Fried Twinkies, Buckle Bunnies, & Bull Riders Read online

  Of the 42 respondents, 34 had voted “No,” 3 had voted “Yes,” and 5 had voted “Wait and see.” A half hour later, Bernard rechecked the poll. The results from a small sampling of fans were running about the same. But this time, Bernard moved his cursor in position to cast his own vote. He clicked on choice number three: “Wait and see.”

  FOURTEEN

  THE BULL THAT SAVED JOE BERGER

  Mandan, North Dakota

  Thursday–Saturday, July 15–17, 2004

  Camped out on a bar stool inside Lonesome Dove, where the patrons and bartenders were on a first-name basis, Joe Berger stirred the swizzle stick of his Black Velvet whiskey. He stared into his drink and contemplated the past 6 years of his life.

  Ever since he’d suffered a massive heart attack in 1998, he’d carried a bottle of nitroglycerin in his pants pocket, kept another bottle on his nightstand, and kept a third bottle next to his easy chair. Sometimes it was hard to keep track of his bottles of medication. There were more than a dozen containing different-colored pills for different ailments, and Berger started each day by swallowing a handful. Sometimes the medication slowed his gait to a shuffle, slurred his speech, and left him looking every bit of 67 years old. Sometimes he didn’t bother to take his medication and ate forbidden foods, such as ribs dripping with barbecue sauce.

  While his health was failing, his marriage already had failed. He was months removed from a bitter divorce that had ended his 50-year marriage and strained relations with his five children.

  Wearing blue jeans and a golf shirt that stretched over his ample gut, Berger, with his swept-back white hair and sad-eyed look, bore a resemblance to Rodney Dangerfield. Like Dangerfield, Berger had spent years looking for respect. Berger had finally gotten it—despite all of his tribulations along the way.

  “I don’t have a Learjet,” he said, stirring the swizzle stick. “I don’t have a ton of money. But I’ve got the buckle.”

  There it was around his waist, the gold championship buckle encrusted with diamonds, awarded to the owner of the PBR’s Bull of the Year. Berger had won it for owning Little Yellow Jacket, the prized specimen at the Berger family’s Rafter Arrow Ranch, in Mandan, North Dakota. He had a second Bull of the Year buckle, too, which he had given to his youngest son, Nevada, and now Berger was aiming for an unprecedented third buckle. Whether he’d win it depended on the fortunes of a crossbred bull that had survived a deadly blizzard, endured a grueling travel schedule, and produced semen that went for $500 a straw.

  In April 2004, just as the PA announcer was introducing Little Yellow Jacket during the pre-event introductions at stop number 16 in Billings, Montana, the bull entered the arena and, as if on cue, reared up on his hind legs and shook his horns. Standing on the chutes, rider Ross Johnson elbowed one of Joe Berger’s sons, Chad.

  “Did you see that?” Johnson exclaimed. “He’s human!”

  Little Yellow Jacket weighed about as much as most NFL offensive lines—1,800 pounds, give or take a few helpings of alfalfa and oats. On all fours he stood 5 feet 3 inches tall, and when he bucked, his hind hooves stretched to almost the top of the 6-foot-tall chutes.

  With brown eyes the size of half dollars, loose skin sagging beneath his chin, and a reddish brown coat, he blended into a pen of bulls. The key to picking him out of the crowd was the horns. The right one extended parallel to the ground and his left one curved down, as if it were borrowed from a ram. What separated him from his four-legged colleagues became clear when a rider climbed on his back and the chute gate swung open. Little Yellow Jacket unleashed a wicked combination of speed, power, and determination. As long as the rider was on his back, he never quit—like the man who had bred and raised him.

  A cattle buyer by trade, Berger spent 20 years working for other people before buying his 2,000-acre ranch in Mandan, a town of about 17,000 that sits across the Missouri River from the state capital, Bismarck. It was the perfect place to raise cattle, but in 1976 Berger started breeding bulls full-time. It was risky business.

  By the early ’80s, the Bergers had fallen behind on loan payments and the bank threatened to foreclose on the family’s ranch. The family avoided bankruptcy only after Joe’s oldest son, Fred, helped take care of the bills and reorganized the debt. In a concession to his family and their strained finances, Joe loaded up 33 cows that he had wanted to use to breed to bulls and sent them to an auction to be sold by the pound and slaughtered. As the trailer pulled away, Joe wept.

