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Thousands flock to watch the wildest rodeo east of the Mississippi.
By CHRIS TISCH
© St. Petersburg Times, published September 3, 2001
OKEECHOBEE -- The way Pete Clemons tells it, luck is a factor when a cowboy climbs atop an 1,800-pound bull ready to unleash its fury.
Clemons was a rodeo cowboy for some 25 years. He rode horses bareback, he rode saddle bronc, he roped calves and he braved bulls. And the most he ever got hurt was a couple of bruises.
"If your luck ever turns bad," a friend once told Clemons, "I don't want to be within 100 miles of you."
Clemons, 74, is a legend in this town on the northern lip of Lake Okeechobee. He won the first Okeechobee rodeo on Labor Day weekend 1951. He won the second rodeo a year later, and went on to win so many rodeos that he lost count.
Fifty years later, organizers say the Okeechobee rodeo is the wildest east of the Mississippi. More than 10,000 people pack the town's arena over the three-day Labor Day weekend to watch cowboys from across the Southeast in action.
While the rodeo announcer pumps up the arena crowd and the bulls are loaded into metal chutes underneath the south bleachers, Clemons watches over young cowboys who get set to ride.
"Basically, you've got a man and an animal," he said, "and they've got to get things worked out."
Cowboy Seth Samples sits atop a bull Saturday that weighs close to a ton. When the gate swings open, the bull blasts out of its chute, kicking its hind end straight up in the air and spinning.
Samples' body buckles. The bull flattens out and Samples, a 29-year-old cowboy from Jacksonville, shifts his balance. But he overcompensates. The bull tosses Samples to the dirt.
He gets up to run away, but the bull is in front of him. The animal lowers his heads and slashs at Samples with his horns, mashing the cowboy in the left side.
Samples spins away and runs back toward the chute. His face is red and caked with sweat and dirt. He winces in pain.
Paramedics tend to him, bandaging a gash in his left side.
"I got up and ran, and it was just the wrong way to go," Samples said. "He got to play with me today."
Samples' ride was only about seven seconds long, a second short of what he needed to qualify. As he walks away from the rodeo, he is sore but determined to do it again. He'll ride again next weekend.
Three years ago, a bull crushed his chest, bruising his heart and puncturing his lungs. The rush of the ride is worth it, he says.
"We're all going to die. I don't want to be an old man," he says. "If I die, I die doing what I love. I feel I'm blessed to do that."
About 30 miles inland from the Gulf of Mexico, after the only concrete in the rearview mirror is a thin ribbon of road, State Road 70 snakes east through a landscape of pastures and thick orange groves.
After more than 100 miles of brush and dust, the road winds into Okeechobee, a Seminole Indian word meaning "big water."
People in this town like staying here, where the cattle and cowboys still rule the countryside.
There are 150,000 cattle in Okeechobee County, about five times the number of people who live there. And just about every young boy here dreams of being a cowboy.
To start them out young, 3- to 5-year-olds participate in mutton bustin'. The kids are placed on the back of a sheep and told to hang on. The child who stays on longest wins a belt buckle.
Devon Jones, about a week away from his third birthday and weighing about 30 pounds, is about to bust a mutton. He is wearing a belt buckle that his cousin won as mutton bustin' champion in 1995. Devon says what he really wants to ride is a bull.
"I told him if he rides a sheep first, then he can ride a bull," says his grandmother, Leslie Lewis.
But when Devon is placed atop the sheep, it starts to bleat. It scares the boy, and he decides not to ride.
The winner of the mutton bustin' Sunday was 3-year-old Dillon Grillo, who held on for 3.96 seconds to the delight of the 4,000 people in the crowd.
His father, Okeechobee resident Tony Grillo, said Dillon might be riding bulls soon enough.
"This is a start," he said. "He likes it."
Some things have changed over 50 years.
The popularity of rodeo, which has swelled in recent years, now lures more city people to town. Unlike the old days, when rodeo cowboys competed in multiple events, most cowboys today specialize in only one.
Okeechobee has a Wal-Mart, fast-food restaurants and a Blockbuster video.
But many things have stayed the same. The people are friendly, the rodeo action is fast, the taverns are bustling with cowboys after sundown.
And when the national anthem is played before the rodeo, people stand up, put their hats to their chests and sing along.
There are two things the locals will tell a visitor to do if they're interested in learning about Okeechobee.
The first is to go to the :08 Seconds night club, where more than 1,000 people flock to on weekend nights to line dance and tell stories. The night club, a refurbished drive-in theater with parking lots as big as an airport's, is owned by two strawberry-haired sisters.
"The true cowboys, they're here," said one of the sisters, Karla Hales, who had her nose busted by a bull she was castrating about five years ago.
The other suggestion the locals will make is to visit with Pete Clemons, who probably can tell you more about the town and its rodeo than anyone else.
Clemons still owns the cattle market his father bought 40 years ago. His hands are sandpaper-rough from a lifetime of work, his skin is brown as a dull penny, his straw cowboy hat is scuffed and a little worn.
What Clemons will tell you is this: He was not only lucky to suffer only a few bruises in his time as a rodeo cowboy, he is lucky to live in Okeechobee, where he has seen 50 years of rodeo.
"It's special, it's a common ground for the people," he said. "You'll see things here you won't see anywhere else."