One of the advantages of being a nine year old tom boy was being fearless. Okay, wrong word, but since this is my story, I will be fearless. Another advantage I had was being born on the wrong side of the tracks. I didn’t know it was the wrong side until I was in the fifth grade and a classmate told me. My neighborhood was called “The Camp.” I remember, sort of, that it was an army base at one time. The houses were made of tin and ours was painted Pea Green, maybe that was an army thing. The tract was surrounded by fields and the back field held more delights than can be imagined… Horses. Of course there was a fence around the horses and signs posted that read “Do Not Trespass,” but we didn’t mind that. We didn’t mind it almost every day.
We could hear the horse’s neighs’ a block away as they lined the fence waiting for their treats of apples and sugar cubes. We didn’t have saddles and bridles, since we weren’t supposed to be riding the horses in the first place, so we had to ride them bareback. This presented the problem of getting on top of these magnificent animals. This problem was solved with some planning and careful timing. My favorite horse was the one standing closest to the fence. I don’t know why we didn’t just use the gate, maybe it was locked and anyway the fence was easily climbed. I had to be careful because sometimes I would get one leg across the horses back and he would walk away. There I would be dangling between the fence and the horse, and you know the horse won. If I was lucky, I missed the pile of warm manure the horse left behind and I still wonder if the horse didn’t plan for me to fall in the soft pile, I mean, his timing was perfect! Once on the horses back he would sometimes just stand there, but sometimes he would actually start walking, to my delight, around the paddock.
The Miniature horses were easier to get on, but not as nice…I got bucked off every time. Bucked isn’t really the right word. When I knew he was getting mad, I would stand on tip toes and walk backwards as fast as I could, because he would kick up his heels, and getting hit with those hooves was a hard lesson learned. I loved walking around the corral, the smell of hay, the aroma of sweat, (mine and the horses) and I even liked the scent of manure. There wasn’t a better way to spend a summer day even though it was on the wrong side of the tracks. But really, how far on the wrong side could it have been, when we had hills to climb, horses to ride and Bastunchury Lake
