Happy Trails, Red Cowboy Boots, & Stick Pony Prompt

May 11, 2023

Wrote this piece during MMWG this morning based on the phrases in the 'title' above and thought I would share. It's been suggested that I write a book based on the horses I've known in my life. Hmm...might just be the softer, kinder writing I need to work on as I fight my way through the current tougher, emotionally challenging memoir and non-fiction projects.

What do you think? Would you be interested in reading about my equine friends? Please let me know in the comments!

Stick ponies, Red Cowboy Boots, & Happy Trails

Stick ponies were never my thing growing up, because I had Johnny, and Charlie, and Shadow and Taffy, and finally, my own, my very own horse, Buck. Without much energy I can recall perfectly the moment I first saw my sweet buckskin Quarter Horse. We’d gone to meet the other equine, a flashy 7/8ths Arab named Joe. Silvery sheen, black dappled flanks, and wide circle eyes flashing white…definitely not the best match for my ten year old self. But his pasture pal, Buck Joe Reed? Yes, please.

My dad bargained, and that weekend we hauled both horses home. As an adult, I’m not sure how this all came to be, because we were poor by even the most generous of standards. A family trip to Anderson’s in Ohio, a massive country style warehouse of any and all things horse and farm related and we were loaded with one new black and red saddle (for my dad) and other things he wanted. I was content with the used leather tack we’d acquired when my aunt had given us her two ‘free’ horses, imagining the happy trail rides in my future.

Tiffani, my best friend about half a mile down the road, not counting her ¼ mile driveway, also had a horse, and we spent more weekends and nights and summer days tacked up, riding roads and farmer’s fields and woods (mostly without asked for permission) than I can now remember. What I do remember is my slick bottomed red Pay Less tennies. I never had a pair of cowboy boots until I was an adult, finally having gotten back into my decades of lost horse ownership through tenacity and determination. Tiffani and I would meet up in the days before cell phones, lunch bags tied to our saddles with twine cut from hay bales, and ride our days away, often not returning home until the required dinner hour appearance. Once, we untacked our mounts in the cover of a shady wooded area, sitting upon damp saddle blankets, enjoying the scent of peanut butter mixed with wafting sweat of horse. As we ate, a truckload of men bumped their way past us down the meandering two-track, hunters preparing blinds for the upcoming season. They waved, we waved, and never thought it odd. Two pre-teens in the woods with horses and picnic. A truck-bed of laughing men in a beat up pick up truck. Zero trepidation or worry.

When I wasn’t riding with Tiffani, it was Tracy, my earliest childhood best friend of memory. Tracy didn’t have a horse, but she had a little Shetland pony mare, the perfect match for my sweet little Johnny. Johnny was a stallion, and a Shetland, and the best friend an eight year old girl could have had shortly after moving from Allen Park to the country life in New Boston. I could read beneath the shade offered by Johnny in the little grove of apple trees on the north of our property. I could lay across his back, flopped upon him contentedly, a human pillow, arms dangling either side of his soft, tawny neck, his mane tickling my cheek and nose. I still hear the rhythmic crunch as he tore bites of grass and clover from the yard, the sounds of his chewing. My body still remembers the feel of his shoulders and haunches as he moved gently, always aware of my balance and presence upon his back.

We were poor, but I never knew it. I never felt poor. The memories and feelings that still flow through me do not feel poor. They are the riches of growing up with the love of horses for company, and they are worth so much more than the luxury of red boots.