  The unpaid bills had piled up again by 1993, so Joe placed an ad in a rodeo publication, offering to sell his remaining cows for the modest price of $500 apiece. The sale would wipe out his bull-breeding program.

  No one responded to the ad.

  So Berger kept that herd, which included the mother of an unborn bull named Little Yellow Jacket. To pay the bills, Berger began taking his best bucking bulls to the Las Vegas sales held in conjunction with the NFR and PBR finals. Between 1995 and 1997, he sold Moody Blues, Locomotive Breath, and Skoal Yellow Jacket for a grand total of almost $40,000. Then came the agonizing twist.

  With the bulls in the hands of other men, Berger watched Moody Blues, Locomotive Breath, and Skoal Yellow Jacket emerge as stars on the pro circuit. And after the bulls won their new owners thousands of dollars in bonuses, they resold the bulls for more than three times what they’d paid Berger.

  After the 1998 PBR finals, where Moody Blues was voted Bull of the Year, Berger watched a TV interview with Terry Williams, who’d bought Moody Blues from Berger. The interviewer asked about the bull’s impressive bucking.

  “He’s been that way ever since he was a calf,” Williams said. As if Williams had raised him from birth!

  Goddamn it, Joe thought to himself. If I get another bull like that, I’m going to keep him.

  In the winter months of 1996 and 1997, deadly blizzards pounded North Dakota. Snow whipped across Mandan and sent the windchill factor plunging as low as 60 degrees below zero. Motorists stuck in snowdrifts froze to death. The cattle, unprotected from the elements, were at even greater risk. The Bergers lost more than half their herd.

  One of the survivors was a brown-coated newborn bull. They named him Little Yellow Jacket, and Nevada grew particularly close to the bull. Once, on the Bergers’ ranch, Little Yellow Jacket broke away from about a dozen bulls feeding inside a pen and sauntered toward an open gate. With a young ranch hand watching, Nevada barked, “Get back in here.”

  With his massive shoulders already out of the pen, Little Yellow Jacket turned around, dropped his head, and lumbered back to the feed bin. The ranch hand watched, mouth agape.

  Two nights before the bull riding event in Bismarck, Joe Berger watched as Nevada affectionately rubbed Little Yellow Jacket’s head, back, and rump, as if the bull were a pet beagle. But this was no lapdog. More than once, Little Yellow Jacket had charged at Joe Berger, forcing him to scramble over a fence or onto the bail feeder for safety.

  “I wouldn’t trust him,” Joe told Nevada a little crossly.

  Nevada shrugged. It was as if he and Little Yellow Jacket communicated through an unspoken language—the bull whisperer and the PBR champion.

  Over the past decade, in part because of Joe’s failing health, Nevada had taken over most of the duties of Berger Bucking Bulls. He branded them, fed them, weaned them, and, if they proved good enough to buck with the best, hauled them across the country to PBR events.

  That weekend Joe Berger fussed when he learned Nevada had scheduled Little Yellow Jacket to buck on back-to-back nights. He fussed again when Nevada told him he was keeping Little Yellow Jacket and the other bulls not at the ranch but at the family’s feed pen near downtown Mandan the night before the competition. Joe fussed a lot at his youngest son. But Nevada usually got his way. Without him, Little Yellow Jacket might have spent his best years grazing on the family ranch in anonymity. Of course, without the Bergers, Nevada might have spent his own life in anonymity—or worse.

  Standing Rock Reservation.
Nevada Berger no longer considered it home.

  On a tour of the Sioux Indian reservation, he stopped at the new casino and pointed to it with pride. But when Nevada got back in his truck and continued the tour, the bleaker parts of the community came into full view. The boarded-up homes. The defunct steel plant. The stray dogs. An older man pedaled his bicycle through what looked like a ghost town.

  Having seen enough, Nevada steered onto a two-lane highway and passed three teenagers hitchhiking in the middle of the road. “They’ll do the same thing in the middle of the night,” he said. “People get killed around here all the time, and they act like it’s not a big deal.”

  He pushed on the gas pedal harder and drove away from the place where, 32 years ago, somewhere amid the dilapidated homes and rundown neighborhoods, Nevada had been born to Chuck Two Bears and Anna Martinez.

  Darlene Berger first saw Nevada the day she drove to the reservation to buy some beaded jewelry. He was 3 months old, malnourished, and in the care of his destitute grandparents. They were hoping to find the boy a new home.

