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This is Lee Habib and this is Our American Stories, the show where America is the star and the American people coming to you from the city where the West begins. Fort Worth, Texas. Being a rodeo clown is hard work. and important work. Besides being expected to entertain massive crowds, Bull riders literally put their lives in the painted hands of those involved in this unique profession.
here to share his story on becoming a rodeo clown. is Leon Coffey. We'd like to thank the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. for providing us with this audio. Let's get into the story.
My dad told me when I was born we had horses. I don't think I've been a day in my life that I didn't own at least one. Oh man, I was born in Blanco, Texas. in 1954. in the courthouse.
Because um In Blanco, Texas, the courthouse was in front and the hospital was in the back. And we've got a website called Courthouse Babies. It's quite the conversation piece. Great granddad, my granddad and my dad broke mules for the highway department when they made roads, mule teams, and Fresno's. Granddad, when he died, was 72 years old and had 40 head of horses.
My dad had to go get all them horses after he died and Those two were the people that trained me and form my life. And uh long before I could walk. They they put you on them horses and on them baby coats and let the little babies ride around on them. Just kind of get them gentle and are you accustomed to people and But I was the littlest of the herd. My granddad We'd gather all the boys up every su every summer and We all stayed around up there and rode horses and I was the littlest of the herd.
So I got to ride Grand Duce Colts.
So I learned to ride bucking horses at a very young age because I was the smallest. I rode a lot of good bucking horses and I started out riding Bubback horses and then I went to Bulls and Back then they were 300 guys that would enter a rodeo and you know, a little rodeo, there'd be fifty, sixty guys there and they only paid four or five. And uh If there was Paying four monies, I was most generally fifth. Every now and then they I'd let me win like the last hole or something like that. I rode good enough to just starve myself to death.
It was a lot of fun. But when you get married and So having kids, you can't do that. I had to try to feed the family. And uh This whole journey of fighting bulls Being a rodeo clown. came from one day When my daughter Said she wanted a tricycle.
And I didn't have the money to buy it.
So I just got up of them, got in front of them. The man told me one time, all you have to do is run fast and act goofy. I said, you're going to pay me for that? He said, Yeah. I said, Man, I used to get kicked out of school for that.
Now you're gonna pay me? Yeah, I can do this.
So I went to work for Steiners. Because she wanted tricycle and I was determined that I was going to make enough money to do that.
So I did it. But I didn't I thought I through this for a couple of years and go ahead and try to make a living somewhere and get a good occupation and Try to feed my family. Mm-hmm. But um I got addicted to that adrenaline rush. That you have when you step out in front of 1800 pounds of massive beasts with baseball bats stuck out of each side of his hair and a pair of God in his eye won't annihilate you off the face of this earth.
And you gotta wait. to make the right move. That's an adrenaline rush this match by nobody. Nothing. We learned from the school of Hard Knock.
But uh I would drive Two or three hundred miles to watch people work because there weren't those schools that I could go to to learn how. Because if you got hit going one way, you get up and go back the other way. And if you're tough enough, you're going to make it. If you're not, you're going to go to house. I'll never forget a bull they cost 17 done.
He was a yellow bald-faced mealy bull that I To this day I've never gotten around. Deep. frightened me. I got five gears. first, second, third, fourth and fear gear.
And when one puts me in fear gear, God couldn't catch me. This will put me in fear gear a lot. I just could not get around him. I'll never forget that brother. I hated him.
But he was probably the one bull that broke an egg in me and said, I'm gonna do it I I'm gonna face that fear and got me over the hunt. But I never got around him. But he hooked me a lot. But I just wouldn't quit. But you have to understand something.
In Rodeo It ain't about the colour of your skin, it's about your ability. If you don't have the ability to do it, You're not going to be there very long. Mm-hmm. And that was another driving force I had I had to prove to everybody that I could do it. besides the fact that I had to do it.
