Rodeo bucks a stereotype

Sam Morris

A bull attacks Tyree Kossie during the Bill Pickett Invitational Rodeo Saturday at South Point. Kossie was later carried out of the arena by medics.

By Ron Kantowski (contact)

Tuesday, Nov. 25, 2008 | 2 a.m.

Sam Morris

Jarvis Denery gets some help from Wayne Rogers after going head over heels while riding a sheep in a competition Saturday. The Pickett Rodeo has been around for a quarter-century, and this was its second appearance at South Point.

Sam Morris

Tiphini Carter adjusts her hat Saturday before competing in barrel racing, an event that tests a rider's ability to turn her steed on a dime repeatedly.

I am not a sociologist, have never played one on TV and did not stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night, but I believe that each person is shaped by his environment.

I am reminded of this every time I look in my guest closet, where a dozen or more Chicago Cubs baseball jerseys and jackets hang neatly. I am a Cubs fan because I grew up near Chicago and my dad was a Cubs fan. Had I grown up in St. Louis, I’d probably be a Cardinals fan.

If you grow up around horses, chances are you’re going to be a cowboy.

This is the thought that occurred to me about midway through the calf roping competition at the Bill Pickett Invitational Rodeo Saturday afternoon at the South Point Equestrian Center. For 25 years, the Bill Pickett Invitational has been the Super Bowl of rodeo for black cowboys and cowgirls. This was its second year at South Point, and I hope it will come back next year and again offer families up-close seats for a fraction of the cost of the other championship rodeo that rolls through town.

Over the years, I have interviewed black cowboys at the National Finals Rodeo. I remember Charlie Sampson, the bull rider, taking off his prosthetic ear and placing it in my hand when I asked about his most memorable ride, and I figure I still owe him for that.

Fred Whitfield is a six-time world champion calf roper who was crowned the 1999 all-around world champion cowboy at the Thomas & Mack Center. I am assuming all of Fred’s body parts are the original ones, because the only thing he placed in my hand when I was done talking to him was his hand, and it was still connected.

In other words, this wasn’t my first rodeo, wasn’t my first time talking to black cowboys. But it was the first rodeo I had attended where all the competitors were black. I must confess that during the bareback competition, it seemed odd to watch one black cowboy after another try to stay aboard a bucking bronc for eight seconds while Stevie Wonder’s funky “I Wish” was playing over the public address system instead of “Ghost Riders In The Sky.”

Then I thought back to a conversation I had earlier in the day, and of being a Cubs fan, and then it didn’t seem so odd.

Watching my step while walking around the pens for about an hour before the rodeo began, I spotted a sturdy cowboy wearing a bright orange shirt with the Wranglers jeans logo stitched in bright blue letters on the sleeves. Had he turned around, I would have learned that this was Jimmy Patterson, because that was the name printed on the contestant number bib safety-pinned to the back of his shirt.

But since he was walking toward me, I had to ask. I felt weird having to do that, but then I realized if the Cubs’ Micah Hoffpauir was walking toward me in the runway at Wrigley Field, I probably wouldn’t have known him, either.

Like every other rodeo cowboy I have ever interviewed, black or white, Patterson was polite and personable. He grew up on a farm around horses (and other animals) in West Point, Miss., population 12,155. They have cotton mills and pecan farms in West Point but Patterson told me he works in a furniture factory. When I asked if there were any big cities nearby, he said, sure, Tupelo, the birthplace of Elvis Presley — population 36,058. Big is relative in Mississippi.

He said he listens to both kinds of music, country and western, although he is partial to the blues, too, what with the muddy waters of the Mississippi Delta as well as the birthplace of Muddy Waters both just down the road a piece.

He played football in high school, tried other sports, too, but prefers rodeo. Patterson said he rides not so much to call attention to the black cowboys of the past, nor to remind the uninformed they’ve been around just as long as white ones — some of the first cowboys were slaves who tended to the cattle while their plantation and ranch owners were off fighting the Civil War.

He rides because he likes it — and he’s pretty good at it.

I suppose in a perfect world, there would be no white rodeos, no black rodeos, just one rodeo for all Americans — which is how it might have been, but wasn’t. Same for colleges, same for buses, same for baseball.

I know had I been around, I would have paid for a box seat behind the dugout to see Cool Papa Bell circle the bases in a 12-second whirlwind, to watch Satchel Paige pitch against the Homestead Grays in his prime, to hear the telltale crack of the bat when Josh Gibson took one deep.

Though the crowd at the Bill Pickett rodeo wasn’t large by any stretch of imagination, even by Mississippi standards, at least it was enthusiastic.

And when one of the black cowboys tied down a calf in 12 seconds, and people jumped to their feet to applaud, I noticed that a lot of those standing and cheering were white.