PAULITICS & PERSPECTIVES

WILLIAMS LAKE —- A few
years ago Whitey Anderson
leaned an elbow on the desk
of Varcouver General
Hospital information counter
and said, “I understand you
have an old, woreout, broke-
down, beatup Cariboo cow-
boy...”

The receptionist cut him skort.
“Take the elevator to three, walk
down the left-hand corridor, Bruce
Watt is in 387.”

Bruce was in the hospital, again,
because he had trouble with his rop-
ing horse, again, while he was,
again, trying to get the trick of
becoming a world champion roper.

He has pursued this goal for a
long time, riding merrily down the
road of life to the snap, crackle and
pop of breaking bones.

He knews how tw get the best out
of horses, but horses know how to
take the mickey cut of him, and they
stomp him, drag him and roll over
on him.

When he owned the old Ericksen
place at Big Creek, Bruce was
known to let precious good hay
weather go by while he roped saw-
horses in his yard. Now, these many
years later, living near Sheep Creek
Bridge, ke hasn’t changed much.

Last January he was alone in the
Wililiams Lake arena one night
breaking a colt which bucked him
off and broke his pelvis in two
places and three ribs.

Since nobody knew he was there
that night, Bruce lay on the bark
mulch for several thoughtful hours
before somebody chanced by and
got him to a hospital.

He reports it was not as bad as
another colt which went over back-
wards with him a few years ago.
That one broke his leg in two places
and also broke eight ribs, two of
which punctured a lung.

On yet another occasion he got
hung up in his rigging and a horse
dragged him across an arena.

“T didn’t figure it was all tha:
bad, but then J saw the fence coming
up and the herse jumped it.”

The skin had been bumed off his
leg, they sprayed it with wax but he
had a near thing with gangrene.

He has had two plastic hip sock-
ets built. He has had to take up steer
roping instead of calf roping
because he can't get in and out of
the saddle fast enough to tie the calf.

Bruce is 67 years old now, and
some people feel he is a liule bit old
for this sort of thing.

These people have missed a cen-
tral truth about Bruce Watt, rancher.
catskinner, logger, cattle-seller.
stampede official and joke-teller,

The towering trath — itis so Gill
people don’t see it-— is that this
nin fiiled to develop any of fife’s
essential vices.

He has never smoked. He fas
never touched a drop of alcohol. He
doesn't gumble, He doesn’t overeat,
and all his life has weighed what the
insurance company tables say he
should weigh,

There is his problem. He has
none of the natural. healthy human
failings that nature uses to jerk the
rest of us around. Not for him the
heart attacks, cirrhosis of the liver
and the lung cancer which carties
off nermal people.

Fite, it seemed, was helpless; lett
with no weapon with which to belt
Bruce Watt behind the ear when he
wasn’t looking.

But the great primal force of the
universe has a way of making every-
thing fair in this world. She gave
Bruce a passion for rodeo roping
events and as a result in the sunset
years he is as beatup, stove-in and
brokedown as the regular sinners.

If there remains a question, it is
this one: how did the Primal Bitch
Goddess of The Universe keep up
his interest in this horse foolery all
his life?

It would be understandable if
Bruce Watt's name was up in lights
at the Las Vegas finals cach year.
But it never has been and it never
will be.

66 Roping is like so
many obsessive-
compulsive activities.
There is hardly any
room at the top. 99

Bruce finishes in the money at
Williams Lake Stampede and some-
times takes a first. That, and a few
bucks won at jackpot rodeos, keep
him in Miner’s Liniment.

Roping is like so many obses-
sive-compulsive activities. There is
hardly any room at the top.

If Bruce was destined to go to
the top it would have happened to
him by age 30 or, at the fatese, 40,
which was the year of Pierre
Trudeau’s first go-around as prime
minister.

Thinking of such lamentable
truths, | put the question to him:
after so damn many years, why is he
stil! roping?

He thought about it a while.
Maybe the question had never
occurred to the man before. Finally
he said “Because when the animal
comes out and the rope barrier goes

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down, [feel 40 years fall away from
me.”

Can you argue with dat?

Paul St. Pierre isan author,
playwright and newspaper colin:
nist, He was a Member of
Parliament for Coast Chitcotin

from 1968 te 1972.

North Vancouver-Seymour
Provincial Riding
and
| DANIEL JARVIS, M.L.A,

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