“I try to get fired but keep getting promoted.”
So says Don Mabry. He’s one of countless volunteers for Rodeo Austin. He and his cohort, Brad Blaine, are charged for 16 days each year with the 100X Club on Rodeo Austin grounds.
Saddle bronc riders Curtis Garton, Spencer Wright and Jake Wright
For years, I’ve been unduly fascinated by this tented lounge, located near the show barn and not far from the Travis County Expo Center, where the core rodeo events and less essential music occur. Why? Because my usual tour guides would say every spring: “Things can get kind of rowdy here late at night.”
Now, it doesn’t take a lot for a reporter to imagine high jinks at the 100X. It’s got a band and a bar. And a big open dance floor. What more do you need? Oh yeah, cowboys. And cowgirls.
This is where the pro rodeo competitors hang out. In other words, exactly where anyone who has been attending these western heritage fandangos since the 1950s — as has your fond social columnist — would want to be at the right time.
Michele Golden (Rodeo Austin Queen, ‘82) and Alex Ingram (Rodeo Austin Queen, ‘13)
Sad to say, I witnessed no fist fights or upended tables on Tuesday when I visited with my pal Michele Golden. Besides her movie-star name and looks, Golden is a former rodeo queen — the first in Austin history back in 1982 — she served as a longtime rodeo volunteer and board member for what formerly was almost exclusively an amateur affair. (The pro thing came later.)
Golden is the ideal date. She tends to know everybody. And those she doesn’t, she meets. We checked out the show barn first, where youngsters about 1/100 the weight of their cattle were practicing exhibition skills. Then we met up with Mabry and Blaine, who could double as a comedy duo.
“If you can’t laugh, you aren’t trying hard enough,” Blaine says. “It gets crazy here at the 100X.”
“We say: ‘Come early and stay late and if you can’t have a good time, go home,’” Mabry says. “The door’s that way.”
Brad Blaine and Don Mabry
Mabry has instituted some changes at the once exclusive club. Five bucks gets you in the door of the rodeo’s most interesting 6,400-square-foot room. High cocktail tables are scattered about, including a few plusher ones and sofas in the Gold Buckle Zone, sponsored by none other than Jack Daniels.
In the past, this area would have been roped off for rodeo pros. But nobody tended to use it. So Mabry opened it up to everyone, just like he encouraged live audio and video feeds from the rodeo arena, all-ages entry to the club so cowboys could bring along their families and general sense of camaraderie so genuine, an urban journalist who hasn’t mounted a horse in years felt supremely welcome.
That’s something to be said for everyone at Rodeo Austin. That includes the disciplined and exhausted staff such as tireless promoter Jennifer Paladino — who issues more press releases than the next 50 publicists. And the volunteers like Manor’s Stan Voelker, who cheerfully taxis the the overburdened from distant parking lots to the hilltop midway and carnival.
(“Half the things in Manor are named for the Voelkers,” Golden informs me. Sounds like another column subject to me.)
After watching them compete in a parade of thrilling events — only the ultra-dangerous bull riding still freaks me out after more than five decades — and catching a few listless numbers from vintage musical act Three Dog Night , Golden and I spent time where the cowboys do.
Ryan Ward, Kalen Ward and Max Meade
What did I learn this night? Bronc riders are cocky, but not as intense as bull riders. Team ropers are the friendliest. Steer wrestlers could use a few breaks. Swift and elegant barrel riders could do with some additional events for women. Neither the Olympic spirit nor Title 9 have made inroads at the rodeo arena as far as gender is concerned.
Some cowboys sleep with their horses. Not in exactly on the same straw, but inside long trailers that split the human and equine quarters. Others sack out in their trucks. A tiny elite make hundreds of thousands of dollars competing on the national circuit, which winds its way each season to the national finals in Las Vegas. Many more cowboys can barely afford to keep up their horses, tackle and other gear.
One last thing. Golden, who could give 2013 Rodeo Austin Queen, Alex Ingram, a run for her money: “I’d forgotten how good looking rodeo cowboys are.”
I hadn’t.