Sibling buffoonery keeps rodeo riders safe and crowds a-gigglin'

By Marc Ramirez
Seattle Times staff reporter

ALAN BERNER / THE SEATTLE TIMES Straddling a fence, Marc “Shorty” Schmoll knows when to get out of the way of a bronc that doesn’t want to be corralled after throwing its rider. Photo gallery

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Here's what Shorty did: He climbed over the fence into the audience and coaxed a woman to climb back over with him, into the arena. One second she's there beside him — then, suddenly, she's a lump on the ground.

The gates open wide. In chugs a beat-up 1969 Volkswagen, painted to look like an ambulance, with Big Red at the wheel.

Before long, the woman's on a stretcher with plungers posing as defibrillators planted suggestively on her chest and small explosions startling the "paramedics" trying to revive her. They pick up the stretcher; it drops with a thud. "If she wasn't paralyzed before," the announcer says, "she is now."

Everything's cool: The Twin Towers are in control. Shorty is Marc Schmoll, and Big Red is his twin brother, Kevin. (The woman on the stretcher is Marc's wife, Karen.)

The Twin Towers — a name earned as junior-high hoopsters — are two-time winners of the Professional Western Rodeo Association's (Pro-West) clown of the year award. They live two miles apart in Snohomish. Two years ago, they earned pro status from the national Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association (PRCA), becoming the only twins nationwide who function as both pro rodeo clowns and barrelmen.

All kinds of characters make a rodeo — the riders atop bucking broncs and bulls, the pickup men on horseback who pull riders off broncs when their eight seconds are over. Then the bullfighters — the first line of defense between bull riders and their animals.

The next lines of defense? Barrelmen and clowns. Thrown riders seek a safety zone; if the fence is too far, they count on barrelmen to run interference. "You gotta know how to work a barrel," Kevin says.

"People might not realize some of the stuff we do is for the safety of the cowboys," Marc says. "Even though we're out there joking, it's pretty serious."

Just how serious is made clear often enough. Earlier this summer, Jeremy Ives was a rising rodeo star. Just 20 years old, he was riding a bull in Tonasket when he got bucked off and went airborne.

The Schmolls heard the story from bullfighter friends who worked the event. Nobody had a chance to reach Ives before he came down; it happened so fast. His head hit the bull's head, which was on its way up, and the impact killed him.

That brought everything into perspective, Marc says.

Path to clowndom

Marc and Kevin Schmoll The Twin Towers really are twins, Bothell-raised rodeo clowns and barrelmen who entertain audiences at pro and amateur events throughout the Northwest. Age: 31. Live in: Snohomish, two miles apart. Kevin, married to Janine, has a 13-month-old daughter, Mesa Anne, and another on the way; Marc, married to Karen, has two dogs, two cats and two horses. Have teamed up: As participants in basketball, football and track at Kenmore Junior High and Bothell High. Both are now electricians for the same company. Source: Marc and Kevin Schmoll

WHAT KIND OF MAN can bear the mantle of rodeo clown? A man who's not afraid to face a crowd while wearing miniskirts and half-shirts, that's who.

Anything can happen out there, and sometimes it's by design: In their hands, hobby-shop rocket ignitions become "butt bombs," bathmats become chaps.

Sometimes it's not by design: One time the Schmolls did the ambulance skit and had Karen all loaded up in the back and the engine died; Marc stammered one-liners while Kevin got a couple of horses to tow the thing off.

The Twin Towers also feature Mexican toreador Juan Morales, who thrills by calling American bullfighters a bunch of sissies and facing El Tuffo, the biggest, baddest bull in the West. (Actually, it's Kevin's dog Tuffy, wearing horns.)

Self-professed class clowns at Bothell High, the young Schmolls also doubled up in track and football. "Our whole lives, we've just done everything together," Kevin says.

It goes on. The 31-year-old brothers are both electricians for Seattle's EHS Electric.

Kevin is Big Red, a name he got in high school, when he had a red goatee and a red pickup. Marc is Shorty, a name he got because he's not. (Both are more than six feet tall.)

