This is the season for county fair and state fair rodeos across the nation. Rodeo participants are a bunch of tough customers, even the amateur ones. Of course, their hopes are for fame and fortune. But, regardless of those goals, they all want to uphold the western tradition of rough and tumble — showing no signs of pain or weakness.

Which brings me to this rodeo story. I heard it long ago, but it’s just as pertinent today as it was back in the day. Here’s the story.

The event wuz the bull riding. The nasty-tempered bulls were from a well-known rodeo contractor. The crowd had worked its way into a frenzy. It wuz loud and wild. No riders had made the 8-second mark. The bulls were clearly winning over the riders.

One contestant back behind the chutes wuz ol’ Skye High, a seasoned rodeo veteran. He wuz the last rider scheduled that session. He wuz appropriately cowboy dressed for the occasion: white starched, pearl-button shirt, creased blue jeans and black Stetson hat.

As he watched the action take place, he watched as one rider got knocked unconscious from a bull horn. Another, contestant got stepped on, bloodied up enuf to leave the arena on a stretcher. At that point, Skye dashed to his dressing room and changed into a bright red shirt. When he got back behind the chutes, someone asked him about the shirt change and Skye said it wuz because if he got injured, he wanted the red shirt to camouflage any blood that might appear so as not to upset any squeamish folks in the crowd.

As Skye continued to watch, he saw his drawn bull come into the holding pen. It’s name wuz The Widow Maker. Ol’ Widow put everyone in the pen over the fence. He repeatedly tested the fence with a ton of bovine muscle. He never quit pawing the ground.

When the workers got him into his chute, ol’ Widow threw a spectacular bovine conniption fit. He bellowed. The slung slobbers in every direction. He jerked the rigging out of a chute workers hands.

About that time, Skye told the chute officials he’d be right back and he dashed to his dressing room and slipped out of his blue jeans and into a pair of brown jeans.

You can easily figger out his reason.

***

At the Old Geezer’s Coffee Klatch this morning, the conversation somehow turned to handling cattle horseback. My height-challenged friend, ol’ Bob Doff, volunteered that in his early years he had a job working at a commercial cattle feedlot close to Beloit, Kan.

He said that on one miserably cold and rainy winter morning his first task of the day wuz to ride the pens on horseback looking for cattle that might have health problems. He paired up with another employee and began going from pen to pen. The horses were gentle, familiar with the pen-riding routine, and perfectly comfortable with their riders opening and closing pen gates without dismounting.

So, Bob said when he wuz relaxed when he entered one pen. But, then, when he leaned forward to close the gate, for some reason his steed started acting up and accidentally backed its haunches into an electric fence. And, Bob said, “That’s when I got unrelaxed and the rodeo started.”

He related that the horse came unglued and started some serious bucking. Bob said he hung on for dear life and, luckily, didn’t get unceremoniously dumped into the feedlot muck and mire.

And, he noted, it wuz his one and only saddle bronc riding experience.

***

By the time you read this column, the 2024 Paris Olympics will be finished. The good ol’ U.S.A. came through again with a stellar overall performance. As I watched the Olympic events, my mind wandered to why the world doesn’t host an Aggie Olympics every once in a while.

Teams of country folks from around the globe could compete to determine the world’s best at doing the hard and skillful task of growing food — both manually and mechanically.

Some of the Aggie Olympic manual events I can envision would be: Building 100 yards of barbed wire fence from scratch; setting up a half-mile of gated irrigation pipe; the 100-pound square hay bale toss and stack; picking a 25-yard row of strawberries; scooping 100 bushels of wheat; digging a 25-yard row of potatoes.

Some of the Aggie Olympic mechanical events I can envision would be: Team working 50 head of cattle through a mechanical cattle chute; accuracy spraying herbicide with a drone; planting the straightest 6-rows of corn using global positioning; Stacking the most big round bales of hay on a standardized flat-bed semi-truck; a timed event to mechanically harvest 1,000 pounds of pecans.

I think you get the drift of an Aggie Olympics. You can probably figger out better events yourself.

***

Two elderly farmers met at the grain elevator and were discussing their health problems.

One old guy said that he’d recently gone to an audiologist to test his possible loss of hearing. He knew his hearing had probably suffered from all his days of driving a tractor.

He told his friend, “I’d never recommend that hearing doctor I went to. He’s a quack. He recommended that I get Heron eggs. That’s nuts. Who ever needs Heron eggs?”

***

Words of wisdom for this week: If your doctor advises you to burn off some fat, do as he says. Put a thick, prime steak on the grill, turn up the heat and enjoy yourself.

Have a good ‘un.