, bony-backed brood mares, our steer being fattened for slaughter, our milk cow, and a bucking barrel: a battered fifty-five-gallon drum hung between four massive poles with car springs and steel cable. Most of my bull-riding friends had started at the junior level, riding big steers. At fifteen, I was in the senior division. Our opponents would be real bulls, maybe not the fire-breathing demons the professionals rode, but big and bad enough to stomp a shy, skinny kid into apple butter. On rodeo day I awakened hours before dawn. A dread seized me within moments of awakening. I raced ...
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