Amidst all the bland colours, there was a clown. Contrasted against the brown dirt, the horses and bulls – brown and white and black – stood a yellow-suited, face-painted clown; a jester, a troublemaker, tossing suckers like they were candy, to the infinite delight of the crowd.
This wasn’t Ricky Ticky Wanchuk’s first rodeo. The veteran entertainer joined the circuit decades ago, trying his hand at bronc riding, bareback riding and bullfighting before ultimately finding his niche.
In the years that followed, Ricky Ticky would watch as rodeo turned from a roughneck, crude pastime into the organized athletic event of today. Not only a spectator, he would be instrumental in the evolution of the sport, voicing his input between rides in tiny cars and timely detonations of dynamite.
“I introduced the idea of having bullfighters and clowns, and I pushed the (heck) out of it,” he said. “I didn’t think there was enough safety in the arena with one guy trying to tell jokes, and all of a sudden they crack the latch and the bull comes flying out.”
Thanks to his persistence, almost every rodeo now boasts the pair, though cost-related barriers still sometimes stand in the way.
Other advancements ran parallel to this one, including a shift in mentality among the riders. “When I started, if you were tough enough in the bar you were tough enough to get on a bull,” he said, adding that these days, this isn’t the case.
Instead, modern cowboys come at it like a true sport, training and rehabbing and honing their skills like any other athlete. “That bull isn’t drinking and playing all night,” Ricky Ticky said with a grin “He’s resting and having oats. The guys that party, they won’t get here.”
His time spent on the rodeo floor has given him a front row seat to innumerable rodeo events, and has given him a chance to observe the athlete-animal relationship. “You’re working with the animal,” he said. “The mentality is that you’re competing against them, but you’re working with them.”
“These guys know those broncs by their names, and they want to see them healthy,” he said. “The harder they buck, the more points you get. The same with a calf - if a calf runs straight . . . you don’t want to do anything to change that for that calf.”
The sport is nothing like kick-boxing or other human sports like mixed martial arts, notes Wanchuk. “To me, that’s very upsetting, the way they slam another human being around and knock them silly. None of these guys would ever do that to an animal,” he said.
These insightful observations have not come without a price. He’s broken his jaw, his back, his hip, his neck a second time, for a total of 96 breaks in all – yet still he keeps coming back. “A guy that cuts grass every day - he breaks a leg, a few months later he’s cutting grass again. That’s the way I look at it,” he said.
Through all his experiences and injuries, Ricky Ticky still seems to be in it for the kids. He purchased $700 worth of suckers in preparation for the 2014 Lakeland Rodeo Association Finals in St. Paul, creating a seemingly bottomless pocket of treats to hand and toss to the crowd.
As a youngster himself, Ricky Ticky was the second oldest of fourteen kids, and he’s a firm believer that if one person gets a sucker, everyone should get one.
“We used to stop at this service station, the one that had a jar of suckers, because the guy would give one to each of us, and I still remember that,” he said. “Kids might not get a sucker again until maybe Christmas, but when they take that first lick, they’re going to be thinking about that rodeo clown - and that rodeo - for one second, and if that’s all it takes to build the seeds and build a fan, so be it. That’s why I do it.”
And he’s been doing it for years. Nowadays, some of the grandparents in attendance are grown-up versions of the same boys and girls that used to hang on the fence and pluck suckers from Ricky Ticky’s hands.
His commitment and dedication to the sport have not gone unnoticed. This year, the LRA handed Ricky Ticky the coveted Cowboy of the Year award.
When asked about the honour, it was hard to gauge Ricky Ticky’s expression, still hidden behind layers of coloured paint. His eyes, though, betray his appreciation for the accolade – after all, he had always wanted to be a cowboy.
“This is so big,” he said. “I started out as a cowboy, and I’ve been a clown for 37 years – somebody said 38, but whatever – and for the cowboys to vote and say, ‘Yes, he is a cowboy, and he’s the best cowboy we’ve got’ . . . That’s big, man.”
It was a busy weekend for Ricky Ticky Wanchuk at the LRA Finals. He fell out of a few cars, made himself into a human dirt bike ramp, and detonated stick after stick of dynamite. After each performance, he could be seen standing at the exit of the Richard Clancy Arena, taking a moment or two to engage with every child who came his way, posing for photos, signing autographs and chatting with the fans.
Even after all these years, he doesn’t consider this a job. He always seems to have time for each and every fan, and the smiles on the young faces are enough to show that it’s appreciated.
“I do it because I’m too lazy to work, and too nervous to steal,” he said, winking like a clown, smiling behind all that white paint.
