Rodeo Family Quotes

The Quincy rodeo was a standing tradition, much like Christmas or Thanksgiving. It was one of the few events we always made sure to attend together, even if that meant closing shop. Except that evening, surrounded by my family, a piece was missing. I hadn’t realized until late in the evening, when I’d glanced across the arena and found Winn at the fence, that the missing piece was her. Another shift. She belonged by my side, not standing alone.

Fuck hope and all the tiny little towns, one-horse towns, the one-stoplight towns, three-bars country-music jukebox-magic parquet-towns, pressure-cooker pot-roast frozen-peas bad-coffee married-heterosexual towns, crying-kids-in-the-Oldsmobile-beat-your-kid-in the-Thriftway-aisles towns, one-bank one-service-station Greyhound-Bus-stop-at-the-Pepsi-Cafe towns, two-television towns, Miracle Mile towns, Viv's Double Wide Beauty Salon towns, schizophrenic-mother towns, buy-yourself-a-handgun towns, sister-suicide towns, only-Injun's-a-dead-Injun towns, Catholic-Protestant-Mormon-Baptist religious-right five-churches Republican-trickle-down-to-poverty family-values sexual-abuse pro-life creation-theory NRA towns, nervous-mother rodeo-clown-father those little-town-blues towns.

To tell the history of the Americas is to tell the story of bovine expansion. Settlers may have made the Wild West and the frontier, but they followed in the wake of their bovine brother. No other animal has so shaped a culture. So many American icons are associated with the cow: the cowboy, the western, the rodeo, the hamburger, the steak house, the Marlboro Man, the very notion of the frontier itself. The story began more than five centuries ago.

The town fair, which took place over the last weekend of August each year, was just over a month away. If their family agreed about anything, it was the town fair. Twiss loved the Wild West game and the spun sugar; their father loved the putting game and the caramel apples; their mother loved the bean counting game- last year she'd guessed 1,245 beans and won a forty-pound sack of kidney beans- and the Ferris wheel; and Milly loved what everyone else loved, except the livestock show and the amateur rodeo, where boys from the 4-H club wrestled calves to the ground for giant gold belt buckles. Milly also loved how the fair transformed the abandoned field behind the high school from twenty-five dandelion-inhabited acres that went unnoticed most of the year into a kind of fairy-tale place, where people sucked on cherry-flavored ice chips and honey-roasted peanuts, and the Ferris wheel went round and round, and the firecrackers reached higher and higher.

My name is on the prayer list every week, which means families like Diana’s are talking about me over supper, lifting me up to the heavens. The rodeo-trash half-breed.

I’m six-five and built. All the men in my family came out oversized. I’d probably kill this little pin-up jailbait if I followed through on the rodeo taking place in my mind. Think pure thoughts, you dog.

Yes, American history is complicated and hard. All history is complicated and hard. Human life, past and present, is never simple. Every family history is checkered, to some extent, and with great inheritances come humbling challenges. But I believe Americans are brave enough to face those challenges, to overcome adversity, celebrate our triumphs---to be a teachable people who learns from our history and goes confidently into the future with, as Lincoln said, "malice toward none and charity for all.

What could I do? I was beyond pissed off. Trevor not telling anyone about us was always a big issue between us. I understood his reasons and never pushed it. But when he made fun of guys who had the balls to come out of the closet? That was a line he shouldn’t’ve crossed. I hated he’d done it in front of me.” Edgard shoved a hand through his hair. “After dinner, the whole family loaded up and went to the big rodeo dance. I declined. “I burned my bootheels getting to the g*y cowboy bar in Denver and hooked up with a dentist who was in town for the rodeo. I spent the night in his hotel room and didn’t see Trevor until the following afternoon when we had to compete.” Chassie figured she wouldn’t much care for Trevor’s jealous reaction, but she wouldn’t be surprised by it. “We sucked in the arena. Lost our chance for points or purse. Soon as we were alone he lit into me. We fought. Not with words. With our fists. We beat the shit out of each other, Chass. It was ugly.” “Where’d it happen? Since you were always so discreet?” “In the living quarters of the horse trailer. Trev said something. I said something back. He took the first punch. I landed the last. Christ, we were rolling around on the floor, bleeding—” “Whoa—bleeding?” Edgard closed his eyes. “When we were shoving each other some beer bottles got broken and we just kept going, stomping all over them. Trevor slipped and fell and I didn’t help him up, I just kept beating on him. So he has a cut on his back and I have a gash on my arm as a memento.

caricaturists and rodeo clowns be included in that special group of gifted performers?

She wished she could just set down the secret and leave it somewhere. But secrets were like land mines. You had to make sure no one stepped on them. Or the whole family might blow up.

Another reason I was deeply uncomfortable was because I’d been having thoughts. Lots of thoughts. Ever since my family had pointed out my lack of relationship experience, I’d thought back through the last ten years and second-guessed everything. I remembered going to the rodeo when I was fourteen and getting a boner when I saw the cowboys in chaps. But I’d also gotten a boner that weekend in church when the choir sang, so that wasn’t saying much. Then

After a global pandemic and the crisis in American cities, more and more people are discovering the gift of rural life, learning that it's better for their families---and for their souls. Rural communities are at the heart of our American story: they are people taking risks to earn a living off the land.

Everyone who has a farmer or a rancher in their family knows they live out of their pickups. Everything important can be found in the cab, including wallets, bills to pay, cattle and seed records. The console is littered with dusty little notes about things that need to be done, jotted down on whatever may be handy---food wrappers, scrap paper, or cardboard from a tool package.

So please... put down your smartphones, turn off your TVs... Spend time with your family. Call a loved one. Just take a break. Focus on the good things that you have in your life---the blessings...A threat like this can break us down, or it can make us truly appreciate the many blessings that we do have... It's okay to be uncertain, but at the same time, we can also pour ourselves into our families, into our neighbors, and into our communities. People are afraid, and they're worried. And some may be losing hope. But my message to you is hang in there. We will get through this, and we will persevere...If there's anything that we all can rally around today, it's that we all have a common enemy---and that's this virus.