Dante's Bullwhips Blog

We’d been hired to do a bullwhip show for a Founder’s Day celebration in a small town in Wyoming. The performing area was marked out with hay bales, and the cowboys sat on them. They were so close that I did not need to use a sound system to be heard. Afterward, everyone went to the local bar to get drinks. It was a low, wide building with a garage door on one wall. It was open for the cooling effect and the sounds of the cicadas. The juke box was stacked with classics from Ernest Tubbs and Hank Williams. `We were standing at the bar and a small woman in jeans and a fringed shirt and wearing a huge cowboy hat rode a horse into the center of the bar and sat there. The bartender said to us, “Don’t worry, they come in here a lot.” The horse ambled over to the bar and started nuzzling my assistant Mary, who returned the affection with pats and caresses while the bar tender gave the rider a can of beer. She seemed already a little woozy to me. “Are you okay for riding?” I asked. “No problem! The horse knows the way home!” she replied brightly.