Horse Tales

When we moved to Wyoming in 1932, we spent the first summer living on a small ranch in the foothills of the Big Horn Mountains near the tiny town of Story while our home was being built on our ranch. It has been so long since I have been out of California, or even out of a city, that I don’t know if folksy small towns still exist in the West, but I hope they do. Story was a very folksy tiny town, and as easterners who originally came out as dudes, we loved it. One of our closest friends was a little girl who lived in a ramshackle house with a treasure we did not have—a player piano which only worked with foot power, and a collection of much-used rolls of early century music.

The house we lived in was comfortable except for the bane of my existence, hordes of insects. It was a time of extensive drouth over much of the West, with few means of coping with them. My brother and sisters enjoyed chasing me with grasshoppers, because they revolted me. There were also swarms of Mormon crickets moving across the land from time to time. And we had no electricity, only kerosene lamps, sitting in pans of soapy water, in which the clouds of moths would drown horribly. (It is strange that in my later life I have been able to overcome my revulsion with my compassion for everything living, even rescuing flies and spiders.)

We had a corral and a small saddlebarn for our 5 horses and one shetland pony just over a small rise from the house. The saddlebarn was about four feet off the ground, with two large wooden steps leading up to the room in which the saddles were hung on wooden supports. To the left was one more step down into smaller room where feed for the horses and the bridles were hung.

One day, when we came back from the general store, we went down to check on the horses and found them milling about, apparently disturbed by something. Upon looking around, we found that the wooden steps into the saddlebarn, as well as the small step into the tack room had been destroyed. Upon going back into the corral, we saw that our two leader horses, Tex and Spot, were both looking into the air. They reminded me of two vaudevillians, and I swear to God I could hear them whistling.

ARW
9/28/08