Rodeo’s fun — that’s no bull

PALMER — With less than an hour to go before show time, Charlie Willis climbed up on a trailer Saturday with his two judges to line out competitors in this year’s rodeo at the Alaska State Fair.

Aside from going over the rules, Willis also offered advice. Hold on to your Alaska State Fair wristbands — rodeo staff were running out of replacements. Try and keep horses separate from spectators.

“I know the horses are good. It’s people that are bad,” he said.

When his spiel was over, someone walked up to him and said there was a rumor going around that riders would be required to wear belts.

“If their pants fall down it’s their problem,” Willis replied.

He and his wife have been working at the rodeo for 30 years, Willis said. Rodeo has become their life. In addition to running CW Tack and Western Wear in Wasilla, they’ve got an arena at their house for riding and roping.

“We don’t fish anymore. We don’t hunt anymore. We rope,” Willis said.

It’s become a family affair. He’s got a son who’s an Alaska State Trooper who is in this year’s rodeo and his daughter came up from Washington to participate as well. He said his son wouldn’t be the only trooper there; officers would be competing and helping out in the chute. He promised a good show.

Standing at the gateway to the staging area behind the corral, Mike Hayhurst, dressed in baggy jeans with his face painted, filled in for security checking for wristbands. Hayhurst is this year’s rodeo clown and Saturday would be his first day performing.

“Yesterday they just had a team roping. Not much call for a clown in team roping,” he said.

The rodeo brought him up from Barstow, Calif. He said clowns play four roles in the rodeo — there are bullfighters to protect the cowboys, freestyle bullfighters who show off their skills avoiding horns, “barrel men” who jump in and out of barrels as the bulls charge around, and funny men who, essentially, do stand-up comedy.

Having been a clown since 1977, he’s done all four. In Palmer, he said, his gig would be to do the stand-up routine. The rodeo had its own bullfighters and, “it’s too hard to get a barrel out here from California,” he said.

Behind the corral, Micah Robertson said he would be rooting for the bulls in the rodeo. Considering he was there to help tend to those bulls, that was to be expected.

Asked if it was a chore to load up trailers with bulls that, at least to the casual observer, don’t seem to be the best behaved, Robertson said nothing could be further from the truth. The bulls are well behaved. And they love to go to the rodeo. Some will get upset if left behind.

“It’s not that they don’t like it. They’re athletes,” he said. “They’re bred to buck and they love their game.”

All that stomping and snorting waiting to get out of the chute is just the bull’s way of trash-talking, he said.

Among this year’s crop of bulls, the one he most wanted to see in action was Grim Reaper — not just because Reaper is a great bull to watch but also because he’s getting on in years.

“I love him to death and this is his last show,” he said.

He also liked Jackpot. But he didn’t want to count out Monkey Bones.

“Monkey Bones there, he’ll turn the crank today,” Robertson said, but, “Jackpot there is the most explosive.”

As for the show itself, Willis and Robertson both seemed to have made good predictions. The grandstand was packed with spectators.

The bulls didn’t disappoint and neither did the broncos. Hayhurst’s routines kept the crowd from getting bored between events.

Hayhurst said that, for him at least, rodeo is just one of those things that gets in your blood.

“It just becomes a way of life,” he said. “I’ve got friends that I won’t see all year until I see them at their local rodeo.”

Contact Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-2270.