Rodeo Loses Roughness Away From West

Mr. Nelson is descended from a long line of rodeo performers his maternal family having owned the "Lazy W" Ranch in the Blue Mountain country of northwestern Colorado; his own family operates the "Heart X" Ranch on the edge of the Salmon River Primitive Area in east-central Idaho. Mr. Pringle, the photographer, has followed the ponies for a good portion of his life.

Boston is the most incongruous place in America to stage a rodeo. There is almost complete antithesis between the society capable of producing such a masculine affair as a rodeo and that of the Harvard-dominated Athens of America. Madison Square Garden is bad enough, but at least New York is pushy, brash, and gaudy.

What happens when the rodeo hits Boston? Not much, if one is interested in good rodeo. In the East, rodeo becomes a spectacle, not a sport. In the West, where rodeo is close to its roots, rodeo for its own sake is highly respected. In many communities the rodeo is the big social and cultural event of the year. Everybody dons their Western apparel (in the bigger Western cities people are fined and jailed for not doing so) and goes to the rodeo. Being head of the citizen's rodeo committee is one of the most highly honored civic positions. Many Westerners have ranch backgrounds, and even if they are not so fortunate, seeing the rodeo faithfully every year produces a certain knowledge and appreciation of rodeo skills.

At the rodeo which will end its two-week run Sunday at the Boston Garden, relatively little time is spent in actual competitions. In each of the five events, there are not more than ten entrants, all of whom participate in machine-gun fashion, seemingly having been instructed to take a "no-time" rather than hold up the show.

Instead of the usual lengthy events, the time is filled by entertainers. A paunchy, middle-aged Gene Autry, who owns a major share of the rodeo, sings and announces that if he didn't live in California, he'd live in Boston. A younger Annie Oakley thinks equally well of our fair city. Also present are the Riders of the Purple Sage who are still drifting along the tumbling tumbleweed searching for some cool, cool water. There is also a square dance on horseback, trick riding, and two girls doing trick roping in semi-Bikini type costumes. These interludes do not leave a great amount of time available for events, and since there are over a hundred contestants, there are a lot of actionless days for the cowboys.

Despite the large attendance at Boston rodeos, there are marked disadvantages to holding rodeos here. Besides not having a fully appreciative audience the cowboys have nothing to do for two weeks except a few show appearances in a town utterly foreign to their ranch backgrounds.

Many of the cowboys made good this summer for the first time, then decided to come East this fall to see the country and try their luck. A typical example is Jay T. Smith of Iota, Idaho, who won the Caldwell (Idaho) Night Rodeo. Smith, like most of the others, has paid out more in expenses than he has won. Only about fifty of the nation's 3,000 rodeo cowboys earn more than $10,000 annually of the $3,000,000 of- fered in prizes. No cowboy is paid; in fact each has to pay to compete for prize money. Four of the contestants are Massachusetts boys, but as Smith said, "They ain't done nothing hardly worth spittin' at." Another local participant is Morgan Smith '60 of Winthrop House who manages his family ranch in Aspen, Colorado during the summer.

Rodeo has come quite a ways since its founding in 1883.

Twenty-five million Americans attend rodeos each year to watch the sport most incapable of being fixed. There are now special convict, Negro, High-School, 4-H and Indian rodeos; there is even a National Inter-Collegiate Rodeo Association with 83 members. The Rodeo lobby has enough strength to pressure Congress into passing a bill authorizing a Cowboy Hall of Fame in Oklahoma City. Despite the growing spectator quality of the sport, it continues to evoke strong loyalty. When I asked Jay T. if he would ever quit the rodeo, he replied, "Why no. It's mah profession."GALOOTS AND SADDLES