February 2021

In a way like Catholics gathering for Mass every Sunday; my father, sisters, and I loaded up in a white Chevy Silverado and headed to Bloomfield, New Mexico every Monday night. We left to the Colorado state line at a ritual time of 6:00 every night-to ensure an arrival of 7:30. Behind us were tall aspen trees and a little white trailer on the trailer hitch being towed along high-way 550. Inside of this trailer held something my little family invested so much of ourselves into every year. Many would drop a jaw at the mentioning of spending $1500 on a sheep–even we groan in April when the bills start coming in for the show season. However, that’s one of the many sacrifices us livestock exhibitors make. Along the highway, I always took over my dad’s AUX cord on the way there and played any assortment of randomness: everything from old Dolly and Waylon to “International Harvester”. However, my dad’s Nelly would occasionally make his St. Louis appearance in our queue other along with y-2k hip-hop. We’d drive through the red and tan soil of Northern New Mexico until we reached our destination-the place where our lambs begin their journey in the rural outskirts of the little town, where the Doyle family lives and where I gathered with a group of fellow showmen to experience the grit of having to work with show animals. Many of us sweating underneath our jeans and the sweltering summer sun; sometimes being knocked to the ground by an antsy lamb and leaving the ring with a layer of fine dust on our exposed skin. This would essentially be our routine every Monday in the summer months, we earned many scars and ribbons through this process. We left our show practices feeling hopeful–yet ready for the promised stop at the Dairy Queen in Aztec and ready to crawl under the covers in soft beds to sleep in the new coming day.