The culture of mud

Walter L Sprague
Arts and Culture Reporter
 
The NLJ has given me the title of Arts and Culture Reporter. I didn’t ask for that moniker. I wanted to be called Art God, or Culture King, or something befitting my illustrious position and overly inflated ego. But they decided Arts and Culture Reporter was more fitting of my job title. I feel dejected, but I’ll push on, without too many complaints or much conflict. As such, while still coming to terms with the blow of not having a royal title, I will take it very seriously that part of my job is to bring items of high culture to Newcastle and Weston County. Culture is what defines us, makes us unique, and lifts the values that we cherish so much. So I feel and accept the enormous burden that has been placed upon my sore shoulders and will try to carry it with grand grace and dignified diligence. Keeping the high values and lifting the culture of Eastern Wyoming is no small task, especially for someone like me. Indeed, I have been entrusted to learn and ensure that these high standards, the integrity of all my fine neighbors, and their great moral principles, not only be lifted but venerated. 
So, I’m going to talk about mud! 
On Monday, July 29, the Weston County Fair had its annual Pig Wrestling event. I was pleasantly surprised at how full the stands were when I arrived to view this high-falutin spectacle. But somehow I found a seat in the stands, had my hotdogs and root beer (now, that’s what I call fine dining!) and camera next to me and settled down to watch. Immediately teams of kids were gathering around where the mud was. And in no time at all, those beautiful, clean, colorful team t-shirts they were wearing, obviously designed and named with great care and pride by loving and exacting parents, were a monotonous uniform gloopy brown.
And this brings me to one of the stark realizations I keep having about living in this remarkable town. The parents of these children—I repeat, THE PARENTS—were not only allowing this, but some of them were also encouraging the mud fight. And this was all happening BEFORE the pigs entered the slime pit. I swear I heard one woman shout out, “You’re too clean!” while another bellowed “Get Her!” And it wouldn’t have surprised me one bit to see a father walk down from the stands, kneel next to his child, and teach them the fine art and austerely revered science of launching a mud ball at their closest friend for maximum impact and splatter. Where I come from, we were allowed to get dirty—within reason, that is. But if my brother, sister, and I had ever tried to do the amount of clothing carnage I witnessed here we would have had some brisk butt breakage to go along with it, and it would be up to a coin toss whether it was from a belt, a big wooden spoon, or a razor strop.
When the wrestling started, the mud was flying all over the place as the pigs were slipping through the hands of the contestants. Sometimes they even darted out from under a contestant as they grabbed at, tried to block the path of escape, and dove on top of these slippery, sloppy, swampy swine. This is closest thing to WWF that I’ve witnessed since moving here. I kept imagining the pigs had names like Hulk “Hog”an or Bret “The Hogman” Hart. And it wouldn’t have been a stretch of the imagination to leave the name Randy “Macho Man” Savage intact. After all I really couldn’t discern much difference between his speech and the squeals of the pigs. Of course the goal was not to pin their shoulders to the mat to the count of three. Instead it was to place them in this big barrel, butt first, not to the count of three, but could you really tell the difference? And when you come right down to it, both of those “sports” are called wrestling, and exist only for entertainment purposes. If I can figure out how to get a regional promotion started I think I’ll be onto something.
Now, I arrived clean. That didn’t last long. I realized that taking pictures from the stands was not going to give me great shots. So I quickly decided that I needed to get right up to the railing so that I could stick my camera in the pigs faces and really get close to the action. In no time at all, a pig comes running by me with four earnest competitors intent on apprehension. Within seconds of arriving at the fence, I was no longer clean. Mud developed wings and went airborne, and for some reason that eludes me, the front of my clothes seem to have developed a strong gravitational attraction for the marvelous mucilaginous mess. I guess it could be that, but I am actually of the belief that when they all grouped, the kids were conspiring together. “You see that man over there without any mud on him? Well, this is what we’re gonna do!” That has to be why the bulk of the chase had to fly within a couple of feet of me. I guess it could also be that I wore an obviously new cap and that was totally unacceptable.
