My suggestion for improving rodeo

I have been to many rodeos, and they may seem to be all the same, but they are not.

Cheyenne Frontier Days brings large crowds of wannabe cowboys/cowgirls together. They have music entertainment in the evenings to bring in even more wannabes. Cody, during the summer, has nightly rodeo for all the tourists.

There are the bronc riders, bull riders, clowns and a host of others. They have even started to get the wannabes to participate by putting them inside plastic bubble wrap to let the bulls bounce them around the arena.

They have rodeos for the little ones -- sheep, pig wrestling, etc. How can you not be impressed when you see a 5-year-old fight, struggle and succeed in climbing up the stirrups to get mounted in the saddle - they never give until they are in the saddle.

But there is one event I have not seen at a rodeo -- backwards hog riding. Yep. I invented it by mishap 65 years ago. We had gone down to Tennessee to visit family on their farm. We were warned not to let the hog out of the one stall, as he was infected. My older sister and I decided to go take a look and we saw this huge hog. By chance, a large hog had come into the barn into a stall right next to us.

My sister goes, “We have to git him out so he don’t git sick!” I look around and see a corn cob. I picked it up and tossed it at the hog. I hit him right on the snout, and out the stall he comes charging. My sister jumped out of the way as she was in front of me. The hog ran right between my legs and knocked me down onto his back, and out the barn we went.  

As we literally flew out of the barn, the hog and I,  I went flying into the gravel and skinned myself up. The parents were in the house and heard the commotion and came running out hollering, “What’s going on!?” My sister, bless her heart, goes “Gary’s riding the hog backwards!” Needless to say, the parents thought we had let out the sick hog, so I got the beating of a lifetime even though I was all scraped up. When they found out it wasn’t the sick hog, the parents were like “Git in the house, now!” 

Maybe the next new rodeo event?