the pendleton
round-up is a special event, in so much as it is the anniversary of
my living in eastern oregon. i moved to
eastern oregon a few days before the 100th round up. i didn’t go that year, or the second year. but i have been to round up the last two years and i have to say, it’s pretty
overrated. no, it’s extremely over
rated. the first time was fun, but with
little context. a few weeks before my
first round up, i went to walla walla fair and frontier days. these were the first rodeos i had been to
since i was a kid, not that I went to a whole lot of rodeos when i was a kid,
maybe two or three and those being so long ago, pendleton and walla walla were,
for all practical purposes, the first ones.
over the past
year, i have also been to the union stock show and elgin stampede.
i considered going to chief joseph days, because it gets talked up like
a mini round up. but an acquaintance who grew up in wallowa county told me that it was
overrated and i shouldn’t waste my time going that far for only that
reason. after elgin and union, i didn’t
feel much need to go to other rodeos.
one of the first things to know about me is that i am not into events
for the social scene. when i go to a
sporting event, concert or whatever, i am attracted to the competition and
entertainment and not the hanging out, chatting, seeing the sights and all that. i care about excitement on the field. i almost prefer to attend sporting events
alone, or at least with someone who is interested in the specifics of the sport
and won’t talk my ear off. if the social
scene is what you’re into, then maybe the pendleton round up is for you.
my first round up
certainly paled in comparison to walla walla. that rodeo is held in conjunction
with the county fair, so there is a much larger carnival, animal showing, and
various other performances that accompany it. it’s really not fair to hold fair and frontier days in
comparison to another strictly rodeo event. but then again, the round up is not
strictly a rodeo either, and for that the rodeo itself suffers.
to compare pendleton to elgin or union is also not fair. those rodeos clearly are
superior. the on-field activity is not
for the faint of heart. the
animals in those more “minor” rodeos are far more fierce. the spectator will actually see the cowboys
carted off the field. at the elgin stampede, just with the bucking broncs, i saw a guy carried off with a
broken leg and another break his wrist on a bucking horse before he could even
get out of the chute. the horse was so ready to throw the guy off that it tried
to jump out before the chute opened and got caught up, straddling the fence. that extreme activity doesn’t happen in
pendleton, though the p.a. announcer hypes how real it is while it is
isn’t really happening. pendleton is
famously known for “let ‘er buck” only
problem is that when one actually watches the horses, it is obvious they are
barely kicking their back feet. in
union, the horses buck until they are nearly perpendicular to the ground. in pendleton, the p.a. announcer praises that
“this is a former world champion bucking horse!” even though by the time a
horse becomes a champion, it has to be pretty old. the former champion this year was twenty
years old. i wouldn’t go to a baseball
game to see a former champion take his last swings and misses, i would want to
see him smashing home runs in the prime of his career. the horses in elgin and union are the horses
in the prime of their careers. i will give pendleton a little reprieve from the
fact that it is late in the season and take panda’s excuse that maybe the
horses are tired of being mean all summer.
fair enough, i suppose, but don’t brag the broncs up as the best. “let
‘er buck?” what is bucking? the p.a. announcer continually telling me
that “these are the best in the world” is a joke because round up is not even
the best rodeo in eastern oregon.
without much
excitement on the field, the main point to notice is the exclusivity and
pompous invite-only activities that makes the round up seem like the kentucky
derby of northwest rodeos. i got a
more humble awakening to this other side to the round up that most people will
never be a part of when my boss was invited by a group to sit in the exclusive
box seats that need to be reserved years in advance that costs an entire paycheck
for some us and comes with access to all the other rooms and buildings that one
wonders what happens inside of. but she
has lived here for her entire life and has been to enough rodeos that driving
an hour to go to one when there are several more closer is not that attractive,
especially when she is told that she has to dress nice. she says, “i have to dress up? to go to a rodeo? no thanks. take someone else.” people like that are my heroes and make me
happy to have the job i do.
and then to consider
the lines, the clogged up traffic, the pay-to-park, the lack of access to even
shake the hands of the athletes, and so on…there is an entirely ridiculous
rigamarole to even buying a beer. you
have to find one guy on a mezzanine who checks i.d’s and puts on
wristbands. then, with the wrist band,
you go to a window to purchase tokens for four dollars each. then you go stand in a
longer line to exchange a token for your choice of either a coors light draft
or a can of a hard lemonade. can i go back to elgin where i just stand in one
line of three or four people and show my i.d. to the person pouring the
beer? not to mention there is a killer
brewery in pendleton. why can i not buy
prodigal son beer at round up? needless to say,
i wouldn’t have a beer at round up.
instead i went to the great satan of soda to try and keep myself awake
through the boredom of it all. but then i am told that the only options are
coca-cola and sprite. i ask for a sprite
and the guy reaches down to pick up a watered-down soda from a stockpile that
was poured five minutes earlier to be fast enough meet the high demands of the
crowds. the guy never even smiled, and none of the experience was worth my
putting a tip into his bucket.
following round up,
they have an “evening entertainment program” in happy canyon that depicts the
history of horrors of indians in the region.
