Horses: early days, Nugget, Bullet part I

[updated and corrected as per Randall's post, 3/23/09!]

Well now that I've been re-energized on this blog--and I'm still waiting, ahem! for the other siblings to start adding things, eh?--I can think of all kinds of things I wanted to write about. Such as birthday cakes, of which I have a surprising number of pictures; and the oilfield, about which I'm not that qualified to write, nor do I have that many photos, but probably will anyway. And not write about, such as the horror that is my string of school photos; don't ever look for those on this blog! The only decent one I ever took, and one of the few decent photos of myself that exist, is my senior class picture.

One that I do want to write about is horses, which were a big part of my life growing up, as they were Jimmy's. I often think of the book title "Mornings on Horseback," even though it was usually evenings on horseback, when I think of my youth before my father died. I don't think this is really the case with Guinn and Randall, because--as previously noted--we were so separated in age that we had much different experiences and consequently have different memories. When Guinn and Randall were growing up times were much harder; the Depression, then the War, affected the family to a great extent and there was no time for hobbies such as horses. As Guinn has noted in other posts, sometimes Roy Lee would have to find work loading bales of cotton onto boxcars for $1 a day, and while I'm sure it wasn't something he enjoyed doing, he was also probably glad to get the work. But by the time Jimmy and especially my own self came along, Roy Lee had greatly improved his lot, through a lot of hard work. So he could afford to indulge his hobby, his passion, the only thing I ever really knew him to be very interested in, horses.

Before I go on about that, however, I want to expand on what I just said: that I never knew him to have a great interest in much of anything. Except Western novels, especially those by Louis L'amour, and westerns on TV, such as Gunsmoke, Ponderosa, Maverick, Palladin, and so on, many of whose theme songs I can still hum to this day. Later in life, and especially as I had my own two daughters, I made it a point to never, if possible, miss a soccer game, a play, a little performance at school, anything, for this reason: I never remember my own father ever going to anything I was involved in. No school plays, no baseball games, nothing. But--anticipating the outrage from my own family members!--in no way do I blame him or have any bad feelings about that. It was just the way it was; it wasn't because he didn't care, but because he worked so hard that he was exhausted at the end of the day. I remember him getting up to go to work long before I did--thus my morning memories of growing up are of the smell of his first cigarette, the sound of his first painful, hacking cough, the smell of coffee, and the sound of the percolator.

So anyway, as I was saying, he would get up so very early, before the crack'o'dawn, and not be back before I got home from school. Then we would do whatever it is we did, eat dinner, watch the aforementioned westerns (I think we got a color TV just to watch Ponderosa), and he would be in bed by 7:30 or 8PM. I've often wondered if his health was a factor; not just the smoking, but the hardening arteries that eventually killed him, in 1970. He had obviously had heart disease for a while before that unhappy event. I also wonder, given the fact that it seems to run in our family, if he had a sleep disorder such as sleep apnea. Back then I doubt it was even diagnosed as it is today. I know from experience how crushing the lack of sleep can be and have wondered, since I started treatment for it, if that was something he suffered from as well.

So, that was a very long and wordy preamble to the main point of this post, which was about the one thing he would make time to do, care for, ride, spend time with, his horses. As I said before I don't know when he started owning them, but I'm sure that all his life he had worked with horses and mules; I heard stories that his earliest jobs in the oilfields of Texas involved using teams of mules to pull pipe on the old cable-tool rigs, [these two photos are from Utah in 1915, but it couldn't have been much different in Texas ten years later] and I know that he was very adept at hooking up a team of mules into a harness, because I saw him do it more than once, at the risk of getting ahead of what is already a very long story! By the time I came along, he had obviously already decided that owning horses was something to which he was willing to devote a great deal of time and probably money, since they are not cheap to own, feed, medicate, house, transport, etc. Jimmy will have to fill in on the first horses, as we had them from as early as I can remember, although now as I think of it, I'm sure it wasn't until we moved to Midland, Texas, in...hmmm, 1956? 1957? Someone help me out here; I know it was before I started first grade, so it must have been about then. At any rate, it seems that the move to Midland was a great step up on the socio-economic scale, in many ways, and horses were a part of that. I wonder if our first horse might have come from Uncle Sallie (Benjamin Roselle, see earlier posts) because he was married to a rich woman with a big house and a ranch and lots of horses.

