When McFadden was a child in the 1930's and 40's, she spent her
evenings with her carousing parents in western bars, and slept
(while they slept it off) in a blue 1937 Packard or in tacky motor
courts. By day, the family traveled through the Dakotas, Montana,
Idaho, Colorado, New Mexico and Texas to the next rodeo. Her
mother, Pat Montgomery (a former showgirl and "the toast of St.
Louis") was a daredevil trick rider; her father, Cy Taillon, was a
silver-tongued, crowd-stirring rodeo announcer. Little Cyra, decked
out in hand-tooled cowboy boots, boy's trousers, checkered shirt
and a big, black sombrero was the darling of the circuit. If mom
and dad bellowed and bloodied each other in drunken brawls or if
one or the other disappeared for a frequent extramarital interlude,
didn't all parents? Cyra loved the adulation lavished on her and
her dashing parents by an entourage of sycophants who paid their
bills and helped them out of scrapes. Roy Qualley, a sobersided
traveling salesman, was the most loyal of the hangers-on; and it
was he who rescued Pat and Cyra when Cydrove off into the sunset
after the final marital spat. "Old Honest Face," as Roy was called,
married Pat and tried to turn her into an honest woman. He also
tried to remold Cyra into a proper small-town miss. Pat ultimately
lapsed into intermittent madness, while Cyra tried to fit into her
stepfather's image, yet secretly longing for life with her
swashbuckling, handsome father. Cyra's maternal aunt, Ila Mae, the
family's Cassandra, kept popping in and out of their lives, carping
about her baby sister's transgressions, and trying to straighten
out the family's increasingly muddied situation. McFadden uses this
book to exorcise the demons that ultimately made her loathe her
assorted extended family. By adolescence she had begun to realize
that her father, by then "the King of the Rodeo Announcers," was
little more than a self-centered, boot-strutting, puffed up
reflection of his own celebrity, whose second wife, the
color-coordinated Dorothy, was merely Cy's unpaid press agent - as
well as Cyra and Pat's mortal enemy. This jagged slice of the life
of an atypical American family is corroded with acid, only slightly
sugared over by McFadden's final and self-serving coming to terms
with her ill-sorted relatives. Cy Taillon's fans (if McFadden is
correct, they are legion) may take umbrage at this portrait of a
one-time larger-than-life rodeo celebrity. (Newspapers euologized
him as another John Wayne, the "epitome of Western values," at his
death in 1980.) Most readers will wish that McFadden had portrayed
her wondrously varied family not as a target for her own
resentments but rather as the chaotic, three-dimensional, humanly
flawed people that peep through her remorseless portrayal. (Kirkus
Reviews)
Cy Taillon was the molasses-voiced king of rodeo announcers. When
he died in 1980, newspapers in the West canonized him as the dean
of rodeo and compared him to John Wayne. A reformed rake, handsome
and charming and flashy, he was also difficult, often more lovable
to the public than to his family. In the thirties he married a
spitfire dancer from Arkansas who changed her name from Nedra Ann
to Patricia, and they hit the road in pursuit of stardom.
Their daughter, Cyra, grew up on the rodeo circuit, traveling
all over the West with her free-spirited, hell-raising parents,
often eating hamburgers and sleeping in the Packard. She was the
mascot, dressed in cowboy gear in spite of her father, who wanted
her to look like Shirley Temple. "Rain or Shine" is the story of
Cyra's complex relationship with her parents and eccentric
relatives. She looks back with pride, regret, and humor on family
life spent and misspent in the gaudy, gritty world of rodeo.
General
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