I think it's not. to make a living. When you're out there riding bulls and you get bucked off, And you a bullet's about to run over you. You don't say send in the white guy, not the black guy. You sit sending the clowns.
There's been places and times that We're trying. But being raised in Blanco, Texas, back off in them woods right there, I never knew what. Prejudice really was. And that I mean it just We all eat, sleep, and break bread together. And My granddad was a Baptist minister and I was raised in the Bible.
So I had I had no fear. of what a man can do to me as long as you're doing your job. You know, I'd There was things Yeah. that were going on back then that I I was uh privy to, but Never let it set me back. I just kept going.
You can slow me down, but you ain't never gonna stop. And you've been listening to the legendary black rodeo clown Leon Coffey telling the story about his life, his early life.
Well, let's face it, how many people are born in a courthouse? And as he put it, just well, he he got into this line of work because he wanted to get his daughter a tricycle, and he was told all he needed to do was run fast and act goofy. and suddenly he was addicted to the adrenaline rush. When we come back. More of Leon Coffey's story here on Our American Story.
Lee Habib here, and I'm inviting you to help Our American Stories celebrate this country's 250th birthday coming soon. If you want to help inspire countless others to love America like we do and want to help us bring the inspiring and important stories told here about a good and beautiful country, please consider making a tax-deductible donation to Our American Stories. Go to ouramericanstories.com and click the donate button. Any amount helps. Go to ouramericanstories.com and give.
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I hate to say it, but I don't trust much of anything. It's the rage bait. It feels like it's trying to divide people. If we got clear facts, maybe we could calm down a little. NBC News brings you clear reporting.
Let's meet at the facts. Let's move forward from there. NBC News reporting for America. Hear that? That's what it sounds like when you plant more trees than you harvest.
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so he could buy a tricycle for his little girl. Let's return to the rest of the story here again. is Leon Coffey. There's two aspects to what Rodeo clowning and book fighting. is They've got to have a certain personality.
But then they've got to have the eye of the tiger. and control of both. That's a very difficult task. I didn't have it to begin. I'd learned it over the years.
But to see somebody In a wreck. and run to get in it. That's ludicrous. But it's what we do. The only people that really know what we do and how we do it as bullfighters.
Or Cops? firemen and soldiers. Mm-hmm. Because they all go into the fire. Not away from it.
And When you can do that, With expertise, it's great. The Crown Prince of Rodeo was quailed outs to me. Quill was a little short guy. that he fought bulls Really good. They got a lot of great rodeos, but Queer was funny.
And uh He told me many years ago, he said son, no funding, no money. I said, really? He said, yeah. Bull powders are a diamond desert. You terrify me and you ain't funny.
You wanted the ass.
So I had to put comedy in my book writing and I w I hit a lot of my inability to do things with comedy. I couldn't get around a certain build, but if I couldn't, I'd ham it up to make the people laugh, and that's what. I got seeing, wow, that's great. Everybody's sitting up there in them stands. or paying your bills.
Another guy w I learned a lot from is is um Bobby Toad Cook. I will say I could never keep up with Bobby Toad Cuck. He works phenomenal. Tell you a story about Bobby Toad Cook. There's a school of comedy called the Red Skeleton School of Comedy and you don't go to it.
They come get you and take you to it to Las Vegas and they keep you there for two years. And they teach you how to be funny. And they took him up, and he had to train for two years to move every Family, everybody. You had to live there for two years and learn how to be funny. and he learned it and he he was Awesome.
He had really good stuff and he knew how to do things, how to make people laugh, how to make people feel good about Latin. Get you. And he said, don't make them laugh at you, make them lap with you. She quit yet. Hmm.
That's a different look. He said, The only person that really needs to be entertained is you. I said, how is that? He said it You're a clown. If you're tickled, everybody else ought to be in stitches.
He said, so try to entertain yourself, and that's what I've done. He also told me, he said, look, If you tell a joke, It's all yours. If it bombs, it's all you. And it's all about the delivery of that joke. It's how you deliver it.