After high school, they'd gone to rodeos and envied the clowns; then nine years ago they met a veteran clown named Corky Kinter and convinced him to enlist them as apprentices. On the road they slept under trucks or curled up in the front seat, not getting a dime in return.

They started with the barrel, a safety bubble inside the arena — bull-resistant, with interior handles for clowns scrunched within. A lot of those first rodeos, they stuck pretty close to the fence but picked up smarts as they went along.

"Most bulls don't want anything to do with you," Marc says. "Most want to just buck off the rider and go eat their grain."

They know a bull will do the same thing 90 percent of the time, whether it's spinning to the left or barging straight ahead. "The 10 percent is what hurts," Kevin says.

Still, you can take action, he says. First, make sure you've worn your protective Kevlar vest. Step into the bull's shoulder, a temporary safe zone that eclipses the animal's limited turn radius. Most of the time it works. But not always. "One time I was a little too late, and he threw me like a feather in the wind," Kevin says.

The Schmolls, in signature red-white-and-blue suspenders, have been run over, hooked and tossed over fences. But neither has ever missed a day of work due to injury, and they figure if the cowboys all walk away and drive home, they've done their jobs.

The last time they saw Kinter, an 18-year veteran who never made the pros himself, "he came out and said he couldn't be more proud," Marc says.

Always on duty

"THESE TWO ARE good athletes," says Al Parsons, a rodeo announcer who's worked with the Twin Towers: "They're not afraid to get in there and dig in if they need to. A lot of funny men won't do that; they'll just get up on the fence and run away."

The Twin Towers will perform at the 2004 Evergreen State Fair & Rodeo. Where Evergreen State Fairgrounds, 14405 179th Ave. S.E. in Monroe. When Rodeos are scheduled 7 p.m. Friday and 2 p.m. Saturday through Sept. 6 Admission Rodeo tickets are $5 in addition to the standard fair admission price (adults $8, seniors $6, youths $5, free for kids under 5) and can be purchased two hours before showtime at the arena box office. No advance tickets are available. More information Call Pro-West at 509-766-2855. For information about the fair, including directions to the fairgrounds, bargain ticket prices and special admission days, call 425-388-3200 or see www.evergreenfair.org.

One of the Schmolls — "Don't ask me which is which," Nick Bates says — leaped to Bates' rescue when he was hurt by a gate smashed through by a bull.

Bates is president of the Sedro-Woolley Riding Club, which puts on the town's annual Fourth of July Rodeo. He says clowns are always on duty — not only when nothing else is going on, but especially when nothing else is going on.

"If you've got slack time — maybe the cowboy is having a hard time — you just don't want to sit there," Bates says.

The brothers provide wholesome entertainment for rodeo events that are increasingly becoming family environments: "We try to keep it as clean as possible," he says. "I've seen some clowns out there that were pretty filthy."

"Ego is a wonderful thing, but you gotta keep it in your back pocket," says Kedo Olson, who at 55 has spent 33 years around rodeos as either competitor or announcer. "When I'm in the arena, I'm trying to deflect attention (away from myself). Those boys are the same way — they work for the good of the rodeo."

As pros, the Schmolls now vie for jobs through word of mouth and at the PRCA's annual 10-day convention and rodeo in Las Vegas. Their season spans weekend dates from May to September; their next appearance will be next weekend at Monroe's Evergreen State Fair and Rodeo.

To make a living at it, they say, would mean working 45 weekends a year. For now it's just a serious hobby. They charge $500 to $800 per event for day trips; any farther and the fee includes expenses.

In the wake of 9/11, they considered changing their moniker. It was the second year they'd won Pro-West's clown-of-the-year award for Washington, Oregon and Idaho. As they rolled to Coeur d'Alene that last weekend of September 2001 in their signature Twin Towers trailer, it was the skyward thumbs and supportive honks along the way that convinced them to hold on to it.

Marc Ramirez: 206-464-8102 or mramirez@seattletimes.com

Alan Berner: (206) 464-8133 or aberner@seattletimes.com

Copyright © 2004 The Seattle Times Company

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