Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, January 4, 1992 TAG: 9201040228
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A3 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: MARK MORRISON STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
A GOOD OL' DOWN-HOME BARBECUE
The barbecue was as sweet as molasses.The beer was as cold as North Dakota.
There was live country music and the smell of charcoal in the air. Enough Stetsons to film a western and God's good earth underfoot.
What more would any cowboy or cowgirl want?
"It's like having a family reunion every week. That's the only way I know how to describe it," said Bob Alexander, producer of the Budweiser Stampede Rodeo running this weekend at the Salem Civic Center.
Thursday night, Alexander threw a little hoedown for the media, his sponsors, some of the rodeo performers and anybody else he felt like inviting. In Salem, and at other rodeos, it is an event that has become as much a part of the rodeo as the riding and roping events themselves.
Held each year on the eve of the Salem rodeo's opening day, it gives the cowboys and cowgirls a chance to catch up, talk shop and blow off a little steam before going toe-to-toe with ornery bulls and back-breaking broncos.
The setting was the same as always: inside the civic center on the hard-packed, red Virginia clay that the rodeo riders hope to avoid tasting through the weekend.
Some of the performers and contestants kicked at the dirt with their boots and shook their heads with worry. The clay carpet, which was hauled in just for the rodeo, was as hard as concrete in places.
"I'm sure they'll disc it up," Harry Payton predicted.
Payton, 50, is a steer wrestler from upstate New York, and his prediction was more wishful thinking than anything else. "This old clay, it's pretty tough," he said.
Bobby Rowe, who brought in the livestock for the rodeo from Tennessee, pointed to a bowling-ball-sized stone pushing out through the dirt.
"Man, look at that booger," he said.
They ate ribs and chicken and pork tenderloin, corn on the cob, baked beans, corn bread and coleslaw. A country group, The Leonards, provided the music. Smoke from the grills hung in the air.
The caterers went through nine gallons of barbecue sauce.
Among the rodeo circles, talk ran from the national rodeo championships coming up in a few weeks in Oklahoma to discussions about hotel accommodations and travel hassles.
Payton says he prefers Motel 6 because he said it looks out more for cowboys. "They'll pop up out in the desert in the middle of nowhere where we need them. You know, `We'll leave the light on for ya,' " he explained.
Most of his colleagues, however, are staying at the Holiday Inn.
Bobby Paul, a rodeo clown, came up from South Carolina. More on his mind was the 90-minute traffic jam he had to endure in Charlotte, N.C. Such headaches also are a part of rodeo life, he said.
"A lot of people only see the glamour, when you're in that arena, but that only lasts two hours. That's just a part of what we do."
Paul's job is to distract a bull's attention from its rider once that rider has dismounted - or been dismounted forcibly. In other words, he's crazy.
A few years ago at a rodeo in Wheeling, W.Va., Paul nearly was killed when a bull hooked him and threw him 25 feet into the air, leaving him with a gash on his head and a puncture wound from the bull's horn that grazed his kidney.
"They said another half-inch, and . . ." he said.
Rodeo people like to talk about their brushes with death.
Paul, 40, stayed off the rodeo circuit for six months, but didn't quit as some injured clowns do. "It kind of puts a little bit of fear into you, though."
Eddy Caraway was once gouged and suffered four broken ribs and a collapsed lung, but he also came back. When asked about the dangers involved in rodeo, he spoke nonchalantly.
"It gets that way sometimes," he said.
Another clown - five-time national rodeo clown of the year, John Gilstrap - talked about retirement. At 48, he said he wants to hang it up in two years. "Then, I'll probably become a security guard or something."
Gilstrap got some good-natured ribbing for a prank that was played on him at a previous rodeo in Salem, when some wise guy put vodka in the water bottle he keeps handy during performances. They say the look on his face when he took that first, innocent swig was priceless.
"You know, we knock around," he said.
A story about Gilstrap taking a bull onto the sixth floor of Bloomingdale's department store in Chicago as a promotional stunt also made the rounds at Thursday's barbecue.
The Oklahoma championships are coming up, said Payton, the steer wrestler from New York. He added that some of last year's points leaders, who don't want to risk injury, are staying away from Salem. "And the guys who did make the finals and are here are going to be darned careful," he said.
On the other hand, the Salem event is the first rodeo of the year that counts toward 1992 points and many riders like to try to begin the new season on top, Payton explained.
Down at one end of the civic center, Gentle Ben was getting agitated.
And his owner, Bobby Rowe, was telling folks to keep their distance. Rowe had the 1,200-pound bull penned up to help give the barbecue a more down-home feel.
"He's getting a little ticked because he's been penned up in here so long," Rowe said, as Ben kicked at the dirt with his hoof and snorted at any admirers who ventured near.
Ben was separated from those admirers by a portable fence that Rowe said wouldn't even slow him down if he wanted to make a charge.
"He'd go through that wall over there if he had a notion."
A boy stuck his hand through the fence and reached out to Ben.
"Son, don't mess with him," Rowe called out. The boy asked if Rowe was scared of Ben. "No, I'm not afraid of him," he answered, "but I sure do respect him."
Rowe, 58, was walking with a cane, needed since the time a bull kicked him and shattered some of the bones in his right leg. But it wasn't Ben who did the damage. Ben is a professional, Rowe said, not mean-spirited like some of the less-experienced bulls he has along.
"I've got some out there that if you run up a tree, they'll go get a ladder and come up after you or they'll find an ax and saw the tree down," he said. "I mean, they're mean."
Memo: a shorter version ran in the Metro edition.