A little of this is a repeat, but since it's been so long since it was published, it was necessary for the continuation.
Saturday I was up bright and early, dressing in my best cowboy duds, boots, hat, shirt and so on. When I looked in the mirror, I thought I looked like a downright handsome cowboy! I hoped Trisha would approve.
She did and yummy did she look beautiful when I picked her up! She reminded me of the song, "Baby's Got Her Blue Jeans On". I received a very friendly welcome kiss at her door. Mmm, she smelled nice too! I could envision guys drooling all around us later! I asked her if she'd been to the round-up before and she said she'd wanted to but never had. That seemed funny for someone who lives only an hour and a half away.
Tickets for the Saturday rodeo are always sold out, even before last year's rodeo is over so we went to one of the entrance gates and found a guy wanting to sell three tickets behind the bucking chutes. Those are the premium tickets and are $18 each. He wasn't willing to sell just two of them, so I bought all three, then let him keep one of them to sell again.
Walking around the outside of the arena always used to be exciting when I was a kid, and I realized it still was. It's filled with thousands of people (the people watching is fantastic!), food booths with smells of hot dogs, barbecue, cattle, and countless other aromas. When we got back toward the opposite side where our seats were, there were the cattle and horse pens and all their smells and noises. It was fun hearing the cattle bawling and looking at those giant Brahma bulls. It was hard to imagine that men were going to try and ride them for eight seconds.
I admit it was fun holding Trisha's hand and watching other guys eyes glued to her as we walked past, assuming they weren't looking at me! I hoped we might catch a glimpse of Shaun and Michelle but with nearly twenty thousand people there, it was a little hard to pick out two.
As we watched the rodeo and listened to the EMCEE's western voice, I imagined what it might be like with Shaun someday announcing this rodeo. It's among the top two or three rodeos in the country and would be quite a plum contract for Shaun, especially since it's practically in his backyard. I envisioned Shaun in the broadcast booth right above where we were sitting, with Michelle sitting at his side.
Trisha enjoyed watching the rodeo, and I enjoyed watching her. There's nothing like a pretty lady in western clothes to get a man's libido excited; Especially when the relationship is a little ilicit. I hadn't even told Michelle that I was taking Trisha, not that I expected her to be unhappy about it.
We ate hot dogs, laughed together at the antics of the clown, groaned when the cowboys were thrown off their horses or Brahma Bull and simply enjoyed being together through the whole four and a half hours. I think Trisha especially enjoyed the Indian dancing and horse races. We bet a quarter on all the races, and I lost seventy five cents. It seemed that Trisha had a much better knack for picking out the winners than I did.
After the rodeo, we drove downtown and looked for a parking spot. Pendleton has a fabulous Main Street show with all sorts of free entertainment, food, and other vendors along the full length of Main Street and a carnival in the big parking lot at the South end. The only problem is finding a place to park. If we'd been earlier, we might have found a parking spot, but after the rodeo, we had to walk five blocks and felt pretty lucky to find that one. I didn't mind walking with Trisha, holding her hand is always delightful.
We walked up and down Main Street, pausing to sit down and listen to the country music at a couple of the makeshift stages. I'd forgotten about the mass of people on the street; you could barely walk amongst the crowd. I was still hoping to catch a glimpse of Shaun and Michelle but the likelihood seemed pretty thin.
We found a little booth selling Elephant Ears and bought one to share. It was fun, both of us eating off opposite sides of it at the same time, giggling at how difficult it was, especially as our mouths got closer and closer together and people were watching to see what was going to happen when the last of it disappeared and our mouths were together. It would have been erotic, except for all the giggling and then both of us desperately trying to steal the last bite. When that last bite was gone, we were laughing too hard to take advantage of the situation for the kiss that our fan club was anticipating.
Trisha found a beautiful set of handmade, turquoise earrings, necklace and bracelet at an Indian booth for seventy-five dollars that I bought for her. They matched her blouse perfectly. I didn't take advantage of putting the necklace around her neck by pressing my body to hers and kissing the end of her nose, it just seemed to happen.
We sat down at a ventriloquist act that was fabulous. The guy kept the entire crowd in hysterical laughter almost the whole time with his array of accomplices. Amongst the comedy, it was amazing how his dummies could sing and sound exactly like famous singers like Garth Brooks, Elvis, and others without the guy moving his mouth in the least. They could even yodel! His Michael Jackson impersonation was hilarious and had Trisha and me laughing along with the rest of the crowd. His show was by far the best on the street!
When his hour was up, he asked his crowd to stick around as he was also a hypnotist and would be asking for volunteers in a few minutes. After his short break, he came back on stage and asked if any volunteers would like to be hypnotized. I pushed Trisha a little, trying to get her to volunteer. She told me, "No, it's just phony. They'll just pretend."
"Come on Trish, try it. It'll be fun," I said, pushing her a little harder.
She finally gave a sigh and got up, along with six other people. I knew she was skeptical and was curious to see what was going to happen if he'd hypnotize her. There were four other adults; three girls, a guy and two kids, probably nine or ten. It looked like they were probably brother and sister, maybe even twins.
The hypnotist talked to each one of them individually for just a moment, trying to relax them. He had them sit down in the row of chairs he'd prepared, asked the crowd to please be as quiet as possible and started softly talking to his little group, going through the routine of telling them that they were getting sleepy and so on. One by one, they closed their eyes and definitely looked like they were sleeping, even the skeptical Trisha.
When he was confident that all were asleep, he told them that the only sound they'd hear from then on would be his voice. He turned back to us and said we could do anything we wanted, make whatever noise we wanted, and nothing would wake them up. Naturally, everyone wanted to test that so started talking at once; the parents of the twins shouted their names and nothing, no response. I even shouted Trisha's name with no reaction. Wow, I thought, they are hypnotized!
The crowd finally quieted down and the hypnotist, Angelo or something like that, started his little experiments, he asked them all to wake up and open their eyes, but the only thing they'd see or hear would be him.
He told them that they'd just stepped outside into a raging blizzard. Every one of them immediately wrapped their arms around themselves trying to keep warm, started shivering and wiping the imaginary wind and blowing snow out of their faces. I sat there in shock, watching Trisha the skeptic desperately trying to keep warm. In reality, It'd been a hot day and was still probably in the high seventies. She was shivering uncontrollably when Angelo had mercy and told them they were back inside around a warm wood stove.
The relief on faces and people putting their hands out to the imaginary stove, turning their backs to it and warming up was hilarious. There certainly wasn't a skeptic left on the street!
