The Bulls Are Here
Dr. Craig and Maureen Booth
By Lyman Hafen Every year during those dazzling days of midSeptember, you counted on it. We were two long weeks into the school year. The scorching air of summer was just beginning to wane under the new slant of the sun. Then the trucks rumbled into town, and a battalion of boys and girls swept through the neighborhoods as fast as they could pedal yelling, “The bulls are here!”
Swanee Kirby’s hulking stock trucks growled onto the rodeo grounds and lurched to a stop at the stock pens on the north side of the Lion’s Dixie Sun Bowl. Before the first trailer gate was lifted, the fences were already lined with wide-eyed girls and boys from every sector of town. A sigh of delight and terror rose from our chests as the bulls rumbled out of the trailer one by one, briskets waggling, snot blowing, throats gurgling as they trotted heavily down the ramp to their pens.
And there they stood like alien monsters in the golden afternoon, shifting from side to side, twitching their massive humps, pitching their high-racked horns, claiming their territory as the sunlight glinted in their eyes the size of cue balls. It was an annual rite of fall for a kid growing up in 1960s St. George. In recent years, I’ve learned it was the same for St. George kids growing up in the 1950s. It all became clear to me a few years ago when I received a text out of the blue on a mid-September day. It simply said, “THE BULLS ARE HERE.” I didn’t recognize the number, but I heeded the call. With no bike at hand, I jumped in the car and drove straight to the Sun Bowl. I walked up to the stock pen 44 www.sghealthandwellnessmagazine.com
