I am wearing a giant belt buckle and got to work early to blast Top 40 country. This can only mean one thing. It’s Pendleton Round-Up weekend!
Any Oregonian with an interest in spectacle and/or history and/or cowboys in tight jeans should make it out to the Pendleton Round-Up at least once in the life. Last year, Patrick Alan Coleman (RIP) and I spent an insane 48 hours at the rodeo, where we witnessed the following things: A parade of 1,300 horses, 900 pounds of ham, men jump from horses to wrestle steers to the ground over and over, a woman spilling beer on a baby. This is about tradition, people. It’s about Oregon’s wild west roots, it’s about drinking heavily in celebration of freedom and friendship, it’s about primal man vs. nature.
This afternoon, East Oregonian-reporter-turned-Mercury-hipster-correspondent Alex Z. and I will be heading out to the rodeo and blogging from the madness all weekend. Check back in tomorrow and Sunday for photos, updates, and direct transcription of terrible rodeo clown jokes.
When did Bud Clark move to Pendleton?
I say this every year when this comes up, but…I grew up there, and that week is absolutely batshit. For a town that spends the rest of the year very quietly indeed, it’s like Mardi Gras on the high plains.
I saw my very first examples of drinking, fucking and fighting in the streets. Also, my first dead body. The Sunday when it’s all over and all those people leave, the streets knee-deep in trash of all sorts, everyone looks embarrassedly at each other. Then it goes back to being a small quiet town again.
@Smirk — ” Patrick Alan Coleman (RIP)” — He’s not dead, he is just on Twitter, MySpace, and had a baby. Wait ummmm that sounds like dead to me too.