That Bucking Bronc is also the primary icon of Cheyenne’s yearly blowout event, Frontier Days. Begun in 1897 – when it was just a one-day event to race ranch horses – it now runs the last full 10 days of every July, and is billed as the largest outdoor rodeo in North America, a claim also made by the Calgary Stampede in Canada.Of course the rodeo is the main event, but Frontier Days is so much more, like a state fair on steroids. For the people of Cheyenne, who refer to this time of year as “CFD,” it's all about parking cars in your yard, hosting out-of-town visitors, or volunteering to help with the show.
CFD actually employs only 13 paid staff. The events at Frontier Park every July are managed by a small army of volunteer workers, some 2,500 of them, organized into committees who handle tickets, rodeo competitors, and Public Relations, to name a few.
Like the other two big-name rodeos – that one in Canada and the National Finals Rodeo in Las Vegas – CFD has PR problems. Seems that animal rights activists swarm all over these events with cameras and note pads just waiting for an animal to be injured or otherwise harmed so that more evidence for the elimination of all rodeos can be gathered.
So the folks at CFD really stress animal safety. During a “behind the chutes” tour, visitors get to see how the animals are gathered, kept, fed, and handled during the rodeo. No one promises that animals won’t be injured, but they do promise that it will not
be on purpose. Oddly enough, they don’t talk much about cowboy safety, except to point out the large memorial to those who have “fallen” at the rodeo.When asked about how the bulls are made to buck, the tour guide explains that a leather strap is tied around the bull’s – uh, hmm, private parts – but that this is not harmful, more like squeezing into a “too tight pair of underpants," oh daddy!
Speakin' of which, they call CFD the “Daddy of ‘em all” because all modern rodeo is, more or less, patterned after CFD. The Cheyenne Chute, another icon of the west, that big ol’ swinging gate that almost instantly opens wide to free the bucking bronc or brahma bull, is an invention of CFD.
For CFD’s estimated 500,000 attendees, there’s the rodeo, nightly music concerts
that feature big-name acts, and a huge carnival midway filled with the screams of thrill-riding teens and the ubiquitous odors of cotton candy and caramel corn. Frontier Park also features old west demonstrations like the Chuckwagon Cookoff and the Indian Village that includes living quarters for the Native Americans who operate the village in authentic Tee Pees.For the last 52 years another tradition of CFD has been the Old Fashioned Melodrama. This is a frontier style show that pits good vs. evil in the simplest terms – the audience “boos” the villain, “cheers” the hero, and “ahhhs” the damsel in distress. The play’s acts are punctuated by interludes of old-timey singing and can-can dancing.
The 2008 version of the melodrama is held in the historic Atlas Theater in downtown Cheyenne. The theater dates to 1908, making this its 100th year. The melodrama, like much of CFD is all-volunteer. The show, titled, “The Rhyming Rapscallion” stars Tallen Handsome as the hero and Dirk Degenerate as the villain, and features a literary twist where Tallen’s young, effeminate, poetry-loving son, Hardly, is tempted by evil and nearly joins the dark side before coming to his senses and conquering the villain through prose. The play is very funny and cleverly written, blasting away at stereotypes with gender-bending characters and a hero in pink coveralls.If you like rodeo, big-time country music, ferris wheels and roller coasters, old west nostalgia, BBQ, and beer, CFD is a once-in-a-lifetime definite. You may have such a good time that you’ll want to become a regular.
No comments:
Post a Comment