Now I’ve had one or two people who told me that they think this is not a nice thing to do to the pigs. One of them went so far as to call it “animal cruelty.” Maybe, maybe not. But they’re pigs and all I can think about when I see a pig is bacon, bacon bits, BLT sandwiches, and of course bacon. Did I mention bacon? Well, just in case-BACON, preferably deep fried in bacon drippings. I’ve also been around domesticated pigs and hunted wild pigs in Texas enough to realize something. They would be, given a choice, far more mean to us than we are to them, so who cares! BRING ON THE BACON! Now these nut jobs are so concerned with pigs’ rights, and that’s a minor issue. But what about all my fine duds? Was nobody going to come and rescue me from the fallout of this mud mayhem? I can’t lay that at anybody’s feet, and I’m not going to put it at my feet either, mostly because they were about an inch deep in the stuff by the end, so there was no room at my feet as it was.
So that night, I had to get ready for the next day. I spent an hour cleaning my camera and getting the worst of the mud off of my shoes and new cap. Because Tuesday night was the event I wanted to witness and experience as much cultural charm from as possible: the ATV and Mud Bog Races! 
Again, I soon realized that the stands were not the best place for pictures and walked up by the flags in no time at all. I know, I know—I’m a real fast learner. But, this one wasn’t quite as bad, for my clothing—not at first, at least. It had nothing to do with a lack of mud. Nor was it some self-control on the contestants part of where the mud would spray. It just had to do with the track. While the pig wrestling pit was of the mind that mud just had to fly directly at me no matter where in the ring it started from, the mud bog track decided to stop almost every truck within ten feet from the beginning of the track, sticking the truck in place, burying them in sludge a few miles deep. I believe it was about the fifth truck that, after seeing the previous competitors get helplessly stuck, gave an audible sigh and just stopped before it even hit the mud. I’ve never witnessed such defeat in my life! The tires spread out in resignation, as if to say, “That’s it! I give up already.” Poor truck. I think its headlamps even halfway closed in shame, and I swear the front grill even turned down in a dejected frown.
I was standing closer to the other end of the speedway, if you can call it that. But I really saw no evidence of speed in this event. The flying filth confined itself to the start, for the most part, partly because there was a hole at the beginning that only one vehicle (one of the first ATVs) could make it through. Now when a truck was stuck and spinning its wheels much of that colorful wetness was being sprayed up and into the cab of the vehicle. I’m appalled to report a couple of the passengers were opening their mouths at this point. I’m hoping it was in laughter, but I can’t be sure. All I could think of is what my behind would have felt like, once my parents got ahold of me, if I had participated in this when I was a kid. But most of the trucks hit that hole and tipped forward to stand straight up with their beds sticking up in the air. I think it was this sight that made that one truck give up even before it got started. Needless to say not one truck made it through this course.
But of course, you can’t have an event like this without a second chance for everyone involved to get their trucks stuck. I don’t think the goal was to get to the other side, frankly, because if it were me I would have just gone to the outside of the flags and mowed people down. That was the only path I could see that ensured you would make it. But they couldn’t do this because the goal was obviously to figure out how to make sure they got stuck the worst. I’m sure there was a prize for “Hardest To Pull Out Of Mud” or something like it.
Now the announcer kept lying and insisting that the goal was to make it ALL THE WAY THROUGH the speedway. So do we simply go at it again and see if they could get further along?  No! The impact crater at the beginning of the course was so deep that a scuba diver would have been able to hear Chinese in if he went down to the bottom.  But the other side wasn’t so bad. Instead of a bottomless pit it was only a few hundred yards deep. Each one that desired to go again (and I ask you—WHY?) had the opportunity to assault the mud bog again.  But this time from where I was standing! Again, I think they all assembled before the beginning of the second heat and decided that I was way too clean. I tried to scoot back a bit when the first wave of soup came spraying at me.
The next day my wife, Connie, put the vacuum in my hand and informed me that the floor was not the place for dried mud. I tried to explain to her the value and cultural significance of the stuff. “Besides,” I tried to tell her, “it wasn’t dried when I put it there!” For some unfathomable reason, she couldn’t see my point of view at all. But, I’m so glad she did not have a belt in her hand as I tried to explain it to her.