Reminiscing about the Dixie Round-Up...

I moved to St. George in 1970 and I'm pretty sure I have been to the Lions Dixie Round-Up Rodeo EVERY year since then! When I was a kid, EVERYONE went to the rodeo. We would just walk around and around the loop of the SunBowl with our friends. It was such a social event for us! We all wore our cowboy clothes to school during the rodeo. There were three parades, the Beauty Parade, the Children's Parade, and the General Parade. We went to ALL the parades, and loved every minute of it. Bands would come from other schools up north to be in our parades. Families and businesses would go ALL OUT on their floats, business's and schools would sponsor girls to be in the beauty parade. All the girls in the beauty parade would wear swimsuits and stand on a car or boat as they paraded down the Boulevard and Tabernacle Street. The whole town would shut down on rodeo nights. The high schools and college scheduled their games around the Round-Up. All the businesses in town had their employees wearing cowboy attire for the three rodeo days. All the schools had "Rodeo Day" and if you didn't dress up, you were a loser! Those were the good ole' days! Now, we have to decide whether to go to the rodeo or the high school game...there is no beauty parade anymore. It would be "exploiting" women! No one has time to make cute floats, so we just have a bunch of advertising and politicians in the parades. The week after the Round-Up, the high school and college played football on the same grass field in the Dixie SunBowl, it still had manure on it, and sand, and big holes where the horses and bulls had trampled it down. I'm sure other schools didn't like playing on our field, but it was a tradition for all of us who grew up here. We didn't even know about artificial turf back then! The SunBowl is still packed every night of the rodeo, but we don't know EVERYONE there anymore. We try to keep the tradition alive, but each year it loses a bit of its nostalgia. Sad! I have kept our family tradition of going to the rodeo every year! I tell my kids about how it used to be, but I don't think they really "Get it". You just had to be there, I guess. So here's to the Lion's Club for keeping it going all these years! And here's to the committee who is fighting to keep the SunBowl in tact(the city of St. George would like to tear it down because the land is so valuable)! And here's to all of the people who still take the time to build cute floats for the parade! And here's to the teachers who still encourage their students to wear cowboy clothes on Rodeo Day!! And here's to all the people who go to the rodeo every year because it's a family tradition!! I love the rodeo, not because of the events, but because of the socializing with friends and family, eating hotdogs and peanuts, setting out blankets to save our seats, and wearing boots and cowboy clothes for those three nights!! I'm all about tradition, and the Rodeo is one tradition I'm keeping alive!! (Stay tuned for pictures of the rodeo tonight. Cam is riding a sheep in the "Mutten Bustin" He can't wait!!)