BILL MCENANEY HAS THE BULLS OVER A BARREL

When: 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday, 2 p.m. Sunday

Where: Show Me Center

Bill McEnaney spends much of his wild life in a novel place: inside a barrel. Inside a barrel isn't such a bad place to be, considering the snorting ton of unfriendly bull outside knocking to get in.

McEnaney will be the barrel clown when the Longhorn World Championship Rodeo comes calling for a three-day run Friday at the Show Me Center.

Rodeos employ two kinds of clowns. The barrel clown's job is to entertain the crowd with comedy over his wireless microphone and to provide a bull rider with a barrel to hide behind in case he lands too far from the fence to make a run for it.

"I serve no purpose when it comes to helping the cowboy or saving anybody's life," McEnaney said.

What he does do is make fun, mostly of himself. "It's old slapstick, like Milton Berle and Red Skelton," he says. "My philosophy is, if the kids are laughing at you you'll have everybody laughing at you."

The other two clowns also dress up in funny costumes but their jobs are serious. Bull fighting clowns catch the bull's eye the moment he emerges from the chute, making him spin and giving the cowboy the best ride possible.

Once the cowboy falls or jumps off the bull, the bull fighters' job is to distract the animal again so the cowboy can safely escape. Bull fighters are skilled athletes possessed of youthful derring-do. Injuries are part of the job. Five years is a long career for a bull fighter, McEnaney says.

His own job is tame by comparison, but he's having his knee replaced in another month. Collar bones and ribs break. "You learn to tape yourself up," he says. "You don't get any sick pay. If you can stand it and take some pain pills, you go ahead."

McEnaney's brightly-painted barrel has a big end and a small end for a reason. "If you see the bull coming at you, you can tip yourself over," he explains.

On its side, the barrel simply rolls when rammed by a bull. Most barrel clowns get injured when the bull hits the barrel while it's upright.

McEnaney grew up riding a Shetland pony around the family farm in Tarkio, Mo. He and his sister Jo Ann learned trick riding from a woman who came up from Kansas City to teach the 4-H youngsters.

They learned how to vault from side to side, stand up in the saddle, do shoulder stands.

"We fell off more than I hope to remember," he says. "The first thing you learn how to do is how to fall."

McEnaney has followed the rodeo circuit around the country for more than 40 years, first as part of a trick-riding act called the Shamrock Range Kids, then in another act called the Flying Cimarrons.

The Flying Cimarrons included his sister and his wife Nancy. For four years the troupe was a star attraction traveling from Fort Worth to Denver to the Cow Palace in San Francisco.

He and Nancy joined the Longhorn Rodeo in 1971 as part of the Longhorn Pony Express, another group of trick riders.

He was 37, about the age trick riding catches up with your body, when he began learning how to be a barrel clown. He quit trick riding two years later.

"All through life I'd seen some of the very best clowns and all their antics," he said. "That stuck in my head. My boss said I'd missed my calling."

McEnaney and his sister still own the family farm near Tarkio, but his home is Rossville, Tenn., a Memphis suburb.

His wife and 26-year-old daughter compete in barrel races from time to time, but his daughter keeps busier as a trauma nurse.

Now 56, McEnaney already can see the day when he'll be a barrel clown no longer. He has a nest egg and already has started a business that makes key chains, trick ropes and the like.

He calls it Wild Bill's Novelties.