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NTH HE HI ds I Et Pl EE Ec "A Family Tradition for 128 Years" PORT PERRY STAR - Tuesday, Sept. 20, 1994 - 5 4 ISTE B & DI RI POU DAV COMMUNITY By Jeff Mitchell Port Perry Star Bandon Moore, nineteen years old, stretches his long legs and lights up a smoke. "I'm a third-generation cowboy," he says, and glances across the room at his grandfather. "It's just something I wanted to do. My family have stood behind me whatever I wanted to do." What it is he loves to do, specifically, is ride bulls. Big ones. Brandon is an up-and-coming talent in the rodeo circuit here, currently fourth in over all standings and virtually assured of a spot in the finals, set to take place in Orono this weekend. He and his first cousin, Danny Stewart -- also a bull rider -- have spent the season, from May to September, doing the rodeo circuit and amassing points, and coming up against some pretty tough customers. Brandon graduated a few years ago from junior steer riding to the bulls. So did Danny. (44 I like bull riding a little better," says Brandon, the more talkative of the two. "It's a little more exciting than barebacks. There's glory, there's money -- it's just the whole concept of man against beast." The beast, incidentally, is a bigger-than-life Brahma, weighing in between 1,700 pounds and a ton. Brandon was 16 when he started riding them. Danny has had his share of experience on the rodeo, too. Just seventeen now, and getting ready to graduate from Port Perry High School, Danny came up riding steers and entering the junior roping competition. Now he's a bull rider and working on his technique. "I just love to do it," he says. He chalks up the success he's had this season -- he was in 12th position two weeks ago -- to a natural ability that's a little hard to define for a guy in a suit. "Either you have it or you don't," he says, simply. Bandon explains that staying on an enraged behemoth for the required éight seconds is really quite basic: "You go with your bulls," he says. "It's a lot of balance." "You have to know in your mind you can ride the bull. If you have any doubt, he'll buck you right off." There are three moves the bull make, he says: He can dodge to the right, or the left, or just buck like a fiend to try and get you off his back. "You gotta watch his shoulders," Brandon instructs. But he also admits he's run up against some hird generation cowboy @& loves to ride 'big' bulls | opponents he just couldn't read, like one bull who threw him again and again. "That bull had no shoulders," he points out. So it helps to go to school. Both Brandon and Danny have attended seminars on the finer points of bull riding in Canada and the U.S, and Brandon has plans to travel to California for mor@nstruction in the near future. It's good to hear what each cowboy tutor has to offer, says Brandon, because everybody has a different philosophy. You just stick with what works for you, and forget about the stuff that doesn't. Bou these guys see themselves carrying fi on with their pursuit of the world's most dangerous sport, and eventually becoming pros. That's despite having to spend long hours on the road, grinding it out at the [=e regional rodeos, and sometimes spending | more money than you make to get J somewhere and ride. : ...And the disconcerting fact that you don't gh really meet up with a lot of old bull riders. "I'd like to become a professional bull rider, but I don't think I'd make a career out of it," says Brandon, who works right now for a [3 construction company. "When you go to the pros, you don't see #8 fs many guys over 30 riding bulls." No wonder. Brandon had his pelvis broken and chipped BB his hip bone; that was last year. : And Danny caught a horn in the head at an event in Sarnia, receiving a gash that took 18 stitches. It's things like that that make a cowboy kind of reflective, sometimes. You can hear it when Brandon muses about his current placing, and the big final in Orono (two weekends away when we talked). Orono is the place where the top seven cowboys and cowgirls on the circuit meet to thrash it out for bragging rights in each of the rodeo categories, and points are what get you there. "There's no guarantee, because I could come out this weekend and break both my arms." W atching and listening to all this is Ralph Smith, the boys' grandfather, a lean 72-year-old with a cowboy's limp. He watches Brandon and Danny -- and a couple other grandchildren and great-grandchildren, including a four-year-old female mutton buster -- when they're doing their thing, and gives the advice you can offer only if you've clung to broncs and such for 30-odd years. Ralph Smith, 72, with rodeo-riding grandsons Brandon Moore (right) and Danny Stewart. "You can see the mistakes they can't," he says. "So you try to tell them what you did when you were riding." Ralph doesn't make every event, because he runs a team of Belgians up at Pleasure Valley, and the weekends get busy. Still, he loves to get out and watch the kids, and will be in Orono this weekend if he can make it. He rode in the States and Canada for 35 years. He called it quits in 1970 -- he would've been around 48 -- after getting tossed for the last time, by a bronc at a rodeo in upper New York State. "I got a busted-up hip," says Ralph. "And I got an artificial hip out of it." He walks now with a stiff and pronounced limp, and sometimes depends on a cane. But he doesn't appear to feel too rough about the injury that ended his rodeo days. | "I rode long enough," says Ralph. Organizers credit the community with Fox Run's huge success From Page 1 five or 10 km courses. When they returned they were treated to a barbecue, and given certificates of apprecia- tion for taking part. But response to calls for partici- pants was so great there weren't enough certificates to go around, said Mrs. McArthur. But the air of making an effort for a good cause was per- vasive among the runners and volunteers, a great start to re- establishment of the Fox Run, which has not been held here for several years. "There was just a feeling," said Mrs. McArthur. "When people were leaving, they were saying, This was fun." She added that when the crowds were gone and it was time to total the day's pledges, committee members were more than pleased with the results, although they had never set a specific goal. "I don't think any of us dared to say it," said Mrs. McArthur. "I know we never in any of our committee meetings said this is the goal we're aiming for." And while the event took hours of work and organization by the local committee, Mrs. McArthur attributes the success of the the run to those who took part. "Four hundred people for our population is pretty phe- nomenal," she said. "There's no doubt in our minds this was not the committee's success, it was the community's success. "The whole community deserves recognition for what they have done." ad Terry's Team members -- local people who have fought cancer and won -- join volunteers for opening ceremonies at Sunday's Terry Fox Run in Port Perry's Palmer Park. The event drew more than 400, and raised $14,000 for cancer research.