Another year is streaming past.
Cold winter has turned to springtime which inevitably calls to mind visions
of my youth, of flowers and fields, fishing holes and crawdad’n, jump shooting
ducks in the local arroyo and baking in the summer sunshine.
I grew up in a rather warm part of California. The Livermore Valley was hard on the Maytag
man. He didn’t have much to do because
clothes driers were seldom used. You could
put wet wash out on the line at 9 pm and bring it in dry before you went to
bed. The average low temperature from May
through September was over 55 degrees.
The average high temperature was well over 90.
Yep, hometown regularly hit triple digits in the summer. And I don’t mean 101 degrees. Nope, 109, 111, 113, and 115 marks were not
unusual. And no afternoon thundershowers
to cool things off like you southwesteners get and no afternoon sea breeze either. No nice late afternoon early evening “recovery”
to enjoy. Just plain hot. From late May until Late September.
Every June along about when the sun had really hit its stride and the
valley was full dry the rodeo rolled into town.
Cowboys and Cowgirls we had aplenty all year round as the valley was
surrounded by ranches and mini-ranches.
Our high school mascot was a Cowboy after-all. But with the Rodeo came the professionals,
parades, street parties, and excitement.
This was serious “fun” back then and likely remains so today, although
I haven’t been back Livermore way for a Rodeo in over 35 years. The Livermore Rodeo is on the National Rodeo
Association’s points-circuit and that actually saved me a hiding in later years
(see Rodeo versus Rodeo). It was pretty
uncommon back when I was living there that a Cowboy won any of the national
titles without having won their event at Livermore first.
Now my early memories of the Rodeo was of a rough old weathered wooden
post and rail corral out South Livermore Avenue just past the Lucky Store and
along where the library and police station were later built. Standard issue Livermore dirt and rock field
stubbled with wild grasses, a tumbleweed or two, a large corral with bucking chutes
and bleached out wooden bleachers, a couple of connected smaller corrals for the
rodeo stock with water toughs, old worn pickups and horse trailers parked this
way and that, most with a horse or two tied out under a shade cover of canvass
stretched between a couple trailers.
The cowboys mostly slept and ate scattered among the trailers.
The rodeo kicked off with a parade right down the highway through the
middle of town; Cowboys and Indians, Spanish riders and saloon girls, floats
and horses, firetrucks and ambulances, contestants and locals. Bands played, square dancers twirled, and
candy was thrown.
The parade started over on the west end of town, forming up near
Pioneer Park and the hospital, moving eastward it overflowed both directions (east
and west) of the highway until it swung south at the town’s tall white flagpole
(there is another story there for sure).
We boys would follow the end of the parade out South Livermore Avenue to
the rodeo grounds, and find a place right up against the corral rails.
Back then, they only charged if you went up into the bleachers. So we didn’t. And anyway, no boy wanted to be as far away
as a bleacher seat anyhow. Any further
back than the floating dust and flying sweat (animal or man) and blood (man), was
just too far from the action. And so we
would squirm and elbow our way into position, giving a little ground now and
then for a younger smaller kid, and watch the rodeo for free each year.
As the years passed and I grew, the Rodeo Association was able to buy
up a bunch of Ol’ man Baranus’s land after he passed away. They set to building a brand new rodeo arena
just outside the edge of town on the south side of the arroyo behind College
Avenue. They tore out our fishing pond, (which
ended the era of flying rock salt in our county) and put up a big new stadium
complete with aluminum bleachers and fold-down plastic chairs, sunshade roof,
flush toilet bathrooms and permanent snack stands.
One of my closest friends growing up was Jim. We both lived on 4th street and
were great friends from about second grade on.
Jim grew up a ½ block east of the Catholic school and Church, I grew up
a ½ block west. He grew up Catholic, I
grew up coyote (I’d say mutt, but that would imply a mixture of religions, and
try as my parents did, I was a bit too wild for any of that).
When Jim and I messed around outside of the Catholic school grounds or church
in the afternoons, he had to stick around and take a lecture from those ol’
gals in the penguin suits; me, I just ran off.
But that too would be a story for another time.
Jim and I decided we would head out to watch the rodeo the first year
the new arena opened and pay for comfortable seats. Thought it would be cool to live like we had
money. Rub our britches on seats that
not only wouldn’t drive an old redwood sliver into a sensitive body part or two,
but that weren’t sticky or gooey yet.
And of course, it wasn’t like we had any choice in the matter cause
without tickets you couldn’t get within a ¼ mile of the arena. So if we were going to go watch, we were
going to have to pay.
I was 6’2” and 185 pounds, regularly wore cowboy boots, boot cut
wranglers, tee-shirts and an Australian Slouch hat back then, so I fit the
crowd pretty naturally. I was trolling
for cowgirls. To a guy like me there has
always been something special about the way a cowgirl fills a pair of jeans.
Jim on the other hand was dressed in sneakers, shorts, and a yellow fishnet
shirt. It was obvious Jim was trolling
too; but he was baiting his hook for different game and I wasn’t worried about any
competition.
Jim and I got together to head down to the parade and I looked at his “attire”
(my momma taught me to be polite, after a while anyway), and commented that he ought
to change to something else, cause a fishnet doesn’t offer much protection. And after all we were going to be sitting in
the sun before and during the parade, and then walking in the sun out to the
arena, and finally sitting in the sun until at least 4:30 pm or so until the
sun had moved far enough west to start to cast a shadow on the seating.
Jim looked at me with the expression he often used with his more foolish
friends and assured me that it wasn’t a problem cause he was pure blood Portuguese
and his brown skin just simply didn’t burn.
I wasn’t convinced. But, heck, “no skin off my nose” isn’t just a quaint
expression your grandma used to use, it’s based in reality and Jim was grown
enough to make his own decision, so I let it go at that.
The temperature that day ran up to about 105 in the shade, except out
at the Rodeo grounds there was no shade to speak of. Clear blue skies, lots of new reflective
aluminum, white sand in the arena. The
place fairly sparkled until the rodeo was just about over when the shade began
to creep eastward.
It had been a great day, and a wonderful rodeo. And while the afternoon had stretched on in
real time, it seemed like it passed too fast and before we knew it Jim and I
were walking back into town talking up our plans to hit the street dance that
night downtown.
But I noticed Jim was moving a bit careful, and a bit slow.
So I asked him if he was alright.
He said he thought he was maybe a bit dehydrated, and that his shirt
was scratching just a bit, and maybe his skin had “dried a little”. So he decided to peel off that yellow fishnet
to cool down a bit while we walked.
He did.
I laughed.
So hard my eyes still tear up today some 40 years later whenever a
picture of him passes my mind’s eye.
Cause Jim was right, his skin didn’t simply burn. It burned in the most wonderful geometric
brown and maroon checkerboard pattern I have ever seen.
At least until you slapped it.
Then it simply went maroon all over.
Too bad too. Cause that was the
last year of the street dances, and by the time we got home Jim was too “done”
to care about going out later.
Turns out he missed one heck of a burly, drunken brawl. The police department, sheriff’s department,
and a couple security services finally shut the “dance” down after finally pulling
the last of the drunken revelers out of the trees, fountains, and down from the
light poles about 2 in the morning.
Livermore hasn’t issued a street dance permit since.
© Copyright 2016 Marty Vandermolen
No comments:
Post a Comment