Randy Large’s arms tell his story.

The tale starts at his knuckles in tattoos, their subjects dark, muddied, unrecognizable, climbing his arms and into his sleeves.

“I regret getting them,” he said, running his fingers over the decades old ink. “It’s just death and destruction. You can see the way my mind worked after Vietnam.”

He pauses at one. A depiction of Snoopy the World War I flying ace – clear against the confusion of his other art.

“This is the first one I got,” Large said. “He’s gone through the fires of hell and he’s just bounced through it. That’s how I think. Bring it on. He makes me smile.”

In 62 years, Large has lived his share of hell. He’s battled homelessness, substance abuse, post traumatic stress syndrome and the effects of a gunshot wound suffered during a tour of Vietnam.

But in those years, he also seen his share of smiles. Smiles from friends, family and his wife, Sue. Smiles from nameless faces in the stands at rodeos across the country, where he protected and entertained as Banjo, the barrel clown, one of the best who ever donned the paint.

Large was born in 1949 on the Fort Hall Indian Reservation outside Blackfoot, Idaho, where his father worked for the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

After his parents divorced, Large moved with his mother to Colorado. It was there he first become enamored of the cowboy life.

“We’d walk to school, two miles to a country school,” he said. “I’d walk with my brothers and neighbors. When we’d get to the Monfort Feedlots (one of the country’s largest stockyards in Greeley, Colo.), I’d go there and I’d work and hang out there all day long. To me it was playing, though. Then I’d join up with the other kids when they were going home.”

School wasn’t for Large. He dropped out in the 10th grade.

“I spent a year on the streets and then decided I wanted a better life and joined the army,” Large said.

It was 1967 and Large, only 17, had to find his mother to get her to sign his enlistment papers.

After basic training at Fort Lewis, the time came to request an assignment.

“I asked to be sent to Vietnam,” Large said. “At that time I thought it was the proper thing to do. They give you a choice after basic on where you want to go. You list three places, and I put Vietnam, Vietnam, Vietnam.”

Large found himself assigned to a unit based out of Bien Hoa, outside of what was then Saigon, the capital of South Vietnam. He arrived just in time for the Tet Offensive.

Five months in country a bullet found him, entering his belly and exiting his back.

Back stateside, at Madigan Hospital at Fort Lewis, doctors told him he’d never walk again without the aid of braces and crutches.

For many years he believed them, choosing to drown his demons in alcohol.

“I had PTSD for many years and didn’t know it,” he said.

Although he now goes to counseling once a week, immediately after the war, the effects of combat on returning veterans were fully understood.

“We struggled for so many years,” he said. “I got out of the Army in 1969 and until last year I didn’t get any help with it. They just didn’t know about it then. It’s like that with so many Vietnam vets. We’re just now standing up and getting help. But if you look back, you can tell, with me. I didn’t do anything. I just got drunk. Back in those days it was the ‘Hippie Missions.’ I didn’t do anything but go to concerts and hang out with the hippies. I drank a lot, got in trouble a lot. The patterns were always there, I just couldn’t understand the patterns.”

For three years he drifted, getting around on crutches, his braces providing the support his leg muscles couldn’t.

Eventually, however, he climbed out of his destructive spiral and overcame his disability.

“I’m not supposed to be able to walk,” he said. “The Army did a study on me. I don’t have the top inside muscle on my leg, so what I’ve done is I’ve learned how to use my hip and carry everything on my hip. I use my hip to throw my leg forward. It’s just about overcoming.”

Soon, Large found his true calling.

“I had just went through a pretty expensive divorce,” he said. “I decided to go to bullfighting [rodeo clown] school in Texas.”

He returned to Steamboat Springs, Colo. as Banjo, and begin working at the weekly rodeo, building up his jobs. Soon he was a regular on the circuit, eventually becoming one of the best barrel clowns in rodeo.

“I think it was just a couple years, and I was right near the top,” he said. “Here’s a little cowboy kid who came from nothing, and I woke up and I’m up there with the best in the world. When I jumped into the barrel, that’s when it all clicked. Nobody could work a barrel like me.”

Large explained that there are three categories of rodeo clown: bullfighters, who protect the rider by making sure they separate from the bull after being thrown; funny men, who work purely to entertain the crowd; and barrel men.

“He is there to protect the bullfighter,” he said. “The barrel man is also a back-up bullfighter. He’s got to be able to get out of the barrel and go do something. He’ll also use the barrel to distract the bull and put on a show.

“There is no fear out there,” Large continued. “There is respect. You have to respect the animal and the work you’re out there to do. But there is no fear level, as far as being scared to death, or afraid to do something. The profession is real odd. It’s like, if you see a car wreck coming and you have to jump in before it happens. Once the wreck is coming, and you’ve got a cowboy hung up, you’ve got to step in and do your job, and then try to step out of the wreck.”

After more than a decade working the rodeo, Large hung up the paint in 1993, retiring to Washington State to run a ranch for friends. Today, he manages Mike and Amy Feuerborn’s Maple Valley spread with his wife Amy. Most days of the week you can find him hanging around Emerald Downs, sipping coffee in the Quarter Chute, joking with the jockeys, riders, trainers and owners, looking for a smile or two. Most people oblige him.

“I’ve learned since I was in Vietnam, since I’ve traveled and done different things in life, I’ve learned to just smile,” Large said. “Just smile. If I can walk in here every morning, sit on a bench and watch people, that makes me happy. I sit on the bench and everybody says hi, I tell them a joke. I just try to get some type of a smile from people. I’m content with life. I’ve got a beautiful wife, I’ve got great horses. I’m surrounded by good people. Life is good. As long as I can see a smile, I’m happy.”