Bronc tale grows

Rodeo Hall of Famer: Runaway bull would have reached the fair if not for cowboyhero

Bronc didn't even have time to cinch his saddle before going bull chasing.
Rodeo Hall of Famer Cotton Rosser knows how difficult roping an angry bull in aparking lot is.
Cotton Rosser hired the cowboy who saved Houston and knows the bull that gotaway.

You don't Taser a bull. They don't put that in police manuals, but any cowboy worth his stirrups knows that's about as sound an idea as petting a rattlesnake.

When National Rodeo Hall of Fame inductee Cotton Rosser heard that the Houston police had tried to Taser the runaway bull at the rodeo, he knew his protege and worker Bronc Boehnlein was in for a wild, high-stakes ride — one where either Bronc won or innocent people on the Houston Livestock & Rodeo show grounds lost big time.

"Tasering a bull just makes that bull a lot more mad and a lot more out of control," Rosser told CultureMap in an exclusive phone interview today. "When they told me about the Taser ... oh boy, Bronc had his work cut out for him."

Bronc did that work while getting dragged across a parking lot on a borrowed horse, with the animal's hooves struggling to gain traction on the unforgiving parking lot surface while the 1,400-plus-pound bull Hardball tried to get away from Bronc's lasso. "(Bronc) told me that he was pulled across the parking lot," Rosser said, revealing more untold details about the night that rocked the Houston rodeo and turned a previously unknown rodeo grunt into a quasi celebrity cowboy hero.

"He was on asphalt," Rosser continued."That's not a good surface for wrangling an angry bull."

Bronc still managed to stop Hardball — knowing he had little other choice. After all, "20-30 police officers," according to Houston rodeo CEO Leroy Shafer had been unsuccessful in trying to halt Hardball.

"At one point, Bronc told me that it was basically just him and the bull," Rosser said. "And that bull was heading for the fair. It's not that he wanted to hurt anyone. He's a bull. He just had to go somewhere and the fair was where he could go. Bronc really saved them from a bad scene."

Bronc himself also told a Sacramento TV station that Hardball seemed to be running toward the fair and the huge crowds there.

Rosser holds a unique perspective on the incident that happened Sunday evening, with the rodeo grounds crawling with tween girls there for the Jonas Brothers concert. The 81-year-old Rosser is not just Bronc's boss at the Flying U Rodeo Company in Marysville, Calif. He knew Bronc's grandfather, an old-school cowboy by the name of C.J. Jones. Rosser also knows the owner of Hardball, Don Hudson, who runs a ranch in Washington.

"That's a mean bull," Rosser said. "They said he was (more than) 1,400 pounds, but I think he's around 1,800 to 2,000 pounds. He's not a small bull."

Hardball was set to compete in the Houston rodeo last night — after having two days to calm down from his escape.

Rosser — who was inducted into the National Rodeo Hall of Fame last year — planned to call up Shafer (an old friend of Rosser's) to give the Houston rodeo CEO a little ribbing over what type of cowboy managed to prevent a bull tragedy in the nation's fourth largest city.

"I'll give him a little grief about Texas needing a California cowboy to save it," Rosser said. "Just a little joshing."

Rosser laughed when asked if a rivalry existed between Texas and California cowboys though.

"No, no, not anymore," he said. "All the cowboys in California are moving to Texas. A cowboy can sell his small place here and go buy an acre in Texas. There's a lot more horses in Texas than California now."

Sudden Cowboy Celebrity

Bronc Boehnlein lived a pretty simple modern cowboy life before word of his runaway bull heroics started spreading. This isn't one of the rodeo circuit's high-paid competitors. Bronc worked as a wrangler in Houston, a spot that's ordinarily far from the spotlight.

Rosser estimates that Bronc makes around $2,000 a month raising show horses. And Bronc hasn't stopped moving since he stopped Hardball. After immediately leaving Houston (before Shafer could even thank him) for two days in Sacramento to help his barrel racing cowgirl wife in another rodeo, Bronc spent today driving to Palm Springs for yet another rodeo.

After reading a story on CultureMap that detailed Bronc's exploits, a reporter from Sacramento's local ABC affiliate did interview Bronc on the air.

"Yeah, he's getting some grief about that from the other cowboys," Rosser said. "He's the new local celebrity."

By Rosser's seasoned estimation, Bronc deserves every bit of it though.

