Clownin' around

By Pete Kendall/reporter@trcle.com

June 15, 2009 09:56 am

— Jim Bob Feller is old enough, 58, to remember times and people that rodeo greenhorns won’t fathom.
“When I was a kid in 1964, I read an article in Western Horseman about George Doak and Junior Meek,” Feller said. “I thought they were cool.”
Beyond cool, actually.
Doak and Meek were Hall of Fame clown-bullfighters and legitimately funny men.
The late Meek, a Cleburne native, pioneered the art of jumping over a bull to entertain the crowds and distract the bulls.
“George was one of my heroes,” Feller said. “Junior was tougher than a road lizard. He played harder than most men fought. The only time I saw him work was when he came out of retirement for the Cleburne rodeo in about 1977. We used to have our convention in Denver. One time, I loaded up with George, Junior, Wright Howington and J.W. Stoker, the trick roper. You talk about scared to death. That was an experience for a kid.”
Forty-two years into his rodeo career, Feller is still collecting memories and experiences. He’ll be the clown in the barrel during the annual Cleburne PRCA Rodeo, which takes place Wednesday through Saturday.
Feller, now a Granbury resident, began working amateur rodeos while in high school in Fort Worth. He competed in bulls and saddle broncs, without great success, for three years. That’s when he turned to clowning, modeling his early efforts after a veteran named Keith Anderson.
‘The earlier clowns did it all,” he said. “They were funny as well as bullfighters. In the business today, there are only three or four bullfighters who do comedy as well.
“In the late ’70s, the comedy bullfighters began to disappear with the emergence of the bullfight tours. The smaller rodeos could only afford to hire a bullfighter, so many clowns were out of work.”
Feller fought bulls for 17 years before becoming a barrelman, an occupation that requires athleticism, savvy and trust — trust because you’re more than somewhat dependent on the bullfighter, who may be positioned behind the barrel.
“Some bulls are just freaky,” Feller said. “A lot of times, the bull will just throw his head up and run through the barrel. That’s when you can really get hurt. You have to know how to brace yourself, and you have to have a lot of faith in whoever is behind the barrel fighting the bull.
“Since the Wrangler bull fights came around, the young kids want to freestyle bullfight, and that’s it. The last 10, 15 years, they aren’t accustomed to working around a barrel. So I’m kind of picky anymore about who I get in the ring with.
“Last year at Cleburne, I let Mark Swingler [barrelman] borrow my barrel. Somebody had stolen his in Gladewater the week before. On Saturday night, a kid [bullfighter] let a Mexican bull get a horn in the barrel. That shouldn’t have happened.”
Barrel work requires timing and guts, lots of guts.
“I don’t go down [in the barrel] till the bull is maybe three steps from me,” Feller said. “The older I get, the quicker I go down. Quail Dobbs, the Hall of Famer, his old face is pretty scarred up, bless his heart. He’s justice of the peace in Coahoma now. Quail was bad about waiting to go down in the barrel. The rim of the barrel would hit him in the head when the bull would hit the barrel. I decided I’d better get down in plenty of time.”
The barrels are not necessarily built for safety, much less comfort.
“There’s more protection on the outside for the bull than there is on the inside for the clown,” Feller said. “Years ago, you’d have a big pickle drum with tires around it. Now, you’ve got probably three to four inches of foam on the outside and an inch of foam on the inside.”
Every rodeo cowboy and clown has been injured.
Feller has been injured so many times he occasionally forgets he’s hurt.
“I went to the doctor in 2002 because my neck was sore,” Feller said. “The doctor asked me, ‘When did you break your neck?’ I told him, ‘I didn’t know I did.’ He said, ‘You did.’ I did it in the barrel. You take a beating in there. I thought about quitting, and I’ve cut back some, but I haven’t cut completely back. I work eight to 10 rodeos a year clowning. I go to another 15 to 20 for Dodge Rodeo.”
Feller is business-minded in the ring but doesn’t mind having fun.
“I try to feed off what’s going on,” he said. “I’ve got a little trained mule we used to call Oatsmobile. Now that Obama is in the car business, we call the mule the Obamamobile. I’ve gotten a lot of mileage out of that. With Cleburne being a four-day rodeo, we’ll switch things up from night to night. It gets to me too much like a job if you do the same thing every night.”
The rodeo circuit has changed since Feller earned his PRCA card in 1970.
“When I was a kid, there was beer drinking and whisky, and in the ‘80s there were drugs just like in every other walk of life,” he said. “Now, these kids are athletes. They go to the gym to work out. We have a few rebels but nothing like the old days.”
Feller can usually do without life on the road.
“But they gave me a little award at the rodeo in California. When I was loading up on Monday morning to come home, a little boy hugged me and said he wanted to thank me. I asked what for, and he said, ‘For being such a good clown.’ Stuff like that keeps you going.”

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