How Trent became a Clown…

Some kids are born into a rich family; I got lucky and was born into a Rodeo Clown family.  My father “Sid McFarland” did rodeos for years before I was ever thought about.  He was born and raised in Montgomery, AL. and back then learning to be a cowboy in Alabama was like learning to surf while living in Kansas.  He started riding his friend’s milk cows in the  hallway of a barn and it wasn’t very long before he started donating his money and body to the real rodeo cowboys.  As he began to get tired of getting slam dunk into the dirt he decided that he could actually make money every weekend if he would become a Rodeo Clown.  He traveled all over the country Rodeoing until he finally settled down in Cody, Wyoming.  I was lucky enough to have been born there, and although that and fifty cents would buy you a coke, people somehow assume you are a better cowboy because of your residence.

His struggles and triumphs helped pave a road straight to clowning for me.  I was blessed to learn from a man very good at his profession.  He taught me that in order to be a cowboy, you have to be an athlete and that means more than just having athlete’s feet.  We have to be in good physical and mental shape which means that we have to eat right, exercise and stay away from drugs or substances that interfere with our ability to think.  The older I grew the more he allowed me to do in the arena. Until finally the day came that he let me stay out there during the Bull Riding.  “Some people ask how do you know what to do?”,  but let me let you in on a secrete.  It doesn’t take a brain surgeon to
figure out that when a bull is blowing buggers in your back pocket, the best thing to do
is run like crazy.

I only had to work the arena for a few very terrifying years before I got my first Clown Barrel.  It was the greatest thing in the world to think that I would never have to run from another 2,000 pound steak.  That was until the first time I used the barrel and the bull charged it.  He knocked it end over end with me inside, and I realized that the freedom of running away sounded pretty darn good at that point.  But there is no escaping this bull version of a piñata; I was just hoping that the bull wouldn’t get the candy inside.  After it was over someone asked me if I got scared, I just quietly said to myself that there are only two people thatwould ever know how scared I got, me and the person that does my laundry.

Some folks think that I may be a bit crazy to do what I do for a living.  I just enjoy helping others and  making people smile.  I was engrained with the fact that every cowboy has to have a real job to fall back on when the day comes that you are to crippled to do it any longer.  So with my dad being a Rodeo Clown and my mother being a Nurse, I quickly realized that the Nurse had a lot more demand and had a lot more dependable of a paycheck. So I became an R.N. which I tell folks that it stands for Registered Nut.  This job profession had a huge flaw however. When my patients in surgery find out that I am a Rodeo Clown they laugh at me, and when my cowboy buddies find out I am a Nurse they really laugh at me.  I often quote Rodney Dangerfield when I say, “I get no respect”. But truth  be told my patients that are scared appreciate me being able to make them laugh prior to a scary ordeal and when the cowboys get hurt they are relieved to see me running to the rescue.

Some may still question my motives for doing the job of acting like a buffoon, so the best way to describe it is, I help people.  With today’s economy being the way it is.  If I can take that family who is struggling to pay the bills, the ones that work 80 hours a week and never get to spend time with their family.  If I can take those people who know what hard times are and give them two hours to relax and enjoy themselves with quality family entertainment, then I feel like I’ve done my job. That is why after the rodeo has ended. I will always be found at the exits thanking everyone for coming out. I never forget that all of us in the Rodeo world could not do what we do if it wasn’t for the spectators and sponsors coming out to support us.  Please feel free to come up and talk, take pictures or collect autographs from me and the cowboys.  I will never forget my fifth grade teacher telling me that acting like a clown would never get me anywhere; I just wish she could see me now as I am traveling this great country, doing what I love.