Phil Leckman

For the rest of America, today is President's Day, a federal holiday.

There's no mail, no banks and no school. From coast to coast, millions are enjoying a lazy, laid-back, three-day weekend. Well, no such luck here at the University of Arizona. We're honoring presidents Washington, Jefferson and Lincoln by slogging through just another Monday. That's right: While folks in New Mexico or Texas or California go to the movies or fire up the barbecue, we're hitting the books and going to class. Why? I'm not sure. But I bet Rodeo Days has something to do with it.

That's right, newcomers. Believe it or not, you are now living in a city that gives its children two days off every year - to go to the rodeo. Even Pima Community College students have free days to watch people in silly hats cling to raging bulls. Does this seem strange to anyone else? Say what you will about Tucson, but this is the second-largest city in Arizona, an ostensible center of culture and sophistication, and the core of a metropolitan area of close to 900,000 people. A rodeo holiday might not seem so odd in Cheyenne, Wyo., or Joseph, Ore., also stops on the national pro rodeo tour.

But here? I've spent hours defending Tucson to my friends and relatives on the East and West coasts, trying to convince them that I don't live in some exaggerated Trail Dust Town caricature of an Old West movie set. How am I supposed to tell them that half the city gets time off to attend a rodeo? I might as well show up to social events in chaps and a 10-gallon hat, toting a tumbleweed.

But don't get me wrong - I have no problem with rodeo in principle.

In fact, I've seen a fair number of rodeos of all shapes and sizes, from glitzy high-polish affairs like the New Mexico State Fair in Albuquerque, where country hitmakers play after the ropin' winds down, to little local rodeos on the Navajo Reservation where the events were announced in both Navajo and English, and I was one of four non-American Indians in attendance (the other three were my family). The fry bread for sale was excellent, too. I've even been to a gay rodeo in San Jose, Calif. Except for a few minor differences - female bull riders, all-male square dancing to Madonna, and an event in which participants have to catch a goat and dress it in drag - it was pretty much like all the rest.

Yup, rodeo takes all kinds. Some of its appeal is certainly wrapped up in some nostalgic notion of manly cowboys and the Wild West - a notion gay rodeo teasingly plays up to its camp extreme. But there's more to it than that. The Tucson rodeo, for example, seems to appeal to everybody, from rich snowbirds to Mexican and Tohono O'odham families eating corn on the cob with lime and chile to ranch folk from Safford or Eloy living it up in the "big city." Even ironic college kids in thrift store "cowboy" gear can find something to love.

And that's something. Maybe even something worth its own holiday.