It's when you deliver it, it's the timing. You've got to have the right timing to tell the right stuff. to make it work. That was extremely difficult to do, but I I went out and tried to find uh I studied it, uh red skeleton tapes and Bill Cosby and all the great comedians, Bill Cosby only because he was great with facial expressions. Red Skelton because he was the king of comedy.
Comedy is not. Jokes. Comedy is physical. comedians Tell jokes. Comedy.
When you work in comedy, it's physical. And uh I am the last of the Mohicans. Yeah. that was a Bull powder. and comedy.
Nowadays that's just not You don't mix them to But it's evolved over the years to where these guys nowadays, I couldn't hold a candle to them because they study it and they work at it and they They finessed everything from the word go and these these guys nowadays are unbelievable athletes. When Rodeo first got started, it was the guy that got hurt. Riding bulls. but get out there and get the bull's attention, get the bull away from the cowboy. You know, just Kinda because he couldn't ride no more or at that time.
And you get them away from it, that's how it all got started. And then uh We would uh had to go tell jokes or entertain the crowd and stuff and When you go As a bull putty, you got a lot of lives on the line. with the best booze in the world. and you cannot be out of position to take that bull away from the cowboy. Yeah.
Which means if you're out there too far and that bull sees you and he quits bucking and wants to chase you, you just cuss that cowboy around. You have to be in the right place at the right time and be there when you need to be there. That's a very difficult task, but the guys that go there They're voted in there by the by the bull riders and when you get to that point They're telling you that You're the best in the business at that time. I believe in God. I will never say I saved a guy's life.
because that's God's job. But I will say I saved a lot of guys from a lot of bodily injury. I've had 14 knee surgeries. Knee replacement. I've had 140 different breaks, some of them two or three times.
Justin Healer had a readout on me one time. It was four pages long about all the injuries that I've had over the years. And I've been beat up, but. Like I said, I never had any formal training of how to do it.
So every time I had an injury, It was basically because I made a mistake. Mm-hmm. If you do everything exactly right, the book can't catch you. because that bull cannot hook his own hump.
So that's the safest place in the world to be. Little difficult to get there. To say the least. But once you get there, You're in ch you're in charge. Cowboys Go down and about to get hooked or something, you go in there and take that hooking for them.
That's your job. You go in there with every speck of you Trying to get the job done. Whatever happens, happens. And you live with it. But you try to minimize the injury.
to yourself and the bull rider. Because You. have got to face the next one.
Okay. One of the buttons told me many years ago, he said that if you get hurt on the first one, you ain't going to beat that for the last one. The good Lord gave me the ability to do what I do. Hmm. And I've always said when he takes that ability where that's when I'll quit.
He's taking my bullfighting ability away. because I was not vain enough to stay out there and keep fighting bullets when I knew I didn't have the step to do it. I'm still working some rodeos. I don't work a lot of them. I still work some right now.
I'm still working the Houston Livestock Show on Rodeo right now, but I'm not in the capacity that they used to be. Like a man told me one day, he said, you worked a lot, a long time for that name, and I let that name work for you.
So I'm doing that and I'm enjoying what the good Lord gave me the ability to do. Put buttons and seats and put smiles on faces. I'm going to tell you what my motto of life was. God put me on earth to do two things. That's make people happy and help people out.
And I can do them both right out there in that arena. And when he takes that ability away, she's going to quit. They segment some of it, but not all of it. This is a place I never in my life thought I'd be. When I was trying to get my daughter that tricycle, I never thought I'd be sitting right here.
I never thought. That tricycle. What put me in here? Mm. Uh And a special thanks to Leon Coffey.
To see someone in a wreck, that's a cowboy, and run into it. Towards that ball. is, as he put it, ludicrousy. Only cops, firemen, and soldiers understand what I'm talking about. But they don't have to be funny, too.
And funny. is money. in the world. of rodeo clowns. The Story of Leon Coffey.
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