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| Dad with my sister Jill |
Last week, I made reference to my days as an unwilling
equestrian, and this week, I’m going to delve into that subject a little further.
As I said, my family was serious about horseback riding, and we rode both “English”
and “Western” saddle. Out west, we rode horses out of the then famous Smoke
Tree Ranch. Back in the 60s, when our family went out west for riding vacations,
it was not uncommon to ride with movie stars visiting Palm Springs to escape
their celebrity in L.A. Cary Grant and his wife Dyan Cannon once joined us on
one of our desert rides. In Buffalo, we owned four horses. My mom and dad rode
horseback every weekend, and were members of the Geneseo Valley Hunt Club. They
regularly fox hunted during the fall season with their two horses, and my
sister Jill was for many years on the amateur show circuit. She owned the other
two horses and was a regional champion in several divisions. At her peak, she
was invited to ride in an equestrian event at Madison Square Garden in New York
City. Somehow or another, my parents assumed that their love of horses would
rub off on me, and that it was my genetic predisposition to follow in their hoof
steps. For me this enforced hobby was probably how most children felt about piano lessons.
I began riding at the Buffalo Saddle and Bridle Club
when I was about 7 years of age, and I took riding lessons for the next five or
six years. I never owned a horse, but rode the school horses at the club. Those
ranged from old nags, to walking tubes of glue. There were two horses that
stood out as my most unfavorites. One was a very old school horse named Wade,
who was in fact a cross between a mule and a horse. Predictably, Wade was
stubborn and slow, and extremely difficult to command. By far the worst horse
in the stable though was “Snowball”, named because he was a white horse.
Snowball wasn’t a bad looking horse, with one exception: he had a green ass. Snowball
had a serious gas problem. Whenever Snowball trotted or cantered, he emitted wet
noisy farts, sometimes combined with loose, slimy green manure. I don’t know what
they were feeding those animals, but the green slime that spewed out of
Snowball’s ass was otherworldly. Oftentimes, our lessons involved single file
trots around the ring, and no one
wanted to be behind Snowball. Anyone within 30 feet of this horse’s ass was in
constant peril of being slimed. These are the dirty little secrets of horseback
riding no one talks about. What child chooses to be sprayed with green horse
diarrhea?
Snowball was one of a hundred reasons I never embraced
horseback riding. As I said, I didn’t mind riding Western saddle out in the
desert, and I also liked fox hunting, which I did for several seasons at the
end of my riding career. Unlike the show circuit, fox hunting was the motocross
of horseback riding, and involved a lot of high speed, open field, all terrain
riding. I enjoyed the excitement of racing around on rugged terrain, jumping
3-4 foot chicken coops, and chasing after something we never ever caught. The Geneseo
hunt was not snooty and aristocratic, like some of those English hunts, and many
of the participants in the Geneseo Hunt were regular folk who simply loved to
ride. That said, to keep a horse is an expensive, full time hobby. When the
moment of truth came, wherein I was asked to commit to the sport, I opted out
in favor of boating. While the rest of my family loved horses, and were happy
to devote the time and effort to their care, I had little interest, and quickly
gravitated to boats. As you probably know, boats rarely spew stinky green
slime at their operators and, while they sometimes come with their share of
mechanical problems, I have found them to be a much better investment in the
fun-per-dollar department. Eventually, my family forgave me for my blasphemous
rejection of the family sport, and everyone was happy.
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Written by Jamie Oppenheimer c 2018 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
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