Hardly one to be put off by parental obstacles, my sister wrote a letter to a local newspaper columnist and requested his assistance in accomplishing her teenage dream. Promptly, her horse-yearning plight appeared in print. Few were more surprised than our father when a "horse family" who lived a county away answered the plea and, indeed, gifted my sister with a young female quarter horse whom she named "Silver Nugget" because of its markings.
Thus began a family romance with several horses as time went on, in addition to loving, if not frequently cantankerous relationships with all manner of animals, both domesticated and wild from the woods.
So many, oh yes, so many pleasant and unpleasant things, and even a tragedy or two thrown in for good measure, blur the lines between youth and old age. The photo displayed here, showing my sister sitting atop "Outlaw," a favorite and proud creature owned by the generous horse family's patriarch and extraordinary horseman (one Christmas, he kindly presented me with my very first BB rifle -- girls want horses and boys want guns, you see, at least that is how it was in the land of Used To Be) is more than 60 years old now, but pretty much paints a rare memory I can hold onto as time winds its way forward without fail and pauses for no one.
