The Animals (Especially Horses!)

When I was age seven, my parents moved us from the city to the country. Out of the friends I made, a couple of the family’s owned horses. There was a five acre pasture next to our home that usually had a horse or two pastured there. I remember the first time my dad showed me how to feed a horse some grass. We stood on one side of the fence and my dad grabbed a clump of long grass. The horse knew what he was doing and waited expectantly. My dad barely started to move his handful of grass toward the horse and it pressed its body into the barbed wire fence, reaching its neck over, stretching to take the grass. I tried it next and felt the grass pulled from my hand. He showed me how to pet the horse’s nose which was so soft on the end, with warm air blowing from its nostrils, and soft lips searching for more grass or a treat. I was in love with horses.

 

We now lived in the same town as my grandmother and regularly I would spend Friday nights at her house. We would play “Go Fish!” and heat up some Jiffy Pop popcorn. We would also talk a lot. My grandmother would talk to me about my grandfather and she would often start her statement with, “Your Dad . . .” She forgot she was talking to her granddaughter instead of her daughter. I could tell she must have said these things to my mother over the years, the only way my mother could know all about the man who had died when she was five-years-old.

Because of my love of horses, I would question her about her experiences with horses. I heard some descriptions of her growing up on a farm. She was the oldest of eight children. She said they would walk home from school. Instead of walking up to the house, they would often ride to the house on the cows that were walking in anyway, getting ready to be milked. Sometimes, she said, they would try to ride the pigs. They were much more energetic than the cows and would run in circles with the children quickly falling off of them!

 

She said her father had a matching team of four black horses. This must have been equivalent to owning a sports car because her eyes would light up as she said how beautiful and well trained they were. She talked of her father harnessing them up and driving them, all in match step with each other.

She had her own horse, “a pretty little bay with white socks and a white star on its forehead.” She was so sad when she received a letter from home telling her that her horse had died. Her eyes held this sadness as she told me about it 40-50 years later.

She told how the town doctor had a matching pair of white horses to pull his buggy. One day, while he was on a call to someone’s home in town, two teenage boys took the pretty pair and the buggy and came to pick up my grandmother! They took her on a joy ride around the country side and returned her home. My grandmother must have been worth it because they were going to be in terrible trouble for this escapade! And with this account and the delighted smile on my grandmother’s face, I was being instilled with my family’s love of excitement and the telling of stories.