The first horse I remember was Nugget, a big pale yellow quarter-horse palomino. We always called him Nudge-it, because, even though he was a big healthy horse of probably good pedigree, he was never in much of a hurry to do anything; it took a great deal of motivation in the form of (what now seems very cruel) whacks with a quirt to get him to move. He was equally good-natured; you could pile a half dozen kids on him, yelling and grabbing his mane and pulling his ears and falling off and clambering back on, and he never seemed to mind, just sort of stood there, long-suffering; or perhaps, such is the horsey nature, maybe he even liked kids. Nugget was Jimmy's horse--again, she'll have to fill in how she came to have him--and we kept him at a place in Midland that had a big red barn, with--and this comes in later with a different horse--a big dutch door, i.e. one that you could open the top or bottom half. I don't remember where it was or who owned it, only that there was an A&W Root Beer stand on the way and if we were lucky, on the way home we might get a hamburger and root beer. I have a lot of memories of riding there, though, with several different horses. Nugget, and later Bullet; I don't think we had Lonesome there.

Bullet was my own horse; I don't know if I got him because I whined about "Jimmy has a horse!" or if my father thought I should have one or what. Here's what happened: one day we went out to a place between Midland and Odessa owned by our father's good friend and business associate T-Bone Moore, who owned a drilling mud company, and was quite wealthy. He had a big house with lots of land; it might have been the yard for his mud company. So we go to his house and go through it and out to a fence behind the house, and there behind the fence were what seemed to be a herd of Shetland ponies, which are smaller horses. T-Bone says to me "Pick one out!" Once I realized that I was supposed to actually, you know, pick one out, I did so, a black and white pony, just because he was spotted and looked like the horse that the Lone Rangers sidekick rode; sort of. I really don't remember why, but that lack of concern was to cause great tribulations later on. So then we go into a tack room and he says the same thing of a whole rack of saddles: "Pick one out!" So I picked out a black leather job with silver chasing all over it, again just because it looked neat. It turned out to not be such a good saddle, or perhaps it was an expensive one, because I don't remember ever actually using it to ride; I remember actually riding a much more utilitarian one and I suppose we gave that one back.

Bullet turned out to be a great lesson in dealing with horses, and I can't say that I mean that in a positive way. He was by turns aggressive, mean, spiteful, even dangerous at times. I always had a hard time saddling him, because for one thing I was too young but more because he didn't like to be saddled. As you were doing so he would turn around and look at you with his beady horsey eyes and if he saw an opening, he would either stomp on your foot, or would start to move away, or, worst of all, would reach back when you weren't watching and bite you, and many can attest how painful a horse's bit can be. It left huge bruises and hurt for days. Once you got all that done, you had to literally beat him--and again, here I cringe at my own youthful malice--to get him to go anywhere. His short little legs couldn't keep up with Nugget and Lonesome and whomeever Dad might be riding, so you always had to force him to go. His ride was jarring and unpleasant, stiff-legged and awkward. Once you had finished the ride--and I don't remember there being many places to go out there; just cotton fields and a stock tank--he was almost impossible to keep in check, and would usually break into a gallop once you got a certain distance from the barn. All horses want to go home, but good ones keep themselves or are kept in hand. Not Bullet; as soon as he decided the ride was over, he was like his name, a bullet back to the barn. And it didn't matter if that Dutch door was closed or open, since he fit under it even if the upper part was closed and the bottom open, the fact that you stuck up too far to make it under the door was not his concern; he was going in the barn. I remember once riding around with Rodger, both of us on Bullet, when he saw that the top part of the door had swung shut; it was as if you could feel this shudder of gleeful anticipation go through him, and he shot right at that door and could not be stopped. Rodger and I had to bail off at the last minute to keep from getting smashed into the door. Another time a whole bunch of people were out riding--and this was a common theme, a bunch of people would go riding on our horses and others at the place--and one of Jimmy's friends from high school, Barbara?, was on Bullet, and by some means he managed to toss her into a blow-pile of tumbleweeds. He was just plain mean, that's all there is to say. Maybe if I had picked out some nice gentle mare that day at T-Bone's, I wouldn't have the aversion--or if that's too strong a word, the disinterest--in horses that I do have to this day, but I didn't and I do. All through their growing up my own kids would agitate for riding lessons or horses, and I would always flash back to Bullet--or the other experiences, to be detailed later, and say "When you're 21 and on your own you can get a whole herd of the things; until then, nu-uh!"

