| Personal Writing Ideas |
| The first memory of my life was on a small section of sunny western wilderness a few miles off the beaten track in the Texas Panhandle. Cactus and sagebrush as far as the eye could see along the rolling hills and ravines. Indian paintbrush and lazy susans covered the ground in between. Its a beautiful and untamed land though the oilfield tried with its tank batteries and pump jacks dotting the landscape. Horses were my most favorite thing in the world and my father was the ranch foreman, so it was inevitable that we children would learn to ride. My father's disappointment that so far all of his children were girls was evident, but he tried not to let on too much. And he did encourage us to try anything we wanted to do. I was three years old when Daddy informed my mother that my older sister and I would have our first riding lesson during the round up and branding of the spring calves. We were a bit shy around the group of cowboys who inhabited the bunk house. But they usually were not around the main house much except during meals served at the spring round up season. My mother had always cooked for this rowdy bunch of men and we children had a table separate from them and most times we were fed prior to serving the men. I did not realize then that we were kept separate from the men because children were to be seen but not heard at this time in the 1960's. But I believed it to be because my mother did not want us exposed to thier boisterous and sometimes off color remarks made during the noisy revelry of the meals. All these men were busy working the pens and moving cattle up the chutes, branding, castrating, and cutting the horns off the bawling calves. They didn't seem to be paying much attention to two tiny little girls who were jumping around the boss man with excitement and nervous energy as he led the pony out of the barn and into the corral. But as I nervously glanced in the direction of the chute area, it felt to me as if all eyes were on us, and failure at this point would not be accepted casually or without notice by them or my father. The red roan Shetland pony, by the name of Red Wine, was the ranch owner's property that was kept for their grandchildren's regular weekly visit. His dark red shaggy mane was explained by my father to be used as the reins, and a rolled piece of barb wire flattened at the center would act as the whip to prompt the stubborn little pony to move. My sister had control of the reins since she was older and bigger than me, and the makeshift whip was placed in my right hand with orders to smack the pony on his rump to make him go. Seconds later I was plopped on Red Wines bare back behind my sister, Dixie, and Daddy's smiling face and a shake of his head showed approval for the time to pop the pony with my whip. To which I responded with an exuberant WHACK that sounded across the paddock. The pony leaped into motion and the next thing I know Dixie and I are both on the ground, with her on top of me, while we gasped for air like fish out of water. I was trying to catch my breath, which had been slammed out of me on impact with the hard packed ground, and began to struggle from under the crushing weight of my sister. |