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Girls & Horses
By Marc Jennings
Sometime during my high school career I made an interesting discovery. I’ll
bet it was our junior year before it really sank into my head, that: “hey,
there are a lot of girls that really like horses”. What is the significance
of this, you might ask? Nothing, really, it’s just one of those random bits
of information that help you navigate the world. Sometimes it might help in
your relations with the fairer sex to know things like this.
At a time prior to acquiring this girl/horse insight, I had a double date
planned for a particular weekend. You know, we spent a lot of time
(sometimes the whole week) figuring out what we were going to do, and who we
were going to do it with, during the upcoming weekend. In this instance, my
good friend, Bruce Trowman, had come up with a plan. Don’t ask me where this
plan came from, cause it was something I would never think of in a thousand
years. So your guess is as good as mine.
Anyway, Bruce approached me with the plan and I responded with something
like, “yeah, let’s do it”. The plan was a double date on a Sunday afternoon.
Sunday afternoon was definitely a non-traditional time to have a date with a
girl. But, there was usually nothing going on at that time of the weekend, so it
would give us a little more mileage out of our two precious days before Monday
came around to depress us once again.
The thing was, the date was to go horseback riding, which seemed pretty
weird to me. When I thought of a date it was going to a dance, going to a
drive-in movie, going to a party; you know, the traditional stuff, where you
had a chance to make out at some point. But, like I said, it was Sunday
afternoon so, what the heck.
Bruce had a car and he was pretty proud of it. It was a 1960 Corvair. In the
early 60’s Ford and Chevrolet had come out with two “compact” cars to take
advantage of a new market segment created by the very popular VW beetle.
Ford made the Falcon, and Chevy the Corvair. It was a good idea but the
execution was terrible. Looking at the Falcon and Corvair, you could
understand why American car companies would lose market share. The Corvair
wasn’t too bad; they had some sporty models. But that’s not what Trowman
had. His was a four-door automatic, for starters. It was a “plain-jane”
stripped down model with no fancy hubcaps or chrome strips or SS letters on
the back. Finally, it was white and kind of looked like an upside-down
bathtub. But hey, it was a car, which beat the heck out of the “shoe leather
express” that I was driving at the time.
Anyway, at the appointed time Bruce and I picked up the girls and went to a
riding stable. I have no recollection whatsoever where this was. I had never
been there before and would never go again. The girls were friends and I
guess this is how Bruce and I ended up doubling. As soon as they got in the
car it was obvious they were really looking forward to this horse-riding
stuff, and I suspect they engineered the whole thing. Bruce and I were just
the two stooges that supplied the transportation and money.
We got to the stables, parked and Bruce and I went into a building to pay
for four people riding for—I guess an hour, I don’t really remember. But the
girls went straight to the stable where the horses were kept. They had
probably been there before and probably had their favorite horses they were
picking out. When Bruce and I came out the girls were mounting up and we
didn’t really have the time to listen to the horse guy explain what the
rules were. We got on our horses and, of course, acted like we knew all
about riding (this was always standard procedure on a date—that is, acting
like you knew everything).
I had ridden horses and ponies before and didn’t care for it that much. The
thing was you couldn’t trust those animals. If they sensed you were uneasy
or afraid, they would typically do whatever they wanted: stand still,
gallop, gallop under low tree branches. They seemed to instinctively know
how to make you more uneasy than you were when you got on. It was worse with
horses that were kept to rent out by the hour.
I don’t think Bruce had ridden before. He looked and acted ill at ease. And
sure enough, we hadn’t been on those horses more than three minutes before
Bruce’s horse started bucking and then took off like a bat out of hell. And
it was like watching a movie; the horse was moving fast, but Bruce was in
slow motion. He began to lose his hold on the horse. Then he kind of slid to
the side in the saddle. The horse must have sensed the trouble Bruce was in
and he went for broke. Bruce came completely out of the saddle and fell to
the ground, but as in the movies, one foot was caught in the stirrup.
After all these years, I can’t swear I remember just exactly what cries of
pain poor Bruce was making as the horse drug him along the ground and he
bounced over the rocks and sticks in his path. But clearly, he was not
having a good time. Mercifully, in less than a minute, Bruce’s foot was
yanked out of the stirrup and his body came to rest in a cloud of dust,
motionless.
I got to him as fast as I could and he was slowly able to get to his feet.
The girls rode over, but Bruce didn’t pay much attention to them, which told
me he was hurt. I let my horse go and helped Bruce back to the car. He got
in and laid down in the front seat to see if he could recover.
Today, after such an incident we would go directly to the hospital or an
immediate care facility to be checked out. But then, if you weren’t bleeding
or didn’t have a compound fracture, you toughed it out. This was what Bruce
did. The girls rode over and asked how Bruce was. I said I think he will be
OK with a little time to recover. The girls rode off—I guess the minutes of
our hour’s riding time were ticking by.
I stayed with Bruce but he didn’t seem to be bouncing back too rapidly. He
was doing some moaning, but when I asked, he didn’t have any significant
injuries like broken ribs or wrenched knee. I stayed with him a bit longer
then finally figured I should go with the girls at least for a while during
our date. So we rode around the place a bit, but I remained concerned about
Bruce. What if I went back to the car and he was dead? I hoped I could find
his keys. (Just kidding about the keys.)
We eventually brought the horses back and turned them in. Good riddance, as
far as I was concerned. Bruce was, by then, sitting up and a bit more
talkative, yet he definitely was not his usual good-natured self. He said he
was OK to drive, and he did fine. We basically just dropped off the girls
and said, goodbye. Nothing more out of the ordinary happened that day, and
although I don’t remember distinctly, I believe Bruce was more or less OK
when he dropped me off.
Now, I don’t mean to suggest that Bruce’s horse mishap that day explains the
strange things he has done since then. They might be entirely unrelated. But
for me, from that day forward, if I ever met a girl that said anything about
horses…….I made sure I didn’t take her out while doubling with Trowman.