Monday April 23 2012
I come from farming stock, where, back in the old days, horses were commonly used, to plow, pull wagons, get from here to there if'n it was too far to walk and you didn't have a car.
That's my dad, up top, with his 3 brothers on a farm horse. He's the one looking at the camera. Maybe he's saying 'Get them off my horse!' or 'Get me off this horse!'
I grew up horse-less, though I dreamed and schemed ways of getting a horse that never worked. As a compromise, my dad would squire me around our little town every weekend, so I could visit the town's horses - I knew where every one lived, and I even named them all. I never thought to ask my dad what he thought of horses. Did he ever have his own horse? Did he like working with them? Were they just another part of the farm chores?
I did think to ask my mom about horses in her life once; she said she used to have a horse named "Maggie," and when she'd be late getting home in the evenings, she'd run Maggie across the fields to get back home in time, and it was a wonder Maggie never stumbled or broke a leg in those fields they raced over. I got the feeling that my mom got a bit of a thrill out of it, but… I never really asked.
Is that where my obsession with horses comes from? A farm boy sitting on a horse, and a farm girl racing her horse home before dark?
Or am I a throwback to some ancestor who grew up knowing horses like the back of her hand, galloping saddle-less and bridle-less across the mountains (I'm sure I got the mountain gene from some ancient being), speaking, thinking, knowing Horse?
The scant details - the photo, the one vignette - are tantalizing.
