Damn Horses

My mother loved horses all her life. When she was young and the family moved to Pittstown after her brother was killed in a tragic accident, they invested in a plowhorse to help work the fields. The remaining brother worked with the horse, and my mother said he hated it, both the field work and the horse. Not my mother, though, she would ride that horse to school, probably her only happy memory of attending that Cooksboro school. After she married, and we kids were born, our family would visit the old homestead every two weeks. One year, on our return trip, my father pulled in to what must have been a recently opened business venture, horseback riding. Several horses were available to be ridden for what must have been a small fee, and so my mother must have saved up for us kids to have the experience of our first horseback ride. I was small enough for someone to have lifted me onto the horse, and I remember it seemed a long way up. The horse I was on would barely move, keeping its head down to eat the sparse grass growing along the edges of the "trail." I don't remember where the other kids were when the owners decided to feed the horses; they must have already returned to the starting point. Feeding the horses meant throwing hay down beneath the apple tree where the horses were stationed. When my horse saw the food, which was all he'd been interested in during the ride, he took off at a fast pace----toward the food, which was under the tree. Somehow I managed to stay on his back; that is until he reached the tree where the hay was strewn. The next thing I remembered was a bump on my forehead where my head had crashed into the tree branch. I realize now that the ranch was early LAZY J, and that the horses were probably very hungry. I also realize I will never share my mother's love for horses.

Close Call on Aznuzewski

Aznuzewski Lane is a long, very long, and picturesque driveway, or rather private road, off Route 40 heading toward Greenwich, and I'm pretty sure I almost died there. I drove down that road on a beautiful September day trying to find a teenager who was in our program. She had left home and was said to be living with her grandparents at that address. I parked my car in front of the trailer that was on the property where the worker lived. I stepped out of the car and saw a large white German Shepherd lying near the doorstep. He didn't bark, or even get up when I spoke to him. His demeanor seemed non-threatening, so I went up the step and knocked on the door. No one responded so I started back to my car. I could see to my left a large barn where a mare was tied to a post at the end of the barn , with her colt free by her side. A man, the grandfather, drove up in the field across from the driveway where I was getting ready to leave. He sat on the tractor, and told me that his grand-daughter was not living there at the time, and was proceeding to tell me where she might be found when all of a sudden he yelled to me. "Watch out for that horse!" I'm standing across the drive from where he was sitting on his tractor in the field, and there is the colt charging down from the other end of the driveway straight at me. I was more than willing to "Watch out," but couldn't see where that would get me. If I'd tried to run toward my car, my back would be turned,and I was pretty sure I couldn't make it in time anyway. It is true this was only a colt, but it was a very tall and large colt, almost full grown, just not yet filled out to horse status. I must have appeared pretty helpless, because suddenly the man jumped off his tractor just as the colt neared where I was awaiting my fate, assuming that I was to be kicked by a horse. The grandfather ran up to the horse, yelling at it as loud as he could, and smacked it as hard as he could. The colt ran back to its mother. The man, climbing back on his tractor, told me that it was a particularly mean horse. I asked him if it kicked, (since I'd been readying myself for that.) "No, he said,"it jumps up on you." I knew then that I would have been dead.

Dose of Reality

At one point in our lives, my mother decided we were in need of medicine. She must have heard it from Agnes, or else from Arthur Godfrey (if his radio show even had a medical segment.) Anyway, from wherever she had gleaned the information, she thought it in our best interest for us to take 2 Milk of Magnesia tablets weekly, the chosen day being Friday. The little white pills had to be chewed; they tasted awful and had the consistency of chalk. I can remember all 3 of us protesting and I recall gagging, but my mother insisted they were good for us. I don't recall how long we were subjected to this torture. It seemed endless, at least in child time. And it might have been longer until one day my mother was cleaning, probably the requisite intensive spring cleaning of those years. Taking off the couch cushions, and reaching down into the depths at the back of the couch, she made a discovery---a cache of the Milk of Magnesia pills, wait, more than one area, a hoard on either end of the couch, multiple doses of sticky, decomposing little white pills. Again, she interrogated us. Again, I was totally surprised, astonished beyond belief. Since there was obviously more than one perpetrator, my mother did not pursue the subject. She was not a big fan of medicating anyway, was only doing so because it was the advice of the time, and was most likely glad of an excuse to stop the pills. I can't recall if I was more shocked because the other 2 had been so defiant as to break the rules, or if I felt left out because doing so had never even crossed my mind. I guess that proves I lacked imagination-- a whole lifetime of following the rules and what has it gotten me but a bitter pill to swallow.

