Mother's Boy

Anna and Albert before the Jackass Mail Ride.

One summer I worked at a packing house grading oranges and saved $250. My father took me up to a horse ranch in the mountains and we looked at a ranch-trained 5-year old Appaloosa gelding. Though I didn't care for his name, we seemed compatable and my dad and I bought him. He was $500 and so my dad split his contribution evenly between my younger sister and me. I owned 3/4 and my sis owned 1/4 of Boy. That is how it was that we never rode together until we were grown and I had more than 3/4 of a horse.

Boy had never been off the ranch and he had some rather odd quirks. For example, he balked at walking onto dirt that was a different color because it was damp. He didn't like to cross the irrigation rivlets in the orange orchards where we rode. But, all in all, he was super! He was young and handsome and had no vices.

Boy and I had lots of adventures during the time we lived together. I rode with a few girlfriends who lived nearby and had horses. There was Debbee and Chiquita, a quarter horse. I once mounted Chiquita and she turned around so quickly I was left hanging in the air until gravity took over and I fell to the ground. I've forgotten the name of Debbee's 2nd horse. She was a skewbald mare with a penchant for the persimmons that grew in her pasture. During the fall her white lips were smeared with orange "lipstick."

Susie's dad got her a little gray half-Arabian mare and had a Native American saddlemaker create a leather bare back saddle for her with her name on it. Christy carried her neck and head so high that she hit Susie in the chin one day. Susie grabbed her ear and bit it. But, after that she rode Christy with a tie-down. For many, many years after Susie graduated from college and left home, I would pass Christy's pasture and see her quietly grazing.

Jan had a big, big Chestnut gelding named, appropriately, Red. He suited her well.

During the year our highschool celebrated "Bermuda Day," or "Scatter Day," as it came to be known. Once we decided to ride our horses to school. It was a really long way and we set out before dawn. We rode along the canal road to the school agriculture farm. We put the horses up there while we were at school. For the life of me, I can't remember how we got home. It was about 15 miles, so you'd think I'd remember?

I also rode with Anna, who was mounted on one of her older brother's horses. She was a pretty mare, though she jigged more than she walked. We sometimes rode with her brother, Albert. One year he agreed to drive the horse trailer so that we could ride in the annual Jackass Mail Ride--24 or so miles along the road from Porterville to Springville, with a lunch stop at the lake.

Anna and I were the first to get to Springville, and we took a "long cut" through a picturesque section of Springville.

Boy was "ranch trained," as I said earlier. That's the only reason, I'm sure, that I wasn't left fatherless in highschool. That story is for next time.