It's not just Bronc's instant decision to borrow a horse and a rope from a nearby calf roper that impresses Rosser.

"What people don't realize is that he didn't even have a chance to cinch his saddle," Rosser said. "Bronc just took off before anyone could tie his saddle. He was out there, bouncing all around on a uncinched saddle, trying to stop a 2,000-pound bull. On pavement. I don't think people who aren't in our business realize just how tough that is.

"That's some serious roping."

Rosser would know. He used to be one of the top cowboys in the country. Rosser won the Grand National Rodeo in 1951 before a tractor accident left him unable to compete. Bronc isn't nearly on Rosser's old level. But then again, Rosser never stopped a runaway bull in a parking lot either.

Bronc halted Hardball by getting him into a corner of the parking lot. Once the bull realized he was hemmed in, the beast calmed down.

"When Bronc first came to work for me, I was surprised by his skills," Rosser said. "Even though he comes from a rodeo family, you don't see skills like that in California often anymore. He's still just a kid (23). My goodness."

It turns out, there's at least one true cowboy left.

"I told the kid," Rosser said, laughing. "Nobody else is ever going to have a story like yours."

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Movie Review

Cookie Queens goes behind the scenes of Girl Scout Cookie season

Photo courtesy of Roadside Attractions

Girl Scouts in Cookie Queens.

Few people are strong enough to resist the lure of Girl Scout cookie season every year, with the cookies’ limited availability and unique flavors a strong incentive to indulge. But only the girls and their families who have sold the cookies know the joys and stresses of trying to get people to buy them, a process that is detailed in the new documentary, Cookie Queens.

The film by documentarian Alysa Nahmias uses the stories of four different girls to represent the nationwide ritual for the Girl Scouts. They include 12-year-old Olive in Charlotte, North Carolina, a longtime top seller; 8-year-old Shannon Elizabeth in El Paso, Texas, who wants to earn the reward of going to camp; 5-year-old Ara in San Diego, California, whose goal is modest compared to most other girls; and 9-year-old Nikki in Chino, California, who has to compete with her older sisters in the cookie-selling bonanza.

The girls represent a cross-section of both ages and backgrounds, with some girls coming from wealthy families and some girls dealing with more limited means. And how much money your family has makes a big difference, as not only does someone richer have more freedom with their time and supplies, but all scouts are required to reimburse the organization for every box they take in, regardless of whether they’re able to sell it or not.

That caveat makes the journeys of the four featured girls feel wildly different. It’s clear from the start that Olive and Nikki’s families don’t give a second thought to the personal economics of selling cookies, with each girl taking in thousands of boxes at the beginning of the six-week selling season. With both Olive and Nikki rightfully confident that they’ll have no problem offloading their supply, their stories turn to how selling is personally affecting them, with each trying to reconcile the fun of doing it with the pressure they feel from their family members.

Shannon Elizabeth’s story is more harrowing, as her parents feel a strong desire to help her accomplish her lofty goal, but worry that the cost might literally be too high for the family as a whole. More than once, the parents are shown fretting that they won’t have the money to pay back what they owe should they fall significantly short in their sales. Their selling approach, which includes walking through an empty swap meet and standing outside a chain restaurant at night, only adds to their stress.

The most fun story to watch is that of Ara, whose innocence is matched by her confidence. Her parents teach her how much money they’ll owe with her small goal of 55 boxes, but right away she takes on more responsibility than expected. She’s shown making sales pitches and tallying the total number of boxes she’s sold with little-to-no help from either her mom or dad. With her high voice, glasses, and a monitor on her arm to manage her diabetes, she becomes the cute and sympathetic part of the film.

There are times that the film starts to feel more than a little manipulative, however. While many of the moments documented come off as organic, some of them seem like Nahmias is actively guiding the participants in order to get a better story. This is especially evident with Shannon Elizabeth and her family, whose early struggles turn into a miraculous feel-good story by the end, a turnaround that seems implausible at best. Everything with them might have been aboveboard, but Nahmias and her team edit the family’s journey in a way that pushes a bit too hard for emotion.

Cookie Queens, which was produced by a company owned by Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, helps to give insight into the business of selling Girl Scout cookies for those who’ve only been on the purchasing end of the transaction. The dedication of each girl toward selling their allotted supply proves fun and interesting, even if the filmmaker tries to gild the lily on occasion.

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Cookie Queens is now playing in theaters,

movies girl scout cookie film