But my horsey experiences there weren't all bad by any means; I remember a lot of fun times riding with Dad, with Jimmy, with Uncle Nick and Uncle Sallie, and people whom I don't really remember and might not have been part of the family. Sometimes I would get to ride Nugget, if it was just Dad and me, or occasionally a different horse if there was a larger group. The most vivid memory I have of just riding with Dad was once when we out riding through these big cotton fields, me on Nugget and him on Lonesome (so Lonesome must have been there? Jimmy!?!) So anyway, suddenly Lonesome shies away, for he was very much the opposite of Nugget, very skittish and high-strung, and suddenly my father leaps from the saddle and starts furiously beating at the ground with a halter; it turned out it was a rattlesnake, that was soon dispatched. Nowadays I'd be horrified if someone so wantonly killed a snake out minding his own business; but these were different times.

Lonesome; you can tell it's him by the wild look in his eyes!

Another very vivid memory is another ride with just dad--or could it have been the same one?, because we were on the same horses. So we stop in the middle of these cotton fields, just flat nothingness as far as you could see, and my Dad loops his reins around the saddle horn and wraps one leg around and proceeds to get out his pack of Lucky Strikes and his lighter and have a cigarette. I'm just sitting there, slouching in the saddle, probably thinking about the chances of getting some A&W root beer on the way home, when suddenly there is this huge noise, a "wwwhhoOOSSSH!" and just as suddenly, Lonesome has bolted and is running down the road as fast as he can go. In that same frozen instant, there is Dad, literally like a character in a cartoon, suspended in mid air, the cigarette in his mouth, the lighter, already lit, in his hand, his leg still in the same position, with a very surprised look on his face, before he fell flat on his butt with a resounding "whomp!" The huge sprinkler in the cotton field had just been turned on, hence the loud noise. He jumped up, made me get off Nugget, and went pelting off down the road in pursuit of Lonesome. After some minutes, me standing there watching him disappear in the distance, here he came leading the still-upset Lonesome, his eyes still rolling at the sprinkler. We mounted up and rode home, me barely suppressing the glee I knew I was going to feel when I told Mom and Jimmy.

One last memory of that place: so one time there was a bunch of us riding, me, Dad, Jimmy, Uncle Nick, and I even think Uncle Sallie, out through the cotton fields and all around. I was riding this ancient horse, Honest John--the figure 25 years old comes to mind, which is old for a horse--and an one point we had to ride through a shallow stock tank, which was little more than a mud hole at this point. So we are going through it and suddenly Honest John stops and nothing I could do, nor any exhortations from the rest, could get him to move. He was standing about up to the bottom of his stomach in the muddy water and I guess it just felt good. What would feel even better, he decided, was to roll over into that mud, so he proceeded to do just that. Rather than be rolled over under him and drowned I just bailed right off the saddle, to great hilarity on everyone's part. But--and I think this was the same ride--even greater hilarity came later, back by the barn, when everyone started bragging about being able to do tricks like bending out of the saddle and picking up a hat off the ground. I remember Jimmy trying it, and falling out with a thud; and it seems that Dad did the same thing. I'll have to depend on her for that, though.

Since this has gotten so long, I'm going to cut it off at this point and go on about horses in Part II, in which I'll talk about Lonesome, and other horses and the mules.