  This boy has no chance, Darlene thought. Then the jewelry maker asked Darlene if she’d be willing to adopt the boy. The Bergers already had four children between the ages of 11 and 16, not to mention the pile of bills. But the next day, after talking it over with Joe, Darlene returned to Standing Rock Reservation and took the boy home. His grandparents had called him Arlen. But from that day forth, the boy was known as Nevada.

  His new brothers and sisters adored him, in part because he rescued them from the regular drives around the ranch with their father. Joe Berger would take the kids for hours and often parked in one spot, gazing at his cattle as they grazed. Occasionally the bulls bellowed, and the unlucky Berger child groaned.

  “When are we going in, Dad?”

  Too young to know any better, Nevada happily joined Joe. When Joe baled hay or cleared the fields in his bulldozer, there was Nevada, sitting by his side. Darlene Berger and the children played only a peripheral role in the business.

  At the age of 13, Nevada began riding bulls and in less than 2 years broke both of his arms—twice. He exhibited the good sense to give up riding but kept working with them. He was there when his father still was trying to figure out exactly what kind of bucker he had in Little Yellow Jacket. Surviving the blizzard proved he was sturdy, but the bull’s first real test came at a small rodeo not far from Mandan. Little Yellow Jacket was 2½ years old.

  He was barely out of the chute that day before he slam-dunked the rider, and the Bergers knew just as quick that Little Yellow Jacket had a chance to be among the country’s elite bulls. Nevada, aware of the PBR, called Cody Lambert and left countless messages before Lambert finally called back. It was Lambert who determined which bulls got into the BFTS events, and in 1998 he agreed to let Nevada bring a small string of bulls that included Little Yellow Jacket to three events.

  By 1999, Little Yellow Jacket was a rising star on the PBR tour.

  Nevada worried about wearing out the young bull with all the travel, but not as much as he worried about squandering a chance to showcase Little Yellow Jacket. Week after week, he climbed behind the wheel of the family’s 1993 Dodge truck, which had so many miles on it the odometer broke. “The King of the Road,” Joe Berger called the bull, because from coast to coast, border to border, in and out of 45 states, Little Yellow Jacket bucked with consistency and ferocity rarely seen among young bulls. He threw off more than 85 percent of the riders before the 8-second buzzer, but he was the kind of bull almost every rider wanted to try, because those who held on for 8 seconds were virtually guaranteed scores of 90 points and up.

  Deep-pocketed men began to drool. Tuff Hedeman offered $50,000 for the bull. Berger turned him down.

  Terry Williams offered $65,000. Berger turned him down.

  Then, relayed through Lambert, came an offer of $130,000, enough money for Berger to pay off the rest of his debt. Berger, who wanted a gold buckle, turned down the offer. The next morning, the phone rang. It was Fred, the son who’d saved his father from bankruptcy.

  “Did you fall out of bed and hurt your head?” he asked.

  “Why?”

  “Someone offered you $130,000 and you didn’t sell that goddamn bull? Are you crazy?”

  Crazy? Maybe. But Berger had a feeling about this bull, which by the age of 5 had filled out to 1,600 pounds. In 2 years Little Yellow Jacket had gone from King of the Road to King of the PBR. At the 2001 PBR finals, he was named Bull of the Finals, finished runner-up to Dillinger in the rider vote for Bull of the Year, and earned $20,000 in bonuses. When Joe Berger accepted the gold buckle for Bull of the Finals at the PBR awards banquet, tears ran down his face.

  The dividends kept coming. In 2002 Little Yellow Jacket won the vote for Bull of the Year in a landslide, making Joe Berger the first man to breed and raise a bull from birth that had gone on to be voted PBR Bull of the Year. As he knew all too well, the previous gold buckles had gone to wealthy men who bought promising young bulls from cash-strapped breeders like him. And suddenly yet another wealthy man sought out Berger.

  Checkbook at the ready, Tom Teague, the North Carolina businessman who had helped the PBR buy back its TV rights, spent the next year pestering Berger about his interest in buying the bull. Berger kept resisting, to the point where Teague almost gave up.

  Late at night at the 2003 finals, after a few drinks in the hospitality room, Berger approached Teague. “Tom, what will you give me today for a half interest in that bull?”

  “Fifty thousand dollars.”

  Berger took a swig of his drink. “Sold,” he said.

  Teague, in turn, gave half of his share to Bernie Taupin. But in the world of bull riding, it was Little Yellow Jacket, not a famous songwriter, who remained the star. In 2003 he was voted Bull of the Year for the second straight season and joined Dillinger as the only bull to win the award twice. Soon he had his own line of merchandise—T-shirts, tank tops, sweatshirts, thermoses, Beanie bulls, art prints, greeting cards, key chains, ball caps, and visors—and a growing legion of fans.

