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When I moved here in 1990 from the land where rivers burn and the smoke from the steel mills turn the laundry on the clothesline orange, I did what all of us newcomers and tourists do: I went down to the Stockyards to check out the western heritage thing. While having a beer at one of the joints down there, I heard a commotion behind me. About a dozen Japanese tourists had ambled in, dressed up as cowboys, decked out in their new boots and hats and Wranglers. It was both surreal and hysterical.

Every year about this time, I think about those Japanese tourists and how Fort Worth embraces this pretend cowboy tradition. Hey, it's Stock Show time, Bubba, and if you're not into pulling the Stetson out of the closet and extolling the wonders of livestock and guys riding around on bulls with their nuts tied up (the bulls, that is), then you're somehow anti-Cowtown and probably a Democrat to boot (pun intended).

Fort Worth Mayor Mike Moncrief has even "suggested" that city employees play dress-up on each Friday during the 23-day run of the Fort Worth Stock Show. Just what I need -- some guy in the water department, taking my payment while his spurs go jingle-jangle-jingle.

This is not a rant against Fort Worth's western heritage or the Stock Show. There are plenty of real cowboys at the show, those ranchers and rodeo athletes who come to town every year. It's just that I get so weary of all the gushing that goes on about a livestock show. Pare down what the Stock Show really is, and you come up with a trade show for people who work in the livestock business. A big trade show, but a trade show nonetheless.

Nothing wrong with a trade show for the livestock business. Fort Worth used to be a big-time player in the livestock game. We used to have the Chisholm Trail and meatpacking companies and serious livestock trading. We don't do much of that anymore, except at the Beltex Corp. horse slaughterhouse on the North Side. But for some reason, when the wonders of western heritage are brought up, no one wants to talk about how Fort Worth is one of two places in the country where horses are slaughtered for meat -- about 20,000 every year.

After all these years, after taking my kid to the Stock Show every January, touring the swine barn, riding those bad carnie rides in the parking lot, I guess I just don't get what all the hubbub is about. What really gets me to scratching my head is all the platitudes that ring out about how wonderful Fort Worth is because we host a trade show for farm animals. The Star-Telegram publishes all those "Foat Wuth, Ah Luv Yew" stories, full of "Cowboys and Culture" references that are so clichéd as to be avoided like the plague. Even crazier is the way the local daily pulls good reporters off their beats for a month to write special sections detailing who won the Junior Dairy Goat (Nubian Doe, two to four years) competition. (That would be Jessica Revay of Weatherford, by the way). The S-T even ran a story investigating whether barnyard poop smells.

Ranker than the poop investigation is the kind of attitude thrown out by the ranching and rodeo folks to those of us who don't think that the Stock Show is some wonderful and mythical part of this city. About the time the Stock Show opened, Fort Worth Weekly ran a full-page ad from People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), basically protesting rodeos as bad for the animals participating. Rodeo supporters wrote in to criticize the Weekly for the ad's "bad timing," and for showing "a lack of consideration for the people of Cowtown."

I don't agree with PETA, but the attitude of these letter-writers was that this newspaper had a duty to refuse the ad because the Stock Show is some civic treasure. For me, that is a huge leap. The Stock Show caters to farmers and ranchers and a bunch of rich people in Fort Worth who like to get out their boots and hats and think back nostalgically to when Grandpappy struck oil and started the trust fund gravy train. Plus they get to ride the Tilt-A-Whirl. It's nothing more than a super-sized county fair. But in super-sensitive Fort Worth, with its ever-present inferiority complex, the Stock Show is virtually untouchable.

Where all this gets a little funny is how public policy gets wrapped up in the civic hosannas that ring out at this time every year in the name of Nubian goats and bulls with their nuts tied up. The Stock Show folks say they need a new arena costing about $100 million. The city has no money for things like better public transportation and road projects, but you had better believe city leaders will find the money for a rodeo arena that gets used a few times a year. The fact that billionaire Ed Bass, another fake cowboy with a serious trust fund (true, he does own a ranch or four), wants the arena, may have a little to do with it.

Sorry to create a buzz kill here. I'll probably hit the show one day next week, look at the chickens and goats and cattle, and watch carefully as the carnies eye my daughter on the Scrambler. But I'll leave my boots and the Stetson in the closet. I save dress-up for Halloween.

Dan McGraw is a local author and freelance writer.