After covering rodeo for years, this city slicker’s more than come around
The 2017 Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo ends Sunday. It’s the 86th — and my 30th — rodeo.
My feelings and relationship with the rodeo weren’t love at first sight. I wasn’t a naturalborn buckaroo when I moved to Houston. I was a city slicker. The only horse I had ever been on, you had to put 25 cents in the coin slot to make it move. I didn’t own a cowboy hat or boots (still don’t).
I had no idea what real barbecue was or tasted like.
Now? Rodeo is one of my favorite times. Well, not exactly the actual rodeo. I’m still not a fan of people jumping on animals for no reason. I root for the bull. But the carnival, the livestock show, the exhibition halls, the concerts, trying to win a prize by shooting a basketball through a hoop that may be smaller than the ball … I’m there practically every night of the rodeo’s run.
The trick to making the basketball shot is to shoot the ball way high, so it has a 0.00001 percent chance of dropping straight through the hoop. The balls are pumped so full of air that you have no chance of sinking a rim-rattler. Aim high, like Houston Rocket Purvis Short’s rainbow jumper.
Ah, the food. I love, love, love me some corn dogs and deepfried, chocolate-covered cinnamon buns. This year, I thought drenching corn on the cob with butter and crunched-up Cheetos was the greatest innovation in haute cuisine since baconflavored cotton candy. Me eating vegetables at the rodeo? Didn’t see that coming.
I started reviewing the food at the rodeo about 20 years go. On opening night, carnival cook Dominic Palmieri gives me a tour of each booth. There’s about 20 of them, and I eat a little of everything new. It’s a labor of love, all right. I bring a band of taste-testers with me, usually some neighborhood kids. I warn them, wear your “eating pants.” One year, we figured that Andrew Hardee, an outfielder for Lamar High School, ate 11,000 calories in one sprint across restaurant row.
Palmieri is always telling me, “You should run a contest in the Chronicle, and six winners get to join us on our carnival food tour.” Let’s do that next year. I’ll think up some trivia questions.
My first year in Houston, an editor thought it would be hilarious if I wore a cowboy hat and wrote a daily column — all 21 days — from the rodeo. The column would be called “Moseyin’ at the Rodeo with Ken.”
I don’t mosey. And I didn’t wear a cowboy hat. But I did write 21 consecutive days from the rodeo. I got to the Astrodome about noon each day and stayed until the last roundup. Mostly I hung out at Helmut’s Strudel booth next to the press room. I ate a hunk of cherry strudel every day.
I did a trail ride one year. I didn’t sleep on the ground under the stars, though. That’s not me. I crawled into the backseat of my car. That is me, and hardly the first time I’ve slept in my car.
One year, the Chronicle held an employee “Biggest Belt Buckle Contest” on Go Texan Day. In one of the greatest upsets in sports history, I won first prize. I wore my solid fake gold World Wrestling Entertainment championship belt. I had Jim Adler, the “Tough Texas Lawyer,” ready to sue if they disqualified me.
My favorite rodeo concerts over the years: Jimmy Buffett and John Fogerty. I went to Neil Diamond night in 2002. During his last song, “Brother Love’s Traveling Salvation Show,” Diamond jumped off the stage and walked the entire border of the Astrodome floor, shaking hands with men and kissing some of the ladies. He practically gave one woman a tonsillectomy. Fans went crazy. It was Mrs. Diamond. The Fogerty show was memorable because rodeo president Leroy Shafer was a helicopter pilot during the Vietnam War, rescuing injured soldiers from combat. At night, his emotions raw, he would rest in his tent and listen to Creedence Clearwater Revival records to calm down. Now he was watching Fogerty, the voice of Creedence, live at the rodeo, playing “Proud Mary” and “Fortunate Son” and the rest of his Vietnam-era hits. I’ll never forget watching Shafer trying to hold back tears.
Did you know that rodeo officials measure the loudness of the concerts — to keep the level safe for fans? Shafer once told me the loudest sound they ever recorded at the rodeo was when Hannah Montana (Miley Cyrus) took the stage in 2007.
I have no proof, but I think the chuck-wagon races are fixed, so each sponsored wagon gets to win a certain number of times.
One year, I was a judge at the World’s Championship Bar-BQue Contest. They slid a box of ribs in front of me to taste. I wasn’t paying attention, talking with someone in the crowd. I reached into the box, pulled out a rib and started eating it. Hmm, this rib doesn’t have much meat on it. I kept gnawing at it in search of meat, licking the sauce, and sucking on the bone for a taste of anything. I really went to town on that rib.
“Uh, I’ve already eaten that one, son,” said Harris County Sheriff Johnny Klevenhagen, the judge sitting next to me. I still get the willies thinking about that.
Now I look first.