Editor’s note: This is another column in Bill Boyd’s new series, “The Way It Was,” about growing up in Marysville. Bill continues to work with the Union County Historical Society to obtain information for his stories.
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When I was in high school, during the late 1940s, I took two years of Spanish. My teacher was a lady named Marguerite Williams, and she was one of my favorite teachers. In one of her classes during my senior year, we translated some stories about bullfighting in Spain. I wanted to learn more about bullfighting, so she recommended a book written in English. I read that book from cover to cover, and I was fascinated by it.
The Spanish people looked upon bullfighting as a sport, the way we Americans looked upon baseball. They had bullfighter heroes, just the way we had baseball heroes like Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig. But I have never been able to look at bullfighting as a sport.
When the bullfighter enters the ring, he has one objective … to kill the bull. And he has the meanest looking sword you ever saw to do the job. I wouldn’t call that a sport. It is more like an execution.
Some time ago, I think it was during the 1980s, my long time Marysville friend Dan Dayton vacationed in Spain. He liked it so much he lived there for many months.
He had heard so much about their bullfights that he decided to attend one at a nearby arena. Since I had never seen a bull flight, I asked Dan to tell me about it. He described the whole thing, beginning with when the bull entered the ring. There were several men, some on foot and some on horses, who taunted the bull. They had that bull so frustrated and angry, it would attack anything that moved.
Then as a bunch of men dressed as clowns continued taunting the bull, some guy on horseback jabbed the bull in its side with a spear about six feet long. That made the bull go crazy. It wanted to attack everything it saw.
When the bullfighter entered the ring, according to Dan, he was dressed in an outfit that made him look like the doorman at a fancy hotel. He waved his hat to the crowd, and they roared. He was, indeed, a hero to them before the fight even started. Then, when the two faced off against each other, the bullfighter waved his cape, and the bull charged.
The bullfighter stepped to one side unmolested, and the crowd roared in approval. The bullfighter had outsmarted the bull. But it doesn’t take much to outsmart a bull. This whole thing was repeated time after time, and each time the crowd roared.
Then near the end of the fight, the bullfighter, with his razor sharp sword in hand, challenged the bull one last time. As the bull charged, he stepped to one side and drove his sword deep into the beast’s heart. The bull fell to the ground and breathed its last breath, and the crowd roared.
At my age, I will probably never see a bullfight. But if I ever do, I am sure of one thing – I will be rooting for the bull.
Those wishing to contact Bill Boyd can e-mail him at williamboyd514@gmail.com