The mercado:
The booths that line the area outside the arena have the most glorious mish-mash of offerings.
The unexpected: The Marines recruit from a big black trailer with the words “Marines move toward the sounds of chaos” in big white letters splashed across the side. There’s a chin-up bar set up in front of the trailer, and a muscular Marine in a black T-shirt and camouflage pants makes pull ups look easy. They hope to inspire recruits from here every year, says Staff Sgt. Christopher Maynard. The actual enlistment paperwork is done elsewhere. “It’s a process to do that.”
Nearby, Robert Sanders fuses a tiny glass humming bird. He sells horses, penguins, rabbits and pigs, all small, delicate and made of glass. Oddly, he says, the humming birds are more popular than the horses. And on occasion he gets asked to make a replica of a particular horse. “I just need a picture and a couple of hours,” he says.
The expected: The booth with the official rodeo merchandise is stacked with shirts of all styles. The most popular, 9-year-old Griffin Wedman explains, are the tank tops, the Henley and the pink short sleeves. Griffin volunteers at the booth — he has for three years. And he’s good at it, he says. He’s motivated: his softball team gets 10 percent of what he sells. “I’ve raised $56 so far,” he says proudly on the rodeo’s second day.
The breathtaking: The enticing smell of leather draws crowds towards this booth, filled with gorgeous, hand-tooled saddles with intricate designs. Jesse W. Smith rarely gets a chance to rest in his lone chair.
“Everything he does is beautiful,” says Rosie Reeve, who looks over the saddles as her husband orders a new belt. They make a point to stop by and visit Smith when he brings his leatherworks to the rodeo. He has done so for 16 years.
“You aren’t going to find anything like these in a store,” says Reeve.
Smith lives in Colorado and has made saddles for 50 years. He’ll be 77 in April, he says, and has no interest in slowing down.
“Why would I quit?” he asks, using his rough, strong hands to make a point. “I love what I’m doing.”
The head-scratching: A woman leans back in a chair as Talor Zalach smears white cream over her face. “It removes lines,” he says when an onlooker inquires about what is going on. Selling Forever Young cosmetics, he pulls up before-and-after pictures on his cellphone. It’s hard to tell the before from the after, but he swears it could make one beautiful.
The kissing booth: Toward the south end of the mercado is a “Kissing Booth” sign. But it’s not what one might think.
A miniature donkey and a miniature horse sit in a small corral. “We ask people to kiss the ass,” says Theresa Warnell with a laugh. “If they do, they get a taffy kiss.”
There’s a purpose behind it — she and Steve Boice run the 8-year-old Horse’n Around Rescue Ranch and Foundation, which cares for rescue horses on about 1,500 acres in Hereford. They hope the kissing booth attracts volunteers and donations.
She pulls out an album of photos and proudly points to before-and-after pictures. Horses previously skin and bone, injured and neglected, blossom under their care. Many of them are then adopted out, she says; some are too injured, or too old, to be adopted and stay at the ranch, which has an all-volunteer staff.
“We’ve rescued about 104 horses, and adopted about 43,” she says, drawing animals from around the state. “We do all we can to make the horses healthy and comfortable.”
