by Maggie Ybarra
Daily Lobo
Death is just a game to a rodeo clown.
He plays it almost every day, taking calculated risks against his one-ton, Grade A beef opponents.
"In this business, it's not if you get hurt - it's when and how bad," rodeo clown Leon Coffee said. "And you know that when you're dealing with 1,800 pounds of massive beast with baseball bats stuck out of each side of his head and the fear of God in his eye, and he can run 40 miles an hour, and the fastest man in the world can only run 30 - and I ain't him. You know you going to get caught. You know you are. It's inevitable."
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In a brightly lit arena where it takes less than eight seconds for a cowboy to lose his grip and fall from the safety of the saddle to the treacherous dirt bed of the floor, the rodeo clown serves as a modern-day matador.
"The deal is that you've got to get good enough to outmaneuver one," Coffee said. "And they're going to tear you up. I've had 14 knee surgeries. I've had - you can't imagine the stuff that's been done to me. It's just when you tear up stuff, you patch up - you go home. There's not an abundance of guys that want to step up and do my job."
Coffee has worked as a rodeo clown since 1969. In the span of three decades, he's collected two wives, five grandchildren and 134 broken bones. If he breaks a leg while on the job, Coffee said he'll wait only four weeks before removing the cast - rather than adhering to the standard six-week doctor's orders.
"I'm not a very good patient," Coffee said. "Besides, when you don't work around here, you
don't eat."
Dressed in a neon yellow Western shirt, black stockings with holes in them, white socks that go up to the knees and a pair of pants cut off to look like a skirt with suspenders to hold them up, Coffee makes sure the audience knows he's there to entertain them.
A painted face is also a standard calling card of the rodeo clown.
Cory Wall, a rodeo clown who works the Texas circuit, said the designs he paints on his face have no meaning, although he has made an effort to use the same ones again and again so people can recognize him.
"Us bullfighters, we just want to have something appealing to kids where they can look at us and go, 'Hey, that's a rodeo clown,' you know?" Wall said. "But it really doesn't serve any purpose."
Although providing entertainment is part of the rodeo clown's duty, it's always secondary to protecting the bull rider.
"We're there specifically for the safety of those bull riders," Wall said. "And in the end, if we can get one to play a little bit - the bull - that's something very entertaining for the crowd, as well. So that's why they call us bullfighters."
Clint Craig, a 24-year-old bull rider from Arkansas, said he is grateful for rodeo clowns.
"You come off those bulls, and sometimes your head's down, and you can't see exactly where they're at," Craig said. "Or you hit the ground real hard, and your bell's kind of rung, and they step in there and take the shot for you."
Craig said the bull can feel when and where a bull rider is going to jump off, and that's where the danger lies.
"If they've got the bullfighter distracting them and leading them in a straight line, and they've got someone right in front of them, they don't care if you're about to jump off of them," Craig said. "They want the bullfighter, so the bullfighter - they're the superman of the sport."
Coffee said that although there's not much money involved in being a rodeo clown, he wouldn't want to spend his life in another
profession.
"I ain't never going to say I saved a life," Coffee said. "That's God's job. But I will say I've saved somebody from bodily injury by offering myself up to the bull instead of the cowboy."
After 38 years as a rodeo clown dodging the occasional joust of horns and avoiding being trampled by dirt-covered hooves, Coffee has been given a new position. These days, he wears a microphone and gets into a blue barrel in the middle of the arena where he trades comedic remarks with the announcer.
"When you get old, you get the barrel," Coffee said. "This is your waning years. I don't run around in no circle. I just stand there and let them hit me."
Coffee takes impending danger with a smile as the bull riders stretch and prepare to risk their lives in exchange for a title and cash prize. And even though performing in the barrel is one step toward rodeo clown retirement, Coffee's job is just as dangerous as dodging and weaving in front of the bulls.
"I've had one get his head in there and work me over pretty good now," Coffee said. "They'll get their head and horns in there and feet down there. It ain't the safest place in the world to be, but it's a job. It's kind of like Willie Nelson said in a song one time: 'It's not a good life, but it's my life.'"
