I know I was supposed to write about climbing tree stands and do a few reviews. I still intend to do that. But I got my yearly phone call from Jimmy Carlson and I thought I would share it with you.
“Happy Fourth Bull Rider” said the voice on the other end of the line. There was never any mistaking that voice. In addition, no one in the world referred to me as “Bull Rider” but Jimmy Carlson from Wisconsin. He was your typical Swede from cheese land. “Ya hey der Bull Rider” was a phrase I heard thousands of times during my working career. The only thing sparing me the “hey der” this time was his recognition of the holiday.
Jimmy and I retired from the same company. The only difference is that he did it five years before me. Jimmy was always my mentor at the company. He was ten years my senior and guided me during my early years. He was my sales manager for my first seven years at the company. And in many ways he was my hero. He was the craziest most fun loving sob I have ever run into during my life. The fact that I consider him crazier then all of the Australian soldiers I hooked up with during my army days speaks volumes regarding his lunacy rating. Believe me, in a bar the Aussies always ran away with the prize where lunacy was concerned. But Jimmy made them look like choir boys.
I only hear from Jimmy once a year. And it is always this time of year. We hash out all the news that keeps us abreast of family and grandchildren. We then catch up on friends from work, most also retired. And sadly it seems like every year one of us will say “did you hear that so and so passed away?” But all of this is a formality. Both of us know the real reason for the call. We will once again talk of July, 1975.
That early July of 1975 we were in Germany. We were both working at our trade show booth at the largest Exposition in the world related to the company’s products. It was a real honor to be selected to work at this trade show as only the best of the sales force was sent to represent the company in the international arena. I am pretty sure that Jimmy pulled some strings to get me on the “team”. I was one of his budding stars but I don’t think that was enough to put me over the top. He liked the fact that I could hang with him in the bar. Well, I couldn’t match him drink for drink, but no one could. But I could pace myself and many is the night that I would watch Jimmy drink unsuspecting rookies under the table as they tried to keep up with him. Jimmy always knew that I would be there at the end and usually summon the cab and somehow safely see us back to our hotel rooms in the wee hours of the morning. I am pretty sure this fact secured my spot on the team for the show in Germany.
As a youngster, my brothers and I rode cows. Heck, we would ride anything we could catch. Growing up on the cattle ranch riding animals was the equivalent of young boys in city neighborhoods riding their bikes. We four boys didn’t have bikes. There was no place to ride them. But there were plenty of animals. Many of these animals really didn’t like the idea of adolescent boys climbing on their backs. But if the brothers could hold the animal still enough, one of them would always climb aboard. Of course horses were the mainstay. But we would also ride cows and young steers and visions of fame in the rodeo arena would flash though our young minds while we held on for dear life as the animals tried to dislodge us. We were all certain that the glamorous life of a professional cowboy would be our calling. Besides, it was absolutely hilarious to watch one of your brothers atop the back of a cow as she bellowed and ran hell bent for leather out into one of the pastures.
As we grew older we graduated to bulls and actually entered youth bull riding events at various rodeos at venues close to our ranch. Mom put an end to the foolishness when my oldest brother broke his wrist the very first time he entered an “open” class event and rode a full blown rodeo bull. We had no idea what health insurance was and my mother grumbled for months about the money spent taking her oldest son to the hospital to have a cast put on his wrist.
Somehow these stories of my youth were told one evening in some hotel lounge at some business function in some large city. Jimmy, who grew up on the “tough streets of Milwaukee” just found them fascinating. Now I ask you, just how tough can any street be in Milwaukee? What, like Lavern and Shirley are going to kick your ass? But none the less, Jimmy would boast with pride about his upbringing and tease the living hell out of the Texas boy. And after one night of excess drinking, the name “bull rider” was unceremoniously placed upon my shoulders.
We were scheduled to be in Germany for the trade show for three weeks. We would work for nine straight days, take off for three days, and then work the final nine days. On the evening of our eighth day working the booth, I found myself with Jimmy and several other employees of the company at the bar in the hotel where we were staying. After eight straight days in that booth we were slap happy. And of course, everyone was getting snot hanging drunk. And being the ugly Americans that we were, I suppose we were rather loud. But we were in good company as some of the English blokes we had met and some of the local Germans were also feeling no pain and pretty loud in their own right. And Jimmy in his cheese head Swedish manner was calling me “bull rider.”
The guys from the UK and the German locals wanted to know why Jimmy was calling me “bull rider” and he proceeds to tell them that I was the finest rider of bulls that America had to offer and there is not a bull anywhere in the world that I could not tame. After all, I was a Texan and that seemed to carry great weight with the English guys and the Germans. It was apparent that they had all watched way to many Hollywood westerns and assumed I must spit nails and carry a six shooter. I tried to tell them I was more of a “cow rider” then a “bull rider” but they were having none of that. About that time two Spanish guys in the bar came up to our table of twelve. They were from Madrid and were also attending the show.
It was obvious that the two Spaniards were not in any better shape then the rest of us. Their command of English was not very good but one did speak a little German so we communicated in the form of a Spanish to German to English bucket brigade and somehow being drunk seemed to help this process work. I actually think I understood one of the Spaniards better then one of the guys from the UK who spoke a form of English laced with cockney. It was like no English I ever heard before. But alcohol can be the universal translator and all were having a great time.
