I like the idea of sports that grew out of practical skills. It’s fun to watch things like lumberjack competitions and rodeo. As a kid, I spent summers in the Wild West and got a real taste for rodeo and riding skills. Alas, it has been many years, but I digress.
Here is something for your Just Too Cool file. This story has it all.
From NBC:
Cowboy Lassos Alleged Bike Thief in Wal-Mart Parking Lot
A hero on horseback saved the day after a man tried to make off with a bike that wasn’t his on Friday, and it all went down in the parking lot of an Oregon Wal-Mart.
Self-described “cowboy” Robert Borba was at the store in Eagle Point, Oregon, to pick up some dog food when he heard a woman yell out that someone had stolen her bicycle from a rack. Borba, a champion bull rider, took off on his trusty steed to give chase and rounded himself up a suspect.
Borba was able to wrap his lasso around the suspect’s ankle and hold the man until police arrived before heading back to the farm.
“I roped him and the rope went down around his feet and I just rode off like I would if I roped a cow or something,” Borba described to NBC affiliate KOBI.
“He did it so well I thought, man, he must be in a rodeo or something. It was perfect” onlooker Rob Roque said.
The suspect, Victorino Arellano-Sanchez, was charged with theft and taken to Jackson County Jail, Officer Chris Adams of the Eagle Point Police Department said.
Of course there’s video!
I love America.
I like to imagine what that bicycle thief was thinking as he lay there, trussed. I suppose that each time he twitched, the horse backed a bit to keep the tension on. People standing around, looking at him, making comments. Were I the judge in that case, I might sentence the guy to muck out that horse’s stall for a few weeks.
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In a couple of other places, Borba is quoted as having said, “I use a rope every day, that’s how I make my living. If it catches cattle pretty good, it catches a bandit pretty good.”
Well, now, that’s some very practical logic. Love it. And it makes me chuckle that he used the word “bandit” instead “thief.” :-)
YEE-HAW! Ride ’em, cowboy!!
Way to cool Fr. Z, way too cool. No desperadoes allowed near that cowboy’s ranch.
My ranching buddy out West- who carried a Louis Lamour or Zane Grey novel in his pack wherever the Marine Corps sent him- informs me he has now added a lasso to his everyday carry.
I don’t know if people who don’t know Americans understand that this is a big part of American culture, this kind of thing. Horses, rodeos, farms, barbecue, fishing, and yes, guns, are all part of the cultural conglomeration that is America. This cowbow, Mr. Borba, is a good representative for the good old American male, a manly man and a good daddy to his babies. We have every reason to be right proud of him. He represents well.
“Don’t try to understand them; just roping, throw and brand them . . .”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_EjbzCX3enA
This is Oregon. Expect the cowboy to be charged with aggravated assault, shortly.
gracie: Great lyric. That song was also in the classic movie the Blues Brothers. It was performed by Jake and Elwood at Bob’s Country Bunker. “We got both kinds of music at the Bunker- country and western.”
Kathleen10: They do like their barbecue. My ranching buddy, soon after he arrived out West after leaving the service, shot a good sized elk and filled his deep freezer with elk steak, elk sausage, elk burgers etc. A break from beef he said. I visited that winter and sure enough, he wasn’t going to stick those steaks in an oven, we fired up the outdoor grill in a light snowfall, and were those steaks good.
I love this story. Citizen’s arrest with bells on! I hate to say, in England the cops would promptly have arrested the cowboy, charged him with assault, and some idiot magistrate would have thrown him in jail and awarded the thief compensation. Think I’m joking? I’m really not.
Kathleen10 says: “I don’t know if people who don’t know Americans understand that this is a big part of American culture, this kind of thing.”
Yup, those of us who were kids in the 60s over here in Ireland certainly do, anyway. “The Virginian” was huge on television back then, even into the 70s. Playgrounds witnessed regular pitched battles of “cowboys ‘n’ injuns” and Saturday afternoon features at the local “pictures” (movies to you) were dominated by John Wayne and Westerns generally – entry fee 6d! Attempts to fashion a lasso from whatever bits of rope could be salvaged in our daily wanderings after school usually proved quite unsuccessful, if not actually dangerous (and attempts to use them even more so, especially on “horseback” i.e. bikes) but it didn’t stop us trying. So yes, we understand. God bless y’all. J.
A German friend recently told me about Karl May, whose numerous Western themed novels were very widely read and made the German reading public very much aware of cowboy and Indian lore. I dare say the name of this interpreter of iconic American culture is almost unknown to Americans.
Oh yes indeed; there was once a time when German boys were addicted to reading, in the shine of a pocket lamp underneath their blanket, books that were decried by their parents and teachers as being too trivial [!] and damaging their good tastes, and which began like this:
Whenever I think about the Red Indian, I think about the Turk; now this, curious though it may seem, does have its justification. May there be however few points of comparison, they are similar in the one thing at least that they, though more so the ones than the others, have been given up on: One speaks about the Turks hardly in another manner than calling him “Sick Man” [on the Bosporus = the Ottoman Empire], while Anyone that knows the state of the affairs must call the Red Indian the Dying Man.
Indeed, the Red Nation is dying! From the Tierra del Fuego until far north of the North-American lakes, the giant patient is lying on his bed, prostrate, overthrown by an unrelenting Fate that knoweth no mercy. With all the forces in his power he has bristled against the same, but in vain; his powers have more and more faded; but few more breaths of air are in store for him, and the twitches which, from time to time, move his naked body are the convulsions that announce the proximity of death.
His early end, is it his fault? Does he have deserved it?
If it be true that everything alive has a right to live, and if this is applicable to both the entirety and the singular entity, then the Red Man has a right to exist no less so than the White Man, and may well claim the permission to develop in a social, in a governmental manner according to his individuality. Now they say of course: “The Red Indian does not have the necessary qualities to build a state.” Is this true? I say: no! but I am not going to state claims here, because it is not my aim to write a scholarly treatise dealing with the matter. The White Man found time to develop naturally; by and by, hunter became shepherd, shepherd became peasant, peasant became industrialist; many centuries have passed over this; the Red Man however has not found this time, for it was not granted to him. He is supposed to make a giant leap from the first and lowest step, viz. from that of hunter, to the highest one, and one has not thought, when making this demand, about the fact that this would make him fall and hurt himself perilously.
It is a cruel law that the weaker one has to make place for the stronger one; but as it goes through the whole of Creation and is valid in the entire earthly nature, we must assume that either this cruelty is but seemingly so, or capable of a Christian mitigation, because the Eternal Wisdom that gave this law is Eternal Love at the same time.
Tempi passati, as the Italians say. Though Karl May’s works are still widely known in Germany, and even, sometimes, read.
Coming to think of it, if we can look over the fact that a semicolon, not a period, comes after it,
“Whenever I think about the Red Indian, I think about the Turk” (Immer fällt mir, wenn ich an den Indianer denke, der Türke ein)
might be something for our reverend host’s series of great opening liners.