A Picture, a Tribute and some Memories
Hi All!Several folks have been on me to put up a picture on my profile. Well, I don't have any pictures of me that are suitable; file size too big, I look too stupid, I don't look like that anymore, I didn't like it, and so on. So I finally settled on this one. This is a picture of my Father, Eric E. Muehleisen (1934 - 1999) in his "Toby the Clown" persona and I decided to use it here as a tribute to him.
Toby the Clown was a part-time pursuit of his that took his family (my Mom, my sister Kris, my brother Butch, and myself) all over the Pacific Northwest for grocery store grand openings, and rodeos. During the summers we'd all load up on a weekend and travel to some place and spend the weekend while Dad did his thing. Here are some other pictures enjoy.
My Dad at a grocery store somewhere in Washington State.
That's my Dad on all fours "playing" with the bull.
My Dad entertaining the crowd. The crowd is in the new bleachers behind the camera. What you see in the background were the old wooden bleachers which were going to torn down. I remember that because my bother played in them with some other kids during the rodeo. I remember that but I can't remember where this photo was taken :-(
Our goat, one of many that we had over the years. Dad used them in his rodeo act. We had a donkey, chickens, a duck one year and, of course, the family dog always went with us. When stopped to eat Dad would insist on parking where he could see through the resturaunt's windows to keep on eye on the trailer. We looked like a traveling gypsy circus much to Mom's embarrassment. Of course, we kids thought it cooler than anything and we made sure everyone knew all the neat animals were ours!
Here's my Dad earning his rodeo pay. At a rodeo his main duty was to get and keep the bull away from the cowboy once the cowboy had 'dismounted" the bull. Dismounting wasn't an issue - they all did that one way or the other. However, what was often an issue was whether the cowboy could get up and get out of the way of the bull after he was "dismounted" - that's where my Dad came in.
Here's my Dad again "playing" with a bull. He's setting up the bull in order to jump over the bull's head. Once the bull puts his head down and starts to charge he can't change direction. So my Dad would get the bull to charge and then run up to it, turn at the last minute as it charged, put his hand on the bull's head and jump. The bull would left his head and this lifted my Dad up and over. One of my fondest memories of this time in my life was once watching my Dad do this and hearing the roar of the crowd!
Take Care, Be Good and don't play in the street!
SteveMule
posted by Steve Mule at 12:34 PM
3 Comments:
Steve;
This is great, and what a tribute to your Dad. How did he ever get into clowning?
David,
Thank you for your kind comment! You're on record for being the first commentator on my blog. Kudo's!
Dad grew up in the NE portion of PA, in coal county, as it's often called. As a boy he did what many young boys did and do and that's dream of cowboys and wanting to be one. After WW2 several Dude Ranches started in PA and Dad was able to get a job at one. They often had rodeos and Dad would be involved in them, either as a cowboy or as the clown. He also started doing a magic act and so on. In the early 50's Dad entered the Army and wound up at Ft. Lewis WA where he met my Mom. He started working at Boeing as an illustator drawing the tech diagrams for maintainance manuals and operation manuals for the B-47, B-52, 727 and 707 aircraft. Dad used his weekends and vacation time to go to the rodeos and after awhile got back into it. After us kids were born and had grown up sufficently we as a family started going with him and that's how we did our family vacations.
The rodeo clown has two functions - keep the crowd entertained when livestock is changed out (switching from calf roping to saddle bronc riding for example) and during the bull riding they prevent the bull from goring the cowboy once the cowboy is off the bull.
I got these photo's from my sister and I'll check if she has anymore.
SteveMule
Steve -
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