Well it’s Christmas time, even though it’s July. That is to say if you rodeo the Fourth of July is when a whole bunch of rodeos are going on all at once. They call it cowboy Christmas because rodeo cowboys can win a small fortune if they do good the week of the Fourth of July.
There’s an awful lot of planning in the weeks leading up to the Fourth of July rodeo run. There are certain nights you need to be entered at certain rodeos so you can get to the next one in time. There are plane tickets to buy, horses and rigs to get positioned and drivers to hire to move the horses and rigs. Nowadays there are more health papers required too, so a good vet that answers the phone is a big deal as well.
For example, I noticed how Shad Mayfield was entered at Prescott, Arizona on July 2nd and then Killdeer, North Dakota on July 3rd. According to Mapquest it takes 21 hours to go from one to the other. It’s over 1300 miles from Prescott to Killdeer. Now, Shad has a driver or maybe even two, but that’s a stretch to travel in a twenty four hour period. Maybe he flew, but then again it takes a lot of planning in the weeks leading up to the fourth.
When I was much younger I would study and fret for weeks trying to decide what, when and where I should go over the Fourth of July. One year I made a swoop down into Texas, Louisiana, and Arkansas. Another year I went into Kansas and Missouri. I liked the Kansas/ Missouri deal a lot better than Texas, it was hot in Texas.
The year I went to Texas, specifically Mount Pleasant and Winnsboro Texas in the same night. I planned to sleep my in my camper at Winnsboro and then drive the next morning to my girlfriend’s house and go to an open rodeo in Perkins, Oklahoma that night. It was so hot I couldn’t sleep, so I took off driving and got to her house at daylight. I had to shoe her horse before the rodeo. So while it was cool I shod the horse and then went to bed. It seemed I hadn’t been asleep five minutes and she was waking me to go to the rodeo. I won second that night and was so tired I couldn’t think straight. I had a roping and a rodeo the next day as well. That week, in a six day period I went to six rodeos and a roping. My expenses were about nine hundred dollars. After it was all said and done I won about two thousand.
The Fourth of July rodeos become favorites with rodeo cowboys and cowgirls for a lot of different reasons. I used to go each year to a rodeo in Kansas because they gave the contestants a free BBQ dinner. Cheyenne, Wyoming has really good pancakes and I usually got some trinket when I paid my fees. My carry on bag I use when I fly came from the rodeo at Cheyenne. From trinkets, food, and plain old friendly people putting on the rodeo, the little things a rodeo committee does can really make a rodeo stand out to contestants.
I’m older now and I don’t have the desire to drive for days and days to compete. My Fourth of July run consisted of two different locations and motel rooms with cable tv and cold ac. We even went swimming one evening at the motel. My son roped in some junior calf ropings.
I mostly sat in a lawn chair and visited with whoever was close by. I was a heck of an arm chair quarterback this past week. I think I enjoyed the visiting more than I did back when I competed, I sure wasn’t as tired at the end of the week.
James Lockhart lives near the Kiamichi mountains in southeast Oklahoma. He writes cowboy stories and fools with cows and horses.
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