  The partnership with Teague allowed Berger to keep the bull at his farm in North Dakota and keep any gold buckles. Berger gave Nevada the gold buckle Little Yellow Jacket won as the 2003 Bull of the Year.

  But Teague wanted a buckle of his own. So in Greensboro, North Carolina, at the PBR’s fourth event of the 2004 season, he pulled aside Joe Berger and, looking to buy the Berger family’s share of Little Yellow Jacket, made an offer he figured couldn’t be refused. Name your price, he said.

  But it wasn’t so simple.

  After the Bergers had divorced, Darlene got the house and a 50 percent interest in the bulls. She had the right to match any offer Joe got. Even if she couldn’t match the offer, her share would keep Teague from taking full control of the bull—and she was adamant about keeping the bull for Nevada and the rest of the family. Tantalized by the thought of a six-figure check from Teague, Joe Berger mulled the offer. But with Darlene vowing to keep her share, he announced he was keeping the bull. The decision temporarily united the family during the July 16 and 17 Challenger Tour Event in Bismarck, with the PBR still in the middle of a 6-week break between BFTS events.

  That weekend, an army of pickup trucks rattled across the Missouri River Bridge and into Bismarck to see Mandan’s most famous resident in the flesh. Many of them had seen him only on TV.

  On April 20, 2003, in Colorado Springs, NBC televised the Bud Light Million-Dollar Bounty, presented by Ford Trucks—a one-ride showdown between Chris Shivers and Little Yellow Jacket. Ride the bull for 8 seconds, and Shivers would win $1 million. Buck Shivers off before the buzzer, and Little Yellow Jacket would win his owners $50,000.

  That weekend, Little Yellow Jacket roomed in a special tent with a pair of chandeliers at the upscale Broadmoor Hotel.He had round-the-clock security, and police escorted him to the arena.

  The showdown had all the feel of a championship prizefight, with an official weig
h-in behind the Broadmoor. Wearing his boots and oversize world championship buckle, Shivers tipped the scales at 146 pounds. Little Yellow Jacket almost crushed the scales despite weighing in at—for him—a relatively light 1,650 pounds.

  The sellout crowd was rooting for Shivers, in part because they wanted to see the rider collect the oversize check for $1 million, which was already made out to Shivers and waiting in a nearby hall. Prior to the Million-Dollar Bounty, Little Yellow Jacket had been ridden just eight times in 54 attempts, and Shivers had failed in all four of his tries. In their last matchup, LittleYellowJacket had dumped Shivers while spinning to the right. But it was foolish to predict what the bull would do.

  With NBC’s cameras rolling, the chute gate opened and Little Yellow Jacket spun to the left. He jolted Shivers forward and propelled the little cowboy into the air. When Shivers landed with a thud, the clock read 1.8 seconds—all the time the bull had needed to defeat Shivers. After scrambling to his feet and sprinting for the side fence, Shivers covered his face with his cowboy hat and wept. The residents of Mandan, North Dakota, watching on TV, cheered. Berger and Teague split the $50,000 bonus, and Berger’s take from Little Yellow Jacket’s earnings over the past 6 years climbed to over $275,000—more than enough to wipe out his debt.

  The 1993 Dodge was long gone, replaced by new Ford F-350 trucks. The rickety trailer used to haul Little Yellow Jacket was gone, too, replaced by a new model bearing the name of the Bergers’ prize bull on the side.

  In July 2004, Little Yellow Jacket came off the road to buck in front of his hometown fans at the fourth annual Challenger Tour event, a two-night PBR minor-league stop in the Bismarck Civic Center. Each night crowds of more than 8,000 cheered loud for the 45 riders and even louder for their favorite bull.

  On night one, Little Yellow Jacket squared off against Cory Turnbow, a 38-year-old rider with Elvis sideburns who ran his own sewage treatment plant in Cleburne, Texas. Turnbow had driven 18 hours to get to the PBR Bull Riding Challenge at the Bismarck Civic Center, and in the first round he broke his bull rope in the chutes. Taking advice from Hedeman and Lambert, he tied the rope in a square knot, rode his first-round bull, and scored an 85, good enough to make the first-night championship round. His reward: a matchup with the PBR’s two-time Bull of the Year.