The dog didn't do it!

One day my mother went outside and found a hole dug on the side of the house, in close proximity to where she had planted some flowers. The dog was tied outside to the nearby doghouse, so she scolded him and probably gave him a few whacks too. The next day, another digging, and repeat the process. Bad dog! Then a third hole, again the same location. My mother, frustrated at his disobedience, dragged the animal over to the site of the big dig so as to reinforce that he was never to do that again. Surprise! She found that the dog's chain did not reach that far, so he was innocent. There had to be another digger. The only other potential suspects were us three kids, so she asked us who had dug the hole. I was astonished at the question. We really never did anything wrong, and I had no idea who could possibly have done such a thing. She got three no's for answers. Finally, my mother put on her hat---serious business--and announced she was going up to see the judge: Judge Center lived upstreet in one of the big white houses there--maybe Overocker's. My stomach turned over, and I'm sure I was shaking, because I couldn't even imagine what was going to happen. Was somebody going to jail? Finally, as my mother was opening the kitchen door, Dorothy, in tears, confessed that she had dug the hole. I don't remember what her punishment was, probably just my mother's disapproval. I probably suffered more out of shock at the whole situation. Just in the last year, talking over old times, I asked Dorothy about it and why she had dug all those holes. She seemed bemused and a little pensive, and said she just felt like it. Now I understand.

THE PERICHOLE

When I was in high schoool , I read "The Bridge of San Luis Rey" and one of the characters was La Perichole, a woman whose looks had been so disfigured by smallpox that she refused to go out, or to be seen without a veil. I'm pretty much at that point now, and I don't even own  a veil. I think the effects of time are even worse than smallpox. The only other memory I have of that novel, besides the names of twins Manuel and Esteban, is the theme arrived at, something like: There is a land of the living and a land of the dead, and the only bridge between the two is love." So I guess I'll hang a drape over all the mirrors in my house, and cross that bridge when I come to it.

Seasonal Loss

Are we ready for the heart breaking story which surfaces every year at this time, where a thief breaks into a family's house (or sometimes car), and makes off with all the children's Christmas presents ? The usual amount of the loss is $800, adjustable, of course, for inflation.

The Power of Print

There were no books in our house. The reason were compelling: books were an extravagance, my parents, as renters who had moved at least 6 times in the first 7 years of their marriage, had no place for book storage or relocation, and, busy with the struggle for survival, they had no time for leisure reading. And, until we moved to VF, none of the houses we lived in had electricity, so reading time was pretty much limited to the daylight hours. Oh, there was an ancient Bible handed down from some forbearer, and my father had a picture album from WWI, and an old dictionary. Even so, I think all 3 of us kids could read before we started school, probably thanks to my mother's teaching us the A, B, C's when she could find the time. So, we had no books, but as I recall, we always had the newspaper, The Troy Record, delivered every day. In the early years, it came by US Mail. In the absence of even radio reports, newspapers were the method of finding out what was happening in the world. My father would read the paper after supper. I would watch him when he read the news, and quite often, listen to him, because at times he would become infuriated with what he was reading, and relay his feeling to my mother in a very emotional manner. His reactions were so heated, and his opinions so strong, that I wondered what the paper could have said to make my otherwise calm and quiet father so angry. I was so curious that I couldn't wait to be able to read the "big words" to find out if I would get heated up too. As soon as I could read most words, I would sneak away with the paper (I thought my reading it might have been frowned on), and read as much as I could. While I could read the words, it was still a mystery to me how those words could have elicited any reaction at all. I chalked it up to those few "big words" that I didn't know. I was far too young to understand politics.