Are You an American?

Biggest and Best Rodeo -- The West a-Hootin' August and New York, we understand, will see one of the biggest and best exhibitions of a certain Americant art that has been displayed so far--an art as completely and typically American as the first Olympic Games were Greek. We refer to bull-dogging, bronco-busting, roping et al. The Frontier may have passed but the sports of the Frontier survive. Sans six-guns, perhaps; sans Deadwood Dick's Last Chance Saloon and a picturesque if sanguinary revolver-practice; but with the spirit of that Frontier alive for all that. Tex Austin is the promoter of the big new rodeo, and he obviously intends to go about it in a showman-like way. He has hired the new Yankee Stadium for a period of ten days in August when the Yankees will be away and he intends to offer $50,000 in prize money--double the total prize money offered at the Madison Square Garden rodeo last winter. The entry list is open to all comers--the contests will be conducted in accordance with the rules of the Rodeo Association--and High-Chin Bob and his riding confreres from all quarters of the West are going to come a-hootin'. Arrangements have been made to quarter some 400 head of stock under the Yankee grandstand-broncos, steers for the bulldoggmg contests, calves for the roping, etc. A huge cocoa-mat will cover the dia-mand and the greater part of the outfield, and the bulldogging and roping will take place on the mat. There will also be relay races on the present track, which will be widened especially for the purpose. Events will take place every afternoon and every night with tickets at a $2 and $3 "top," respectively. And the champions, male and female, of the Western rodeos will arrive en masse.

Here is something American to the core--a thing most natively American in its every attribute, sprung like the border ballads from an aspect of American life now almost completely gone, preserved for the amazement of an age well nigh as different from the age that produced the rodeo as the Court of George V is from the court of Henry VIII.

Perhaps your grandfather went West with the covered wagons--or round the Horn to California in '49. Perhaps he didn't. At any rate, if you're in New York in August, here's something you shouldn't miss.