the night show was toned down more this year than last. this year, the
window in the chinese laundry mat was shot out. last year, they burned the thing down and relentlessly
tormented the chinese people who were actually just more white people wearing
straw hats. and every old west store
front has perfectly crafted signs in beautifully written fonts, except
for the chinese laundry mat, which is written in chinese characters with
handwriting worse than a kindergartener would do. overall, the racism and indian genocide shown in the performance can be passed off theatre, a portrayal of the
way times were. meanwhile, the crowd cheering
as the white man rises to the top forcing the removal of indians can be
considered a portrayal of the way times still are.
as much a waste
of time as round up was, i wouldn’t have minded to go back to pendleton the
next night when work wasn’t part of the picture and i could do the in-town
concerts, carnival and and other stuff that was twelve blocks away on main street and virtually impossible to get to for people tied up at the rodeo grounds and happy
canyon night show. jd kindle and the
playboys were on at the GP two nights in a row.
it would have been a good time, but!! in la grande we now have an event
during round up weekend to give people in union county an alternative to going
to pendleton.
this was the
second year of the great circle.
it’s a benefit concert for the blue mountains conservancy organized by colt haney and
some other down to earth to people that make it much more inviting than a rodeo
in a huge stadium. the great circle is a
new enough thing that there is no exclusive access. the artists and maybe some volunteers
have v.i.p. passes, but otherwise the most exclusive access is a $25 wristband to
take part in all three days of activities, camping and all that. that’s only $7 more than to sit in the top
row for a single four-hour rodeo. this is to
say that my preferred concert experience is about the same as my preferred
sporting event. to me, these are about
seeing the performance and not going home afterwards to try to see myself on tv
while watching a replay. great circle is a event big enough that you know a lot
of the songs by heart, but small enough that anyone can walk backstage or drink
with the bands in the beer garden. and
while the recycling doesn’t reach my rigorous standards, i can at least leave a
cup with my name on it next to the kegs that i reuse every time i go back for
another beer. and, yes, it’s real beer
brewed here in oregon by 2 kilts. and while the food may not have been as locally sourced as i would
prefer, it’s not just processed junk food either. the menu puts to shame any
and all eating establishments in la grande.
great circle was perfect. the bands are top
notch and the experience was a “one of a lifetime” type event, except that it happens annually. even the
electricity surges a few times didn’t interrupt the music, it only made the
bands and the dancing crowd more engaged and together. never again should anyone expect to find me
at round up, i would choose great circle any day over round up. with land blessings and conservation efforts
to preserve the wilderness surrounding the great circle, the money spent to
attend the event goes to a much greater cause than the commercialization of a
rodeo in a town that competes to be the biggest “city” in eastern oregon. even
the genocide of the indians took on a more positive light at great circle with
ghost wind singing songs of how the indians are rising up and reclaiming their
lands, buying some of it back (as if they should have to pay for it, but i am just pessimistic in that way). it’s an
encouraging spirit, not one of “oh that sucked, but oh well this is the way it
is now” mentality that permeates most of the rest of an apathetic society.
as i think back
on it all, the year that has been…seeing the EOU ladies play at nationals in
iowa, to keol fest, to the rodeo season, to all the events at liberty theatre,
to my little tiff with the observer last week, one thing clearly comes into
focus. i volunteer my time to a radio
station, that like most other free-form, non-commercial entities, struggles to
survive. news, music, sports and entertainment are cutthroat businesses. that holds no attraction to me. i am not in this to cut throats. i would rather cut my own throat than someone
elses, even that of my most ardent enemy.
that is why it’s tough to watch the happy canyon night show. i feel more for the indians than the white
men, then and now. i put myself in the
same position, vulnerable though it may be to not play along with the
expansionist agendas. the day i start doing this to get ahead, or to be cool, is the day i exit the game. i operate now, as always, to help provide
people with an alternative to the lame over rated activities that divide people
into exclusive groups: those with tickets vs. those without, those with v.i.p.
passes and so forth. once an event gets too much of an important of a level, it becomes a ho-hum event that
continues for the sake of a reputation and a profit rather than it’s original
purpose and that is why new alternatives are needed. in short, i live to bring fun to a town that
is virtually impossible to have fun in. that by itself is already a hard enough
job, i don’t want a harder more convoluted job than that.
this is all maddening because (as i sound like a broken record) not only is there
on the one side of the fence people trying to make it hard to allow fun things
to happen, but there is the other side of the fence of people that seem to not
even care enough to want to attend the events.
for as successful as events like great circle, keol fest and others have
been, more people will leave la grande to go see the pendleton round up than
come out to the great circle. that’s
pathetic. still, we continue in hope that
it will change, that someday people will appreciate what is in their own back
yard more than what is in another town.
i am still looking back to march when holiday friends, a nationally
touring band, stopped in at ten depot.
two days later, they played a outdoor stage to thousands of people in
boise. though they can practically have
groupies clamoring for backstage access in another city, they had five people
show up to see them here. that will
never make sense to me, but it does help me understand why people still
remember the eagles coming to la grande in 1976, and people still remember that
it was 1976 specifically, not that it was in the 1970s in general. people remember it so specifically because it
will never happen again. the social
community is like a plant. if you give
it water, it will grow bigger and bigger.
if not, it withers and dies. if
there is no support for the musicians that are willing to play here now, then
there will be no incentive for bigger musicians to play here in the future. we will continue to have people talking about
seeing taylor swift’s tour busses passing by on I-84 on the way to portland, as
if that is a big deal. that’s the extent
of the excitement. and the fans of
people like that will continue going to portland for entertainment and
not care or even know that better things happen right here.
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