AMERICAN NOTEBOOK

A LOOK AT THE WEEK THAT WAS

ISTOOD outside the World Rodeo Championships in Dallas, Texas, last night trying to get some air. Inside, the arena heaved with excited moustaches hidden under cowboy hats. There was only one iconic red ‘Make America Great Again’ hat to be seen in the venue that housed 45,000 people.

I met a lady named Martha in the lift of my hotel. She gave me the biggest hello I’ve had in years. One of those ‘hellos’ that makes you feel instantly guilty, as though you should not just know the person already, but should also know their birthday.

I saw her again later outside the arena. We queued up together to exchange our dollars for “Man Bucks”, the currency accepted at the Rodeo Championships. As we queued up, I noticed there were cacti, like alien shapes backlit by the glow from the neon lights of the city sprawling around us. A stallion passed between the cacti and the glow, making its way inside to compete. Martha told me the horse belonged to the famous cowboy Turtle Powell, and that he was a sure bet to win that night’s ‘calf wrestling’ event. She followed my gaze to a grassy area beside us and enlightened me further. “That cactus there… is agave.”

I’ve only ever seen the word written, she pronounced it ahgah-vay, like ah-gah-vay Maria. Agave is that healthy replacement for sugar that has finally made its way to Ireland and has taken over your porridge and protein balls in recent months. It’s natural and sweet and just that bit less satisfying than what you want, but it does the job. The plants look beautiful and exotic and are not the size of the novelty cactus I bought as a houseplant because the salesman told me it was impossible to kill and thrived on neglect.

At the rodeo, it was loud. People were dressed as cowboys but they were not in costume or being ironic. People were cheering, hugging, every single person who passed smiled at me as I queued for refreshments. There was a wall of soft drinks, unrefrigerated, behind the counter. The sugar sediment in them had sunk to the bottom of the bottle, gathering, making it look like a wall of expired egg timers.

If the bottles of soda are America, and the sugary sweet sediment is the happiness at the presidential election result, then maybe Texas is the bottom of the American fizzy drink. All of the happiness, joy and hope seem to have drained from above, pooled here and settled.

It’s baffling, but the hope is palpable and contagious. It’s an audacious, gun-carrying, kind of hope for the future, and for change by the people who have merely tolerated Obama. There’s a real sense of “y’all had your turn at hope. Now it’s ours.” I haven’t experienced any malice in it but I’m very aware that cacti look very beautiful but on inspection, they have spikes and they hurt if you get close.

I sidled up to the man with the red hat, the only one, and I asked him if he was having a good week. He said, “The best. I’m damn sick of being told what to think, if I think a bull don’t belong, telling me it do belong ain’t changing my mind.” Then, in the same breath, he offered me some of his nachos.

It’s a bit scary. It’s scary because it’s so joyous down here. Joyous in a victorious, validated, casual kind of way. The smiles and snippets of conversation I catch at the gas station or at the rodeo are like sound bites I heard on the streets of Dublin in May 2015, the day after Ireland voted Yes to Marriage Equality; people congratulating each other on the outcome because they’ve taken proud ownership of it. The public morale seems high. My colleague travelling with me is from New York, he’s withered from the result. On seeing the celebrations around us, he asks me, “Is what I am feeling now how the racists felt when Obama was elected?”.

At the opening of the rodeo, the MC prayed“to the Lord Jesus Christ to keep our cowboys safe for this event”. It was veteran’s day too so two bearded men in dirty denim hoisted an octogenarian out of his seat while the camera captured it all on a 40ft screen. The man fought in Iwo Jima. The crowd went wild. The MC then introduced a young, fresh-faced cadet who was heading away to fight “for this great land”. The two screens created a false set-up where the Octogenarian was facing the Cadet. It was poignant and intense and then the beat dropped and the dub step kicked in, I suspect, to rouse the horses and bulls.

I kept quiet about my views and fears on Trump in Texas. I was in the minority, so I didn’t really feel safe to start a discussion. For the first time, it occurred to me that this was what happened to this silent majority during Obama’s reign. It became unacceptable and impossible to criticise liberalism from the right in any legitimate way, so they stayed quiet.

But it hasn’t changed their minds, just as being silent about my views at the rodeo hasn’t changed my mind. All of their unspoken views just sank to the bottom, waiting, waiting for someone like Trump to come and shake them up and mobilise the sediment.

The republicans have thrived on neglect.

There’s a definite ‘agave’ sweetness down here. It’s not quite the sweetness we want, it’s not the sugary comfort we grew up with, but in these bitter times, will agave do? Is some hope, somewhere, held by a few, better than none?

Oh, and Turtle Powell, the ‘sure bet’ Martha told me about?

He didn’t win. He came second.

Maybe next time.