Finding Normin


Ever since I first discovered Georgia O'Keeffe and her famous paintings of  steer skulls, I have always wanted a real steer skull of my very own.  I don't know why, but I just thought it would be a cool thing to hang somewhere in my house someday.   When I was in my late 20's and I finally did take my first trip to the southwest and to Arizona, I was determined not to return home to New Jersey without my steer head.  I had envisioned driving along an empty stretch of highway through the Sonoran desert and discovering one just lying there not far from the side of the road.  Well, of course, that never happened.   For years after that trip, my desire to own a steer skull and have it displayed on a wall in my house would crop up from time to time. It never occurred to me that you could actually buy such a thing almost anywhere in AZ.  And there was no Internet in those days where I could just go and find one on eBay. 

It wasn't until Jim moved west to Tucson to start a new engineering job, that I thought I might finally get my precious steer skull.  While I remained back in NJ and he settled into his new surroundings in Tucson, I asked him to be on the lookout for the perfect one suitable for hanging in our future Tucson home.  A few months after Jim arrived in Tucson, he sent me an email containing a photo of the steer skull he had found for me.

His email read: "Didn't you say you always wanted one of these??? 

Say hello to your new family member... he's looking kinda scrawny, needs a little meat on him..."
    




Naturally, I wanted to know the entire story behind this skull.  Where had he found it? If he had not found it out in the desert, then did it come with a certificate of authenticity? In response, Jim emailed me the following bio on our first Tucson artifact. 
 

He was Stormin' Normin... jokingly named after Norman Schwartzcopf and Normin, the little bull in "City Slickers."  He was a right-handed-spinner (rare... hard to ride, like left-handed pitchers are hard to hit) rodeo bull, for bull riding competition.

A guy named Phil Wilkins saw him in a rodeo and basically sold everything he could to rustle up the $45,000 to buy him.  He was an exceptionally difficult ride due to his right-hand spin, very erratic and unpredictable timing, and tendency to not get distracted easily.  No one ever made more than a couple seconds on him.  In 1996, during the 5th show of the circuit after Phil had bought him, he charged a rodeo clown and almost killed the man.  The circuit made Phil withdraw Normin from future rodeo use.  So now Phil had a bull that was too ill-tempered to breed other rodeo bulls, too tough for meat, too ugly for a show beast... basically, just useless, and impossible to unload.  So Phil just kept him.

Phil outlived the bull, and when Norm died, Phil had a taxidermist clean the skull so he could hang it over the door to his work shed.  Phil finally passed away about 3 years ago, and his kids were liquidating his mobile home estate.

So, if you wanted a Bio, there you go... it's all lies, but a good story.  I paid $25 to some old Pasqua Yaqui guy in a pickup truck parked in the vacant lot across from the airport.  I was standing there looking at it and he asked me what I was going to paint on it.  I smiled at him and said, "Paint on it... that would be desecration..."


Normin now graces the wall of our  covered patio.  He keeps watch over all the desert critters who visit our backyard, of which there are plenty.  More about them in future postings. 

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