[note: after lots of whining from me about how no one else ever adds to this family history, Jimmy Ruth has taken me up on it! I knew that me putting up horsey stories would get her going, and I'm glad to post her--hopefully!--first of many such tales. - RW]
The View from My Side of the Horse
We have all agreed, I believe, that perception is our reality and so I’m going to submit my perception of the horse tales (or tails, as the case may be). Memories get all jumbled and mixed together over the years. I’ll just give y’all mine and you can believe them or not.
Daddy always was interested in horses. Randall, remember in Portales when we would go driving around after supper (these were the pre-TV years)? There was a place that had Shetlands and horses and we would always go by there. Daddy knew the fine points and I knew I loved looking at them. I was six that summer. There was a donut shop we would sometimes go by and get a treat while we were out. Strange, the things that make an impression. I remember so much about Portales compared to Snyder and I was six in both places.
Anyway, I have digressed. The first horse story I remember Daddy telling was about the old lady’s horse. Daddy and Uncle Rosco rough broke horse for $5 a head and the old lady (I have no idea as to age—Daddy always called her the old lady but in a respectful tone) had a horse she was quite taken with. She hired Daddy and Uncle Rosco to break her (the horse, not the old lady). Uncle Rosco put a loop around the horse’s neck and then short-tied the rope to a tree branch. The horse reared up and over, breaking her neck in the fall. Daddy and Uncle Rosco left the county for awhile. I don’t know if that was the same trip as the one when Uncle Rosco came down with the measles and Daddy had to get him back home. I think that story’s been covered elsewhere. Suffice it to say that Daddy said it was a nightmare ride.
We moved to Midland in October of 1957 and we got Nugget early the next year. He belonged to Uncle Sally and had been raised on the place Aunt Gladys’s family owned. Nugget was a registered Palomino (Sally’s Golden Nugget) and just a horse otherwise. He wasn’t a quarter horse or anything in particular but he was beautiful and I adored him on first sight. Uncle Sally showed up with him and my first saddle. I have no idea who paid for him. I didn’t care. Uncle Sally was really into Palominos and had shown Nugget at halter at the Fort Worth stock show. And I have the ribbon he won to prove it here somewhere. I guess Daddy & Uncle Sally decided that Nugget was perfect for me to learn on and he was. He was 16½ hands high which meant that I had to stand on something to saddle him and I had no hope at all of ever getting on him bareback without some help from somewhere. He was easily the best natured horse around, although he managed to throw me more than once, kick me on occasion, and bite when he was in a snit. My first saddle was, literally, a piece of Texas history. It had belonged to an old cowboy whom Uncle Sally knew who was one of the very first to realize how important a second cinch could be. And I had one of the first saddles with that second cinch. It was really old—black leather, and one stirrup fender had been mended by lacing a leather strip across it to hold it together. Unfortunately for me, the mend was right above where my boots ended and rubbed blisters on my leg the first few times I used the saddle. I have no idea what happened to that saddle.
Nugget, and later on, Bullet and Lonesome, lived out toward the Lamesa highway at a stables owned by Toby Hillyard, who was one on Andrew Mellon’s grandsons and had lots and lots of money to play with. It was a huge white building, surrounded by what seemed like miles of white fence. There was a central opening that went completely through the building and there were wide, high doors (like barn doors) at each end. The stalls were on both sides and there was plenty of room down the middle to drive the truck that had the hay and feed. Each stall opened to an outside pen. I really don’t remember the location of the tack room but I think it was in the middle. There was a caretaker who lived (in something not nearly as nice as the horses’ quarters) behind the place. The property had a fenced riding ring and a place to practice for trail class competition. Daddy and I went out there nearly every night after he got off work. I was literally in hog heaven. I even took riding lessons for quite awhile although all I ever want to do, other than come to a sliding stop and spin the horse around (never mastered it) was to ride as well as Daddy and Uncle Sally and Uncle Nick. I did get good enough to be qualified to teach advance Western and beginning English. I even took polo lessons from one of Toby’s employees who was a multiple goal player (the higher the number, the better the player; I would have been about a negative 5).
We hadn’t had Nugget all that long before I got my good saddle. It was a bench-made Leddy Brothers saddle, made just for me and it was beautiful. Uncle Sally gave me a black and white braided nylon bridle/reins that was gorgeous and perfectly worthless in controlling a horse. I had a one-eared bridle that I used as long as we had the horses.
It amazed me to read Jug’s view of Bullet. I have so many memories of Jug racing that little horse all over the place while grinning like the proverbial ‘possum ape ( and I still have no idea what a possum ape is). I don’t remember Bullet as Satan Incarnate; he was a Shetland and they are pigheaded and opinionated. I certainly don’t remember him as being any meaner than any other horse around there. He never bit, kicked, or stepped on me and I was around him a lot. He did have one quirk—he did not like to have anyone on him whose legs went below his belly. I only tried to ride him once and as soon as I discovered what upset him, I never tried again. I could, and did on more than one occasion, load little ones on him and, when I walked off, he would follow me around like an overgrown dog. He did run away with Beverly Smith but that was because she popped him with the reins and then thought yelling WHOA repeatedly would stop him. Actually, he did stop, on his own schedule, and she flew over his head and landed on her butt in a sticker patch (there were enough sticker patches around there for all of us to land in one at least once). I remember when we went to get Bullet over in Odessa at T-Bone Moore’s place. T-Bone had several Shetlands, but his love was miniature horses, an entirely different thing. He had a black stud and a white one and they were both perfectly formed little horses. I can remember him telling Daddy that they were teacup horses, meaning their muzzles would (should) fit into a tea cup ( and that sounds redundant, I know). I thought Jug named him Bullet, which seemed strange to me since he had a white patch in the shape of an arrowhead on one flank. I’m probably wrong. I don't remember the black saddle Jug mentioned. The saddle Jug got for Christmas I do remember. It was displayed Christmas morning on the ottoman and was a gorgeous thing. It was from the King Ranch saddlery; in case you didn't know that, you could read it in lots of places--the name was stamped all over the saddle. When Jug graduated to a taller horse (Nugget), Bullet went to live with Aunt Gladys in Stamford and stayed in a stall in her backyard. He died of a kink in his intestines which Daddy said was caused by being fed too many pecans. There were a lot of huge pecan trees in the backyard and I guess Aunt Glad would sit on the step, shell them, and feed them to Bullet. I have only good memories of him. What a difference in memories…..
And the Bullet digression mostly ends here.
