—
brains’
MZM
—
Hancock said he’s never had
stage fright and he’s looking for
ward to clowning a Victoria rodeo in
front of 7,000 people.
But, he explained, “when I’m out
there, it’s me, the bull and the guy
riding.”
Hancock said clowning requires
a lot of teamwork.
“Two clowns working together
during a bull riding is kinda like a
football team; you encourage each
other, you push each other — it’s
teamwork,” he said. “You lean on
each other, too.”
Hancock said clowns perform
both ad-lib and rehearsed acts dur
ing the rodeo.
“I set myself on fire one time,”
Hancock said, recalling an act
which backfired.
In the act, another clown was to
point at him with a sawed-off shot
gun as he set off a bomb attached to
his pants. But the bomb was packed
too tightly.
"Stood me right up on my head
— set my pants on fire,” he said.
“People were trying to beat me out
with their hats.
“A lot of people don’t realize how
dangerous clowning is. People up
in the stands, they see a clown get
knocked around and they think,
’Hey, he got it, big deal. That’s what
he gets paid for.’”
Hancock said nobody holds as
high a respect for clowns as bull
riders do.
"We’re almost their guardian
angels,” he said.
The first two hours of the rodeo,
clowning is all fun and games, Han
cock said, but it’s different during
the bull riding.
"I’m a ham all the time,” he said.
“The only thing that’s different is I
joke and play around a lot. Then,
during the barrel races before bull
riding starts, I go and don't want
anyone around me and I sit down.”
Hancock took off his black felt
cowboy hat and pointed inside it.
"See, right in there,” he said.
“I’ve talked to the good Lord many
times, right in there. Just like this.”
He covered his face with the hat.
“I usually speak to the good Lord
for a little while and just sit there and
think about what I've got to do,” he
said. “It gets my blood going. I'm a
lunatic after that. I’m so psyched up
I’m just like a cat in a cage.”
Hancock said he goes into the
bull riding ready to do what he can
to keep the rider from getting hurt.
“Every time you get somebody
out of a bad jam, you can look at it
as maybe saving their life and sav
ing them from getting hurt,” he said.
“When I go all the way through a
rodeo without getting any bull riders
hurt, whether I get hurt or not, it
makes me feel good,” Hancock
said. “It makes you know you’ve
done your job. And that’s your vic
tory.”
y
Dave
Tollefson
Hancock’s rodeo clown partner, ‘‘Hoot,”
hams It up with a horse between events at