Horse Tails

My dealings with horses were not so much a love of but as part of my chores.  I gathered the milk cows about 1/2 mile away from the barn on horseback.

There were 3 events I can remember that had to with horses not involving work.

The first was a date of sorts, Alan Burkhart called me up and asked if I wanted to come play.  He lived 3 miles down and came to take me back to his house on horseback.  I remember it taking him a long time to arrive.  Seems he had stopped on the way to kill ants with the horse`s reins.  Boys!   I was probably 8-10 years of age.

The next was I decided to go for a ride.  Got a mile away from home and the horse wanted to go back and ran home with me holding on and screaming all the way.  The more I screamed the faster he went.  He stopped at the barn and I fell off into Daddy`s arms.  He later found my ponytail holder in the horse`s tail.  After that I often walked to get the milk cows.

The last was I ran for Freedom Rodeo Queen.  I had to ride a pattern in front of the crowd but the deciding vote was the number of tickets each girl sold.  I worked at it.  Another girl Tana Ferguson really worked hard at it but the owner of a large ranch wrote a check to raise his daughter,  Karen Walker`s amount to the top.  I didn`t resent it.  She was always a friend.  That was one thing I wished I hadn`t been talked into but I did receive some nice prizes.  One was a pair of purple jeans, I promptly took them back and exchanged them for blue.  Another was a skirt and sweater set I wore alot,  gold wool straight skirt with fuzzy fall colored sweater spotted something like an apaloosa horse.