Ponies

Every kid should have the opportunity to spend some time on a farm with all the fun it brings.

My uncles that lived near the family farm were never very rich guys.  One dabbled in farming while working in the mines.  The other one dabbled in trading animals while working in the mines.  Both of them were fun loving and made sure the kids around had fun when they came to visit the farm.

One of the ways we had fun was to ride the ponies.  The fun began in trying to catch them in the pasture.  Most of the time they didn't have halters so we had to be smarter than them to catch them.  We had reins...but that was it.  Saddles belonged to the estate crowd.  We rode bareback.

Now ponies are known to have ideas about being ridden.  One of the ponies that was at the farm at one particular visit had a habit of reaching around and biting the one trying to get on...in the butt.  That obviously was painful and didn't add to the fun of the rider, just those who were watching and waiting their turn.  We had to learn to hold the rein tight on the opposite side of the pony's head so we could keep it from reaching around to bite us.

There were never enough ponies to go around so we took turns riding them.  Some of the younger ones required help like being lifted up on the pony's back and being led around but us "reglars" could go on our own.

As I've mentioned before my cousin Dan and I should have lost our lives on the farm for all the crazy things we tried.  The ponies were involved in several of those escapades.  Fortunately, you can only fall so far from a pony's back.

The hay barn sat behind the farm house a couple of hundred yards.  We rode the ponies back the lane to the barn, into the barnyard, across the exposed sandstone and into the barn...attempting to catch onto the beam above the barn door to dismount on the way in.  This was to immulate the many TV cowboys we had seen do a similar feat.  It was not successful.  We usually ended up laying in the dust at the door while the ponies went on back into the barn.

My cousin Dan's house was on the other side of a little "ravine" from the farm house.  The little meadow there sat down below the rock wall that ran along side the farmhouse.  There was a little gate with an overhead frame above it that led into the meadow.  The cattle had made a path sloping down the hill to the bottom where the path made a sharp right turn and then up the hill to Dan's house.

We used to ride the ponies down that path.  If you've ever rode a pony you know their little short legs don't allow for a very graceful trot or run.  So whoever was behind the other as we rode down that path got to laughing at how funny the other one looked bouncing up and down on the pony.  Then both of us would get to laughing, finding ourselves hanging onto the bouncy ponies, trying to keep from falling off.  One time Dan ended up in front of the pony's front legs on his neck...before he fell off.

There were only two times that I remember getting close to one of us really being hurt.  That's when we ended up riding something bigger than a pony.  One of those special not-quite-full-sized horses was Old Bob.  He was the mainstay in the early days on the farm.  Just before leaving on a Sunday afternoon to make our way home, Dan and I got on Old Bob to get one more last ride.  I was in front on the reins and Dan was sitting behind me.  For awhile.  Until he kicked Old Bob where Old Bob hadn't been kicked in many years.

That old horse somehow managed to kick in his turbo-charger, took a leap and Dan rolled right off the back.  Really, he did a somersault (that he didn't even try) getting kicked in the head on the way around.  He ended up with a gash over his eye that required a few stitches.

Another time we were out at my Uncle Carl's house a few miles out the road.  He had another bigger than usually pony AND a genuine, real saddle to go on it.  Wow!  We hadn't had that luxury ever in our pony riding days.  So we hitched up the saddle and got ready to ride. 

I was riding the horse around the yard having visions of Roy Rogers and the Lone Ranger when I started to get this choking feeling right under my chin.  I finally figured out that I had ridden under the clothes line and it was tightening up, threatening to take me off the horse.  I dropped the reins, grabbed the saddle horn and hung on...until the belly band broke and me and the saddle went off the back.  I guess the saddle had been in storage awhile and rotted that important part of the fastening system.

We can still laugh about those times when we get together.  My Mom probably would have wrapped me up in some kind of protective clothing if she had known all the antics we got into on the ponies.  But I survived and with a little artiritis here and there have lived to tell about it.