The year is sometime in the late 70's or early 80's.
I'm the youngest of three boys. My mom would take me shopping with her while my older brothers were at school or off doing something else, I was always the one that was tagging along with mom.
We lived in the Ogden area and one of my mom's favorite places to eat a quick lunch was Taco Time on Washington Blvd.. (Locals might remember the Taco Time close to the 12th street intersection, right next to McDonald's.)
Now, I didn't like Taco Time but loved McDonald's. So what we would do is get my food at McDonald's and then we would walk over to Taco Time and mom would get her food.
Plus, Taco Time was kind of a cool place because they had a little game room area with a couple of pinball machines, a couple of video games (Pac Man if memory serves me) and one of those duck hunting games with the actual guns that would shoot the beam of light at the screen where the ducks were flying back and forth. If you are old enough you know what game I'm talking about.
So, one day we are at Taco Time eating and I asked mom about some giant paintings that were on the wall. This must have been one of the first times we were there, because I was fascinated by the paintings. They we tall paintings that seemed to take up the entire wall, there were three or four of them if I remember correctly. (I even went so far as to email the Regional Manager or whatever of Taco Time when years later that Taco Time went out of business. I asked him if he knew where those paintings were and he emailed me backing saying he had no idea what had happened to them. I guess I should have kept on top of things, I maybe could have bought those paintings after they had taken them down for a remodel or when they went out of business. Damn it.)
I asked her what was going on in the paintings and she told me they were bullfighting. Now, my mom knew and still knows nothing about bullfighting but I guess she knew enough to tell me what the paintings were about.
I couldn't take my eyes off of them. I was fascinated by the bulls, not so much the matadors but the bulls. I couldn't get over their horns and strength, to me they looked like the most incredible animal on planet Earth.
Now, back in the olden times, whenever we wanted information about something there was only one place to go..... the library.
I don't know if libraries even exist anymore in their purest form, now I can imagine they are all nothing more than makeshift homeless shelters.
But back in my day libraries where special places to go, a world full of information and even adventure. It was almost like a treasure hunt because first you had to go to......... the card catalog. (This was even before the card catalogs were switched to computer.) Once you looked in the card catalog to see if they even had a book on the subject you were looking for, then you would take the book's Dewey Decimal System reference number and go on a treasure hunt. Off you went to search through the dozen and dozen of book shelves in the library. If you could find it, and if the book was actually there, you felt like you had discovered gold. It was so much fun.
And it just so happens in Ogden we had a great library, the Weber County Library.
We went to the library a lot, my mom would take me and my brothers to the library whenever we needed to do any kind of book report or project for school. And back in those days it always seemed like one of us had to get to the library for something, so for us it was a common destination.
So, on one trip to the library, after I had seen these bullfighting paintings at Taco Time, I searched the card catalog to see if they had any books on bullfighting. And lo and behold, they actually had quite a few.
Off I went on my treasure hunt, I couldn't believe I was actually going to find out more about the bullfight. I remember clearly the section that had the bullfight books was upstairs. And the Weber County Library has a really cool staircase so it was always fun to run upstairs.
Search and search I did, and then I found it, the bookshelf with the bullfight books. I had found treasure.
There were at least a dozen books there on the subject. I can't remember them all but I do remember most of them were from the author Barnaby Conrad.
(A photo I took recently while in Ogden. I'm on the East side of Washington Blvd. looking West. Where that Starbucks is now is where Taco Time used to be. Why did they tear it down? That was a city landmark if you ask me. It even had the Taco Time cactus logo sign that would light up in neon and swivel if I remember right. Don't we have enough Starbucks? Ugh... I guess things just change, but not always for the better.)
The three books I remember that I checked out and read, and yes I did read them from cover to cover, were How to Fight a Bull, Gates of Fear, and the Encyclopedia of Bullfighting, all by Barnaby Conrad. I remember at one time also checking out Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises however that one I couldn't get through, I guess my young teenage mind, or maybe even pre-teen mind at that time, couldn't comprehend Hemingway.
(Later in life however I did get through the Sun Also Rises, as well has Hemingway's Death in the Afternoon. I will say I think Death in the Afternoon is required reading for anyone interested in the bullfight, the Sun Also Rises not so much, unless you are a Hemingway diehard.)
The one book out of Conrad's books that I really loved reading, and the one I think cemented my bullfight curiosity was the Encyclopedia of Bullfighting. It had all Spanish words that deal with the bullfight but then it had the explanation in English. So it was perfect for me to learn more about what at that time was a completely unknown thing. The photos were amazing to look at too, all black and white, but mesmerizing all the same. I was hooked.
I don't know how many times I checked that one book out, probably a dozen times easily. I may have been the only one at the Weber County Library to ever check it out, I don't know. But once Ebay became a thing years ago one of the first things I bought was my own copy of the encyclopedia, and I've gone through it many times over these past several years.
That book pretty much had to tide me over until the internet was invented. Up until the internet I had nothing else, I was deprived. So once the internet came about in the mid to late 90's I was thirsty for more bullfight information and finally got it. Mostly from Madrid's Las Ventas website, but also from El Juli's personal website, and that of Enrique Ponce too. I remember those two had pretty impresive websites with lots of photos and information, enought to quench my thirst.
These days I think most bullfighters opt for Instagram, Facebook, etc. I don't think any really have their own websites anymore.
And of course there are quite a few blogs out there too, mostly from Spanish bloggers. I used to follow a lot of them but don't very much anymore.
Mundotoro.com I check out everyday, it really has the best news available. Facebook is a wealth of information as well, there are plenty of Facebook pages you can follow that are updated daily.
So those are the basics, the back story on my bullfight affliction. There is more out there, like how I also use to run with the bulls when I was a kid, well, not bulls, but milk cows. But it was kind of the same thing. And how I tried to train a dog we used to have to charge at my red jacket like a bull so I could practice some passes. That kind of worked but kind of didn't, the dog would mostly jump up at me once he got to my jacket. Damn dog, stop jumping on me, charge at my jacket! The things I used to have to do.
I once lost a girlfriend too over the bullfight. I asked her if she ever drempt of being a bullfighter like I did. She never returned any of my calls after that.
