Nancy Ellis wrote a delightful collection of autobiographical essays through Story Worth.com. Here’s a segment I love:
When I was a child, I was crazy for horses. I read Black Beauty and Flicka. I went to all the western movies. My favorite toy was a stick horse. I treated that stick horse like it was real. I rode it everywhere. I tied it up. I talked to it like it could understand every word I spoke. Once on a long family car trip, I pretended to be riding my horse all the way. I visualized myself on my horse, running alongside the car, making appropriate galloping noises for effect. It must have been very annoying for those in the car!
I can just see them smiling, Nancy!
Hey, everyone … did you have an imaginary horse when you were a little girl? I did. My horse was a rusty, old boy’s bike on a kickstand with a rope on the handlebars. Leave a comment and tell us about your childhood horse!
My mom lent me her indian blanket and I “saddled” the pepper tree out in back. I rode that “horse” and had so many adventures.
I also watched any television program that had a horse in it. Roy Rogers, Gene Autry, and the Long Ranger were my heroes. I started reading horse books when I was five. A weekly visit to the Redondo Beach Public Library was wonderful. I traded in one armful of books and headed out with another. Rutherford Montgomery, Anne Seaton, Glenn Balch, Walter Farley, Marguerite Henry and many other authors were my regular reading. Black Beauty was a book that impacted my life. Beauty’s descriptions of animal cruelty and mean people set the story of my life.
My mother bought me “Killer” when I was ten years old. He was a sneaky, mean devil. I stuck with him and had “Cheyenne,” his new name, for almost 30 years. He was 42 when he passed on. And, I still miss him so much.
No saddles, just heading full steam throughout Redondo and Torrance.
I am glad I was raised a horseman.
Those are adorable images of your horses, Nancy and Sheila. Thank you!
As very young children, my father used to take my sisters and me on nightly walks to see “our” horses. One was the iconic electric sign of a red Pegasus on top of the gas station. The other was a scraggly wooden horse also (barely) attached to the same roof. We’d all happily call out to our horses and come back the next night – until the hurricane hit…