A small town boy meets the big wide world
What I did on my summer vacation
At 09h00 the bank opened and I was able to exchange a travelers’ check for French francs. I bought a train ticket to Madrid, and waited until the train arrived and borded, relieved and happy. Madrid was beautiful, architecturally. I spent most of the day in the Prado museum, awed by their collection of masters’ works. I found a place to stay, and bought my ticket from Madrid to Pamplona, very excited to be so near.
The trip to Pamplona was mostly uneventful, if beautiful, especially passing from San Sebastian on the coast up to Pamplona in the mountains. I arrived in the evening, and passed many people, young and old, who were obviously ready to party. Everyone was talking about meeting at the “Muscle Bar.” I found a place to stay for the week, and asked the directions to the Muscle Bar. Wondering if that meant we had to roll up our T-shirt sleeves, I laughed out loud when I arrived and found out it was the “mussel bar,” named for the plates of mussels you could get with the caraffe of wine. Though the word was, “It ain’t vino if it ain’t rojo,” I had had a bad experience with red wine and was pretty much tied to white!
It was not difficult to acquire friends and acquaintences at the mussel bar, and I soon met Greg and Ivy, first time attendees to the fiesta, and John, who had been there before. We ate and drank until almost midnight, and I headed for home. It was the fifth of July, and the fiesta opened in the afternoon of the following day. We all planned to meet in the town plaza for the opening ceremonies
Sure enough, we met up in the crowd-john was pretty tall and easily spotted-and cheered after the speeches and wandered along the streets afterward which would be closed to runners in the morning. The “run” started at 07h00, on the seventh day of the seventh month. At that time, the streets would be filled with runners and seven bulls would be released! We spent the rest of the evening drinking and singing and getting to know one another. After all, we would be facing death together in the morning--all except Ivy. In those years women were not allowed to run, the idea being that if she fell, a gentleman might feel obligated to help her up, and he, himself, could get gored by a bull in the process. Thus, Ivy was spared the “danger!”
The next morning we met in the streets just above the town square. The side streets were all boarded up so that a chute was formed through which the bulls must past. In their way, running in front of them, were probably two to three THOUSAND people. The streets were jammed. The street we were on was inclined slightly so that we could look down the street to see what was happening. At 07h00, a gun was fired and the bulls were released from the holding pen into the street. You could feel the electricity in the crowd, and you could tell the bulls were on their way as the crowd started coming our way. We heard a second gun shot, that indicating that the last bull had cleared the holding pen and was on his way. The time between the first and second shot gave an indication of the relative safety of the run. If the shots came close together it indicated that the bulls were traveling in a pack, and that was seen as less dangerous.
As the crowd started to move, you could see the bulls as they rounded the corner out of the plaza and headed up our street. They seemed to take up the entire street, and they were BIG! We started running ahead of the crowd and the bulls, and as the bulls got closer the crowd parted and there they were! Horns aplenty! That first morning I dove into the street next to the curb as the bulls tore past, on their way to the bull ring where the whole show ended. After the bulls went past there followed a bunch of big cows, on the same route. The thinking there was that the cows would push the bulls along if they wanted to straggle.
That first morning we did not follow to the bull ring but repaired to one of the bars. I had scratched my hand fairly deeply when I hit the street, and I was wanting to staunch the blood and put a bandage on it. Greg, instead, called for some salt from the barman and rubbed it into the wound. “You want a scar there that you can show your kids,” he said.
Wapakoneta resident Larry Jones shares his 46 years of experience with the Peace Corps and International Schools in his book Passport, which is being serialized each Saturday and Wednesday in the Wapakoneta Daily News with his permission.