Let’s Get the Horses Up

Jimmy decided to breed them.  So each year we had a new colt on each of those.  And before we knew it we had 8 horses.  We did have a quarter horse to ride and a pony for the kids but we didn’t fool with them much.  Personally I just like to see them out in the field.  But I know that horses can be expensive to keep and when the market dropped off and no one was buying horses anymore we got rid of most of them.  Some people couldn’t even give them away so we felt fortunate that ours went to good homes, where they would be taken care of and treated well.

Jimmy finally got a pair of colts that had the coloring he wanted:  they were blonde with blonde tails.  He finally had his Haflingers.  They were a little bigger than standard Haflingers but they definitely looked more like Haflingers than Pershings.  He was happy.  Because now he had the team that he would be more than proud to parade around town and to parade in, well, parades.  And the parade of all parades was the annual Fancy Farm Fourth of July Parade.

I have to tell you about this parade.  Years ago Fr. Hancock made an announcement from the pulpit that he wanted everyone to go home, clean up the tractors and trailers and come on back out to FancyFarm  that afternoon because they were going to have a parade.  Now Fancy Farm is one of the most patriotic communities in the country.  Most everyone flies an American Flag year round.  And the thing about Fr. Hancock’s request was that everyone did it.  They all came out.  If they didn’t have something to put in the parade then they watched the parade, cheering on their neighbors and family and friends.

And aside from a few times over the years there has been a parade in Fancy Farm every year.  It’s always held on the Sunday closest to the Fourth of July.  Everyone still gets their tractors cleaned up, or decorate a flatbed trailer, or bring their horses out and parade around town.  And there is always a huge crowd of families and neighbors and friends to cheer everyone on.  And the little kids get so excited about seeing their friend on a float or picking up all the candy that is thrown.

And as far as I know Jimmy has been involved with the parade from its inception.  He would help the kids decorate the trailers to match the theme.  He would make sure they had lots of candy to throw out.  There was even a 7 or 8 year stretch that he served as chairman of the parade.  And pretty much every year during that time he grabbed the boys and put the American flags up all over Fancy Farm so when you ride through town you knew what was important to us.  And from the minute he got the horses he put them in the parade.  And he hasn’t missed a parade since.

Jimmy shares his love of horses with his daughters.  They are always out there with him getting the horses up, giving them baths, gearing them up and then riding shotgun until he tells them that they can drive the horses.  It’s a good thing that there is 10 years between the girls because by the time that Carilynn left Katie was old enough to take her place.  This has always worked well for me because the times that I helped with the horses was the time there were problems.  Like the time we were going to be in another parade and they had you line up real early and the horses didn’t have room to be impatient so I was holding them.  That is until they reared up and knocked me flat on my back.  Yeah, I’m happy watching the horses from the sideline.  So, the girls have shared this with their dad and I’ve been free to take pictures or something else like that.

But this year both of the girls are gone.  Carilynn went off and got married and started her family somewhere else.  Katie is off to Carilynn’s and will probably be there more than here most of the summer.  And then she’ll be off to college. So the girls are gone.  So Jimmy made up his mind this year that he wasn’t going to put the horses in the parade. This year he was going to sit on the sideline with me.

Yeah right.

I should have known.

Here we are 2 days before the parade, we were sitting watching TV when Jimmy says “let’s get the horses up”.  I said no.  He said “yeah, I think I want to get them ready for Sunday.”  I said no.  Guess what?  We got the horses up.

Now did I mention to you that I’m not a horsewoman?  I love the idea of horses and I love them standing in a field, but I’m useless when they’re around.  When we had the blonde team broken for driving we also had them broken for riding.  Katie wanted to ride.  So we had them both broken and John was going to ride the other.  But John has no interest in the horses and the horse he was riding decided to ride the fence to see if he could knock John out of the saddle.  It made me mad.  He was only a little kid.  So, me being the mother I am, I decided to teach that horse a lesson.  I got up on him and made him do what I wanted.  Now I haven’t ridden a horse since I was in elementary school and even then I wasn’t very good at it.  I took lessons but it didn’t take anybody long to realize I was not cut out to be a horsewoman.  But I got up on that sucker and rode him like I knew what I was doing.  Until, … I realized that I didn’t know what I was doing and I got scared, to death.  That’s when I headed back to the barn, somehow got myself off of that horse and never tried it again.

So, what was Jimmy thinking?

First, we had to separate the horses.  We currently have 5 horses, 2 mules and a donkey.  We wanted two of the horses and the 2 mules.  This was not going to be easy.  They all came into the cow lot, we got one in a stall, then they started running back and forth through the cow lot and of course John and I couldn’t do anything right.

To make a long story probably a lot longer, we finally got the horses put up.  Then we had to go get  he wagon.  Jimmy houses things in some of the most obscure places, and never the same place twice.  For instance, the wagon was in the dark fired black barn. We got it pulled out but Jimmy wanted to take the canopy off for the parade.  You should have seen the 3 of us trying to pry that 4th pole out of the wagon in order to get the canopy off.  I will just say that my back was not in good shape after that.

Once we had the wagon and gear on then it was time to hitch the horses up.  Let me just remind you that it’s been a year since they’ve had even a halter on much less the driving gear.  They weren’t taking too kindly to us by this point.  And we weren’t being the nicest to each other.  This was about the time that Jimmy realized that I had on flip flops.  It was also about the time I started cussing him.  So once we got him up in the wagon and the reins in his hands I turned around to head into the house to get my boots.  He wanted to know if I was going to go riding with him.  No, I told him, I’m not.  I told him to go around the tobacco patch one time, get the horses settled down, and I’ll get in then.

When I came out he was in the middle of the tobacco patch, way too close to the other horses, Jimmy was struggling with getting the horses to go where he wanted them to go.  Of course anything I did to help was wrong so I just stayed behind the wagon and prayed that Jimmy or the horses didn’t get hurt.  John came out and helped.  He jumped into the wagon with Jimmy.  I walked behind.  I don’t know why.  I was just sure he would holler that he needed an extra set of hands.

I walked all the way around the tobacco patch and then decided to head back to the house until Jimmy Needed my help in reversing the entire process.  I’m thinking that went pretty smooth because I don’t have any horror stories to tell.  That and the fact that I was exhausted.

I took major pain medicine and went to bed without supper.

The next morning I had to help again.  Thank goodness I had lots of stuff to do so I couldn’t help all day.  But I will say this, all of that trouble and aggravation didn’t compare with seeing the satisfaction on Jimmy’s face as he was driving those horses.  I wouldn’t say that I would do it all again to see that but I got it.

I just hope that they are not so hard to deal with at the parade.