Been To The Rodeo Meaning

(idiomatic) Exposed to conmen and hucksters; experienced.

Example: 1950, Melbourne S. Applegate, Helping Boys in Trouble: The Layman in Boy Guidance, page 35
  Some years ago I was talking to a ten-year-old boy who had been to the Rodeo. He was a lad whom most casual observers would readily have called tough.
2002, Vincent Lardo, Lawrence Sanders, McNally's Chance,
  I'm a man past his prime who's been to the rodeo and back, as they say. I've been an actor, a bartender, a maitre d', and a hustler, without much success at any of them.
n.d., Alan Neff, Precious Tribes, Vicious Lies, page 72
  I was one of the few graduating privates promoted from Army class El to E-2. To paraphrase Joan Crawford, I'd been to the rodeo and survived.