Bronco Buster
© 1975 BobColtman
Jackson Hole, Wyoming, summer 1959, was my first trip west. I went there with Bill Briggs and we lived in the park, sustaining ourselves with Teton Tea and music till dawn. We sang under bridges and anywhere they didn't throw us out of, worked in the then-new Pink Garter Theater playing melodrama, almost fell off any number of horses, and finally vanished in the direction of Mexico and some other things I may write about someday. While there I saw the fringes of rodeo life, with its phony glamor and hard knocks. The working cowboy's) life is lousy enough so that staying on crazy broncs looks glittery by comparison. But there's only room for a few hands on the brass ring. The riders I saw had a look around the corners of their eyes that said: what a hustle.

BRONCO BUSTER
(Bob Coltman)

You bronco buster, you gotta know how to fly,
'Cause when you leave that leather you'll be tastin' the sky,
Got to roll and be ready on your way back down,
'Cause there's nothing underneath you but the cold, hard ground.

You may rise up easy but you'll come down hard,
If you ain't built to take it, stay out back in the yard,
For these broncos'll know it, they will drag off your skin,
Dig a grave to contain you and then trample you in.

Got a fast little pickup, but I can't afford gas,
Got a hot dog budget and an appetite for class,
This racket I'm in ain't no get-rich scheme,
I can't wear weather and I can't eat dreams.

Take a look, Angelina, from your hotel high,
You ain't very pretty, but then neither am I,
Your heart may be fickle, but it's soft enough to lay
A bronc-rider's head on till the coming of day.

Cost me fifty good dollars just to enter this show,
If I don't win nothing I'll be fifty in the hole,
And I ain't won nothing since July in Bell,

And this brute they fixed for me looks meaner'n hell.
But this old gate's a-risin', so here we go,
Folks, here's the boy wonder, are you likin' the show?
Fightin' pure bolt lightnin' and a-losin' the war,
But I got to stay on him just three seconds more.


Copyright 1975, by Bob Coltman