Romance of the Rodeo Cowboy

“There’s a young man that I know, his age is twenty-one

Comes from down in southern Colorado

Just out of the service and he’s lookin' for his fun

Someday soon goin' with him someday soon”

(Someday Soon ©Ian Tyson)

Remember that song? Written by Ian Tyson and originally recorded by Ian and Sylvia, then a few years later by Judy Collins.

Ian Tyson “rode the rodeos” in his late teens and early twenties, so it is rumored on the internet, so that is where he was coming from when he wrote this – the sweet faithful young woman waiting for the rascally rodeo rider.

“My parents cannot stand him 'cause he rides the rodeo

My father says that he will leave me cryin'…”

Yep. We all hummed and sang along. Pretty tune.

“He loves his damned ol’ rodeo as much as he loves me

Someday soon goin' with him someday soon”

After my experience with rodeo cowboys, when I hear that song I want to say, “Run, girl, run! Your parents are right!”

The story: as a senior in high school I was accepted by the two colleges to which I applied – UC Santa Barbara, and Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo.

I chose to go to Cal Poly as a journalism major instead of to the University of California at Santa Barbara as a music major. For some reason I thought that journalism would get me a job, whereas music would not. Wrong – in the sixties women weren’t being hired for journalism jobs like they are now. It was a man’s world.

I knew that Cal Poly was the choice that would please my parents. It was an engineering and agriculture school with a ratio of three male students to every female student (“Cal Poly- where the men are men, and the sheep are nervous”), and it was a conservative school.

This was 1965, when the Free Speech movement had taken off in Berkeley, quickly followed by the Filthy Speech Movement. My older brother had gone to Berkeley, but I knew that my parents would never allow me, their wee ewe lamb, to go to that cauldron of Communism and dirty language.

Besides, it was a three-hour drive down 101 from Watsonville to San Luis Obispo, and Santa Barbara was another couple of hours beyond that, at least. Cal Poly was geographically much more desirable.

My mother drove me down and checked me into my dormitory that September day. I couldn’t wait for her to leave. In retrospect, I’m ashamed of how rude I was to her. She knew better than I did what my staying and her going meant. It was the end of my living under the parental roof (at least until I came crawling out of Los Angeles six years later, but that’s another story).

Once ensconced in my dorm room, I got to know my roommates and the girls living across the hall, Julie and Carol.

Cal Poly had a championship rodeo team, and Julie and Carol were barrel racers on that team. Barrel racing is the women’s rodeo sport.

So, there I was, 17, literally a farmer’s daughter fresh out of the apple orchard, and I had new cowgirl friends at this ag school.

That first quarter I met some of the cowboys on the rodeo team, and those rodeo cowboys – holy carp. I’m not sure if many of them were that devoted to academics. They were there to rodeo on that championship team. And to drink.

I can’t help but wonder if they were like other athletes who are in college for one reason – to play their sport – and their academic transcripts were cooked, if you catch my drift.

One Friday evening late that fall I went to a cowboy party. Most of the team riders were there, and soon I realized that I was the only sober person in the room.

Guess what happened.

One drunk cowboy got into an argument with another drunk cowboy, and soon that escalated to one taking a swing at the other and connecting solidly. The kid who’d been hit went down like a tree falling over and struck his head on the refrigerator. I couldn’t tell if he was bleeding from a head wound or one of his existing orifices, but there was blood, and he was no longer conscious. The drunken party goers scrambled around, trying to figure out what to do. It was decided to carry him to a bedroom where he could sleep it off. No one thought to take him to an ER or call an ambulance. Cowboys.

If I had any illusions of rodeo cowboys being romantic or glamorous, those illusions died that night.

Ian Tyson’s fantasy about that nice passive girlfriend waiting for him and following him anywhere no matter how badly she was treated – well, reality kinda ruined that song for me, both seeing rodeo cowboys in action and my young adult life navigating the stormy waters of romance. My generation of girls was raised to be that girlfriend, and I must tell you that for most of us it did not lead to a happy life.

After my disillusionment with rodeo cowboys I started hanging around with the beatnik/bohemians at school, so my parents’ worst nightmare about me falling in with the commies was realized.

Of course there was nary a commie among them. They were just young people who drank, played guitars, and sat around talking – they weren’t violent, and they had some conversation.

Big improvement over the rodeo cowboys, I thought.