Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1929-12-15

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dude ranches and cowboys hit the
Broadway trail. Now the twain not
only meet, but that part of it which
comes from Windy Gulch brings half dozen
Park avenue telephone numbers that he picked
up while showing the lady dudes" around the
plains
Back here in the great open-all- might spaces,
1O-gallcn hats are getting as common as half
gallon TASKS.
And thanks to the cowboy invasion, the ma
tives are gettin to the place where they can tell
a long horn taxicab when they hear one; can
tell Brooklyn calf from Bronx calf, with Or
without short skirts and they find themselves
hanging around the Madison avenue cactus
stores trying to get some Western local color.
The dudes may appear funny to the COW
country when they get out there, but buckaroo
can seem just as queer in the land of the ten
derfeet. But it won't be long now. Too many
New Workers have been out on the dude
ranches" and too many riders and rcpers have
been heading this way. We exchange dudes for
bull-doggers and half the fat dowagers of Fifth
avenue can now make trick knots in the family
clothes line and know a gila monster from
goldfish.
TOR, like it or leave it, New York is becoming
a Winter wranglng ground for dudes
Corrals are set up in the lobbies of Swanky
hotels and there's a scout at every railroad
terminal. Ten-gallon hats sweep through lob
bies and spurs click on marble floors. East Side
kids who never had seen a cowboy outside the
movies. now shine the high boots of the best
calf ropers.
Rodeo championships, which used to be settled
out where the West began, now are staged be-
fore the best silk hats that ever decorated
$I0-per-seat box in Madison Square. Bronco
busters and bull-doggers and calf ropers ride
the rods, If necessary, to get to New York for
the Winter round-ups. For the purses are the
N NJ anywhere a
stake awaits if one can carry of champion
ship.
Those arguments about riding and roping and
steer wrestling which used to be settled out i'll
the prairie arenas now are staged to standing
room only" with anncuncers broadcasting and
bands playing and arc lights glaring and ladies
in ermine getting firtatious wink from
bronzed cowboys in wool shirts and trick GRIM
son neckerchiefS.
Like prize fights and world championship ball
games and all the rest of the contests, the rodeo
now comes to the metropolis. It uses the saw
dust of made-to-order amphitheater instead OF
alkali-sprinkled stretches of the West.
Hundreds of its best performers arrive in early
Winter, when snow has put the plains in bed
they haunt the regions of Madison Square and
If they don't get any of the prize money, they
begin to join the throng Of voorhees, actors in
the midtown belt seeking just enough money
to follow the rodeo rounds through the South
SLOWLY the cluttered, herded Enclosure that
- they call New York becomes more and more
familiar to group of men whose lives have led
them over lonely trails. once the rodeo argu-
ments have been settled to the satisfaction of
cane-toting men and orchid wearing grand
danes the rodeo trail swings southwark for the
Winter, with new chances for purses.
Rodeo performers in the East are not on a pay
roll. Like horses entered in a race they take
their chances. If they can win the contests
they get into the big money. If they can't they
ride back home on the hitch-hike basis.
Some of them join circuses and Wild West
shows or tour around with carnivals for a while
to get their fare back to dear old Windy Gulch.
Some make international regulations and get on
Q steady pay roll.
Taken by and large. the rodeo is not
~racket"-at least for the participants Nor has
AZ raarticnlar kinslain rrH..h