Sport: Career Cowboys

In 1910, when, the late, great Teddy Roosevelt pranced around the arena at Cheyenne’s Frontier Days celebration, rodeos were a novelty even in his wild & woolly West. Today rodeos are a big-time U. S. sport. They annually attract twice as many spectators as auto racing or track. In Texas rodeos are chasing baseball off the sandlots. They have a governing organization (Rodeo Association of America), a cowboys’ union (Turtle Association),* a major-league circuit and a national champion.

To compete in the major-league circuit —the 100-odd rodeos sponsored by the R. A. A.—a cowboy must be a better-than-average bronc rider, calf roper, steer wrestler or steer rider. More than that, he must be willing to take a chance. A cowboy on the range gets around $40 a month—with “grub.” A rodeo cowboy gets no salary at all. He pays his own traveling expenses, hotel bills, entrance fees (sometimes as much as $100 for one event). If he competes at calf roping, he has to pay the feed bill and transportation cost of his specially trained horse (even more necessary to a calf roper than trained ponies are to a poloist). If he competes at steer wrestling, he has to hire a “hazer” (a mounted assistant to flank the steer going out of the chute).

Yet some 500 U. S. & Canadian cowboys have chosen rodeoing as a career—well aware that in an arena they may make more money in 60 seconds than they can make in a year on the range. Besides, they can buy fancy shirts and see the world. Last week, after nine months of jogging around—to Salinas, Pendleton, Cheyenne, Calgary and scores of lesser roundups—the cream of the professional cowpunchers gathered in the midst of Manhattan’s skyscrapers for the climax of the season: the 14th annual World Series Rodeo in Madison Square Garden—26 days,* $60,000 in prize money.

Few top-notch cow pokes miss the Broadway roundup. With luck one man can win $4,000 at the Garden while his wife gets the Broadway permanent she has been dying for. Some wives perform at the Garden too (almost all rodeos have women’s bronc-riding contests). But the girl who made even the cowboys sit up-and take notice last week was a rich Texas rancher’s daughter, svelte, 17-year-old Sydna Yokley, who put on as spunky an exhibition of calf roping as has ever been seen east of Powder River: throwing and tying a calf twice her weight in about 40 sec. (topnotch calf ropers rarely do it in less than 20 sec.).

After the first week of the Garden show the leading contender for the national cowboy championship was shy, shambling 27-year-old Paul Carney of Galeton, Colo. With 6,178 points (one point for each dollar won during the season—except in bronc-riding events, which merit 1¼), Cowboy Carney was 1,598 points ahead of his nearest rival. Competing in three events (bareback bronc riding, saddle bronc riding, steer riding), he appeared to have the title in the palms of his tremendous hands.

Like most of his confreres, Cowboy Carney rodeos ten months of the year, travels by auto, likes pool & poker, spends his two months’ vacation “foolin’ round,” seldom wears “civvies,” is “scared of bulls” (in spite of the fact that steer riding is his specialty), earns about $6,000 a year, expects to retire at 35. But unlike most career cowboys, he does not plan to buy a cattle ranch when his bucking days are over. Instead, he hopes to run either a nightclub or a dude ranch. “I can get along with dudes,” says he. “All you have to do is let them have their way.”

*”Because the turtle is slow but sure,” top-flight rodeo performers dubbed themselves Turtles when in 1936 they formed a union for collective bargaining with promoters.

*Longest run of any sport event ever held in the Garden.