By Barry K. Shuster ’80

On the first night I spent at UC Davis, circa 1977, I went on a jog near my dormitory in the Tercero complex. It then hit me between the eyes—literally—why the students called themselves “Aggies.” I was majoring in English, but I was attending an agricultural college, as evidenced by the school’s dairy barn, not far upwind from the dorms.

Since I had grown up in a well-groomed Bay Area suburb, the scent of cow manure wafting in the evening breeze had not really been part of my, let’s say, paradigm. Still, I really didn’t mind the smell as much as did some other city slickers who came to Davis for a first-class liberal arts education in a pastoral setting. I remember one fellow whining on the telephone, “I hate it here. It smells like cow manure!” Well, “manure” might be considered a euphemism for the actual term he used. He should have read the whole brochure. If you were seeking pastoral, Davis was the real deal back then.

My initial dealings with cattle at UC Davis proved to be foretelling in regard to my college experience. About a year-and-a-half later, as a staff writer for the California Aggie (there’s that “A” word again) I decided to enter the bull-riding competition at the Picnic Day rodeo and write about the experience for the newspaper’s sports section. About that time the “Urban Cowboy” craze was ramping up, introducing the mechanical bull to countless New Yorkers. I was a misguided Hemingway wannabe, and I wanted whatever Moral Superiority in the Afternoon I was entitled by riding a real bull, versus a possessed rocking chair in the back of a disco. Long story short, my first Picnic Day bull ride lasted about half a second. I managed to stretch that brief interval into roughly 600 words, which appeared in the Aggie with a photograph of me, my face knotted in terror, as the animal and I parted company. I don’t think Hemingway (or Travolta, for that matter) would have been much impressed.

After my first feeble attempt to ride a bull, I started wondering what kind of person rides bulls, not just on a lark, but with intent and purpose. I convinced myself that if I could be a real bull rider, I might be able to accomplish anything (or at least, something). I learned that bull riding had its equivalent of a formal education. Later that year, during winter break, I stood in a muddy arena in Nipomo, a small community on the Central Coast. I was at the school of world champion bull rider Gary Leffew, trying to remember what brought me there and why I was wearing a cowboy hat.

At Leffew’s school, we learned about visualization, positive mental attitude and even Zen, as a means of conquering fear and improving concentration and confidence. By the end of the week-long course, I had sat astride eight or so Brahma bulls, each time with incrementally greater success, if you discount one near catastrophe known in the trade as getting “hung up.”

That which does not kill us makes us arrogant enough to think that nothing will. I returned to campus and joined the venerable UC Davis Rodeo Club. In the months that followed, I competed in a handful of weekend rodeos, including college and semi-pro events. At the Picnic Day rodeo, one year after my inaugural cowboy experience, not only did I compete as a bull rider, but I helped organize the rodeo club event. I guess I mustered sufficient visualization and Zen that afternoon, as I remained on the back of a stout black bull long enough to take second place in the competition. In eight seconds, I had made my point, if only to myself. Friends and family rolled their eyes and hoped that I would someday return to a state of sensibility.

It would be easy to file this experience under Misspent Youth, an already thick and overflowing folder. Yet even in my most lucid moments, I always conclude that my short bull-riding career at UC Davis was a valuable part of my education. I’ve had the opportunity to tell the bull-riding story to receptive audiences on numerous dates and job interviews. It has also provided something else my very young son finds cool about me. My old chaps and spurs adorn a wall in his bedroom, a shrine to Dad—the Man, the Myth, the Legend. I promise to tell him the unvarnished tale at such time that he’s old enough to understand and I don’t seek his adoration—when he’s 37, I figure.