The Spaniards were most interested in the “cowboy from Texas” and told us of an event close to their home that was taking place and was just the ticket for a fearless tamer of bulls. As soon as I heard the word “Pamplona” I knew what they were talking about. Ernest Hemingway’s novel "The Sun Also Rises" was required reading during my senior year of high school. I knew right away they were talking about the “running of the bulls.”
I could see the gleam in Jimmy’s eye as he listened to the Spanish to German to English story of the bulls of Pamplona. Now Jimmy thought that Hemmingway was some “girly man” poet who lived in Key West and molested young boys. Hemmingway novels were not required reading on the “mean streets” of Milwaukee. He had heard something about running with the bulls but he really didn’t have any clear cut knowledge on the subject. But the stories being told in the bar that night were lighting his fuse. He got up from the table, went to the pay phone in the lobby and called the company travel agent. He booked two tickets on a flight to Madrid that following afternoon and reserved a rental car. We were going to Pamplona for our three day vacation from the booth.
Now everyone has seen the news clips of the young men in white pants and white shirts with red scarves running along side those big black bulls. But what the news clips don’t tell you is that you stay up all night drinking and this asinine event takes place at like eight o’clock in the morning. Now this made perfect sense to Jimmy. Why drinking all night was the perfect training regiment in his “Wide World of Sports.” And it also explains why hundreds on normally sane individuals go running down the street with these bulls that are the size of Volkswagens. They have been drinking all night!
In 1975 it was pretty rare to see many Americans in Pamplona. And if you did, they were watching this crazy event, they were spectators. Now I am sure that many Americans had made the run, but it was not like today. Every year now many Americans “make the run.” But back in 1975 we were considered an “oddity” by the locals. But we were embraced with warmth and enthusiasm. And after drinking all night with many of them, we were kindred spirits, brothers of the grape if you will. And Jimmy’s expertise with consumption had not gone unnoticed and by the light of early morning he had earned quasi leadership stature within the group.
I, on the other hand, looked like I had just served two years in a Turkish prison. Beer was my drink. I knew beer. Beer never pushed me off a cliff. It just sat me down fat, dumb and happy on the back of a hay wagon. Wine however is the root of all evil. Wine will not only throw you off a cliff, it will kick you several times while you are lying at the bottom of the canyon. Wine is vindictive and you will pay a dear price for enjoying her pleasures.
And I was now dressed in some ridiculous white “clam diggers” topped off by some stupid white shirt with only two buttons. And while Jimmy wore his red bandanna in “Rambo” style, mine was pulled over my eyes trying to shut out the harsh light that only seemed to further irritate the sadistic wine demon that now owned not only my body but my very soul as well. I was in no shape to run. Hell, I was in no shape to walk! But here we were in the middle of this narrow street with our drinking companions from last night. Most were still drunk. Some like Jimmy were still drinking! And many fared no better then me. They also looked like hell. All I wanted to do was throw up and find a bed.
It is the voices of the crowd that tell you the running has begun. You hear the noise grow louder and soon you see young men dressed in white running toward you. But the enormity of the situation does not really hit you until you see the first one. You see the horns above this sea of white racing towards you. And as this sea parts, you see the first back bull. And then you see another, and another. You don’t even think. You turn and run.
It was Jimmy who kept on encouraging me. I was running right next to him. “Run bull rider run! He gonna stick a horn up our ass he is!” I looked over at Jimmy and I realized I had never seen him happier. He had been drinking all night and was running for his life in some narrow alley in a godforsaken town somewhere in Spain. And he was in heaven. It was his Olympics. It was what the “mean streets of Milwaukee” had trained him for all his life. He was in his element.
I, conversely, did what any normal cow riding dandy from Texas would do. I threw up. And the stupid white shirt with two buttons became some crazed tye-dyed combination of used red wine and white cotton. I soon learned that if you held your head to one side and hurled while you ran that many others behind you would join your new fashion revolution. And as if to add a bonus prize, the regurgitated wine was just the catalyst needed for several of my drunken running brothers to join the puking parade.
And so we ran, Jimmy having the time of his life shepherding his flock of red wine spewing followers down the narrow streets of Pamplona. The bulls never came close to us. They were dumb animals but even they knew that coming close to our little band of runners was fraught with danger and they gave us a wide berth as they passed. Come to think of it, most of the runners gave us a pretty wide berth as well.
When the bulls and other runners had passed I slowed and walked to the side of the narrow street and sat down in a door way. I remember seeing Jimmy chase after the bulls and runners chirping away with joyful hoots and hollers. It was the last I saw of him until he showed up at the airport in Madrid two days later. I didn’t even ask how he got there as I had taken the rental car.
He would tell the story of “the run” at company functions, meetings and trade shows for years and years to come. He never said anything about me throwing up as I ran with total terror down those narrow streets that morning in July. He would just tell all of the glory that he and the “bull rider” had shared that day on the streets of Pamplona.
And every year during the first few days of July he will call me and laugh his ass off as he replays every detail of my “spewing with the bulls.” And every year that phone conversation confirms to me that the day we ran in Pamplona was indeed the very best day of his life.
And it makes me feel good to know I was part of that day.
The Best Day of His Life
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raydaughety
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