I come from horse people. My grandfather had hundreds of horses. His father had a thousand. My mother not only grew up with horses, but she was also beautiful, and she rode her father’s horses in parades down the main streets of cities out west.
My childhood dream was to have a horse. But, I grew up in the east near Washington, DC, where we didn’t even have sagebrush. I had cats I loved. I had parakeets I loved. I was thrilled when it was my turn to take the class pet home in a cardboard box for the weekend—a white guinea pig with red eyes that squeaked and ate lettuce.
My father took us to the National Zoo on Saturdays, and I loved visiting the hippos, the giraffes, the monkeys, and the bears, but my favorite animals at the zoo were not actually part of any exhibit. Behind a sturdy wire mesh fence on one edge of the zoo, the Rock Creek Park Mounted Police kept their horses. I could fit one or two fingers through the mesh of the fence to touch the velvety nose of a horse if it came close.
I watched Gene Autry, Roy Rogers, and the Lone Ranger on black and white TV, and like many kids in my generation, I longed for a horse like Champion, Trigger, or Silver. I got a bicycle and learned how to ride it. I loved it and pretended it was my horse. By turning it upside down and moving the pedals, I could feed it hay by fitting grass between its fender and front tire. But I still longed for a real horse.
Once, when Roy Rogers and Dale Evans arrived at the National Airport, my father took us to greet them. We were standing next to a railing on the second floor, and down below, we saw the tops of two white cowboy hats bobbing through the immense crowd. Dad said they were Roy and Dale, but Trigger and Buttermilk weren’t with them.
Then one day, Dad picked my sister and me up early from school. He said we were going to be on the Gene Autry TV show! I was so excited, but I grew more worried the closer we drove to the center of the city instead of out to Gene Autry’s ranch in the country.
A short while later, I was completely disappointed—infuriated, actually—to find myself among a handful of children sitting on a brightly lit stage edge in front of a closed curtain next to an actress heavily made up to look like a cowgirl. I was so angry about the whole disappointing situation that I couldn’t speak. I was tongue-tied. There was no sagebrush, there was no ranch, and there were no horses—only a wooden hitching post in front of a painting of a Western backdrop.
The phony cowgirl talked sugary sweet in front of the camera, but once the camera cut from her to a taped western of the Gene Autry show, you could tell by the way her voice changed that she didn’t care much for kids. She asked my sister and me if we’d like to set up the targets in the kids’ shooting gallery, and though I would have been glad to, I wasn’t able to say a word. The cowgirl gave the job to two boys instead. Then she turned to us and rather rudely said, “Well, you would have gotten a prize without having to hit a target!”
I didn’t care about any old prize. I was burning with humiliation. Of course, neither my sister nor I were able to shoot down any targets. We were both total losers in front of the whole world on Channel 5 WTTG TV.
On our way home, Dad acted like he thought the cowgirl presenter surely was pretty, but I could tell he was only trying to make us feel better.
I never did learn how to ride a horse. By the time I was twenty, I had briefly been on one or two. My experiences were not positive. One of the horses bucked, but it couldn’t get me off because I was more afraid of being on the ground by its feet than on its back. My sister learned to ride a horse. Her daughter and her granddaughters ride horses. Probably most of my cousins and all of my aunts and uncles learned to ride horses. My husband grew up riding horses, and our daughter learned to ride a horse, but I never have.
I still remember the ache and longing I had for one when I was a little girl, but as things turned out, the best horse for me was a bicycle after all. I believe horses to be beautiful, sensitive, intelligent animals, and I have the greatest admiration for people who have an affinity with horses and know how to ride them. Rather than a horse rider, I am a horse admirer. And I am just fine with that.
If you have a story about how horses or horse people have improved your life, please consider sharing!
Photo by astrosystem on Adobe Stock Images.
