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Although I have lived in this state for 42 years without crossing the portals of the National Western Stock Show, it is still impossible to ignore the event, since it's always on TV or in the papers.
Much of this coverage consists of advice to city folks about how to dress, talk and otherwise comport themselves at the stock show. Why the stock show gets this attention is hard to understand.
Have you ever read an advance story on a Grateful Dead
concert that advises you to wear tie-dyed shirts and say
Wow, man, far out
? Does a story about an imminent
gallery opening ever tell you to wear leather and feathers
and say things like post-modernism will soon become as
passe as socialist realism, but the philistines will ever
insure a demand for representational kitsch
?
Of course not. Those who might attend concerts or art
shows are presumed to know how to behave. However,
potential stock-show attendees apparently need advice so as
not to look or talk like those despicable and unauthentic
drugstore cowboys.
As someone who's spent his entire
life near cattle, I might as well provide some useful
tips:
Decide whether you're going as a stockman
or as a
cowboy
-- they're different critters and you can't
mix the styles.
To look like a cowboy, forget the broad-brimmed 4X Stetson. Instead, go down to the feed store and get a gimme cap. Break it in by stomping on it for 20 minutes.
Now hasten to the tanning salon. Thanks to wearing such hats outdoors, real cowboys sport distinctive facial tan lines -- a pale oval from forehead crest to upper lip, and all the rest a bright crimson crescent. Explain your needs to the attendant; some Denver salon doubtless offers a custom overnight stock-show tan for wannabe cowherds.
Finish body preparations by slicing the ends off a couple fingers (mimics roping mishaps) and visiting a makeup expert for fake scars that look like puncture wounds, burn marks and bar-fight scrapes. Don a ragged snap-button shirt, faded jeans and battered boots, and you're ready.
The legendary cowboy doesn't talk much, so answer all
inquiries with one of these phrases: Much obliged,
Fair to middlin',
or Goddamn
environmentalists.
No one will think you're one of those awful
drugstore
or urban
cowboys. However, you can
also avoid stock-show embarrassment by going, not as a mere
cowboy, but as a stockman -- the employer of cowboys.
Stockmen are a fairly eccentric bunch, so you can dress just about any way you please and still pass. Talking the part is everything:
1. Complain about low cattle prices and high everything-else prices. The only time a rancher ever says that things are going well is when he's trying to sell the place. The rest of the time, he says he's broke, even when he's playing liar's poker with $100 bills.
2. Disparage sheep. My Wyoming homesteader grandfather
once observed that There are a lot of cattlemen who
wouldn't be cattlemen if they weren't scraping sheep
[manure] off their boots,
but that didn't stop him or
his friends from bemoaning hooved locusts
that
allegedly tore up pastures and fouled water spots. Most
cattlemen's sheep jokes can't be printed here, but listen
and learn the one whose punchline is Frederick's of
Laramie.
3. Attack welfare, as with Those city bastards ought
to quit living off the government.
If some jerk brings
up unpleasant matters like below-cost grazing leases,
tax-supported agricultural research, boondoggle water
projects and soil-conservation payments from the
government, punch him out. It's the American Way, and if
stockmen don't preserve the American Way, who will?
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