In the 1960s, the six of us kids ranged in ages from three to twelve. We each had chores we were responsible for on our dairy farm. Milking 50 cows twice a day kept us busy, but also provided our family’s livelihood. In addition to the cows, we also had several horses, lots of chickens and of course barn cats and a dog. Anyone familiar with farm life knows that it is as consistent as a clock. One cow or fifty cows, the milking happened every day at 5 o’clock in the morning and five o’clock at night. Any visitors, which would always cause a break in the routine were very welcome to us.
A favorite visitor to our farm was the preacher and his family. Supposedly this preacher had also grown up on a farm but he did several peculiar things that made us doubt his claim. There were two girls in the family, Carol and Nancy. They were somewhere near in age to some of us. One day when they stopped by to visit, they were all standing in the yard chatting when our dog wandered over and calmly hiked his leg and urinated on the man’s shoe. The adults were laughing about this then went inside the house to clean it up. We decided this would be a great time to go bridle up some horses and give Carol and Nancy rides. We didn’t have saddles and some of the ‘bridles’ were actually just halters with baling twine tied to the sides to act as reins. Our tough little horses, actually big ponies, were barely broke, but we had worn them down by riding quite often. The preacher’s girls were totally inexperienced at riding at all, much less bareback. We managed to get going with one riding with my oldest brother, the other with me. We had five horses that time, our youngest brother was too little to be out with us, he was at home with our parents.
Our farm happened to be next property to an old abandoned church with a cemetery on each side. Our parents would joke that one was the ladies’ the other was the men’s. We believed them. In fact, being the oldest, my brother and I often made up stories about that old church and cemeteries to scare our younger siblings. Having the preacher’s daughters there however, was especially fun because they believed everything we said. Everything! Even our younger brothers and sister got in on it.
Recently we had heard the adults talking about how somebody had been stealing cattle in our area. For some reason we started telling Nancy and Carol that we thought the thieves were holed up in that old church. Next we decided to ride over there and check it out.
Carol and Nancy were getting scared and really didn’t want to, but they were on the horses with us so they had no choice. We were really having fun at their expense. We teased them about being scaredy-cats and chickens so they toughed out and we rode to the church yard.
Nobody maintained the property, it was overgrown and tangled. The day was also getting toward dusk and all of us were getting a little spooky because of the things we’d been talking about. When we came really close to the old church, suddenly a flurry of bats burst out of the church’s steeple tower and scared the stuffing out of us, including the horses! The worst part was that our horses were easily panicked and every one of them bolted for home, approximately a quarter mile away.
When horses panic, they cross some sort of mental line and in the case of our half wild mounts, cannot be controlled or reasoned with. Because we rode pretty often, we were doing okay at staying on, but we also had a mane to grip. Our passengers, however, besides having to deal with riding double, bare back, they fell off easily when the crazed horses plunged and plowed through the cemeteries, jumping over stones. Carol and Nancy screamed and cried and we tried to stop the horses but nothing doing. They ran pell-mell all the way home to the pasture gate, panting wild eyed. Our parents had come back outside and were looking for us. They were just in time to see us race into the driveway. Boy were we in trouble. We tried to gain a bit of sympathy for our harrowing ride that we just barely survived… sort of, but nothing doing.
We were in deep trouble, insured by the cries and wails coming from the preacher’s kids, straggling into the driveway. Two of our younger siblings had also fallen off in the madcap dash for home, and were mad and scared and crying. What a mess. Everybody was looked over for injuries, but other than scratches, bruises and dirt, all were pronounced more or less healthy. Two of my brothers and I were held responsible because we were oldest. We were punished, banned from horseback riding and forbidden to make fun of Carol and Nancy for being bad riders and sissies to boot.
Our younger brothers and sister never held it against us, they always wanted to go along with whatever the rest of us were doing. I think our parents over-reacted because they were embarrassed that we didn’t take better care of the preacher’s kids. Carol and Nancy, however, didn’t get mad at us either. They came out to our farm many, many times after that. Maybe the lesson in all this is to not interfere too much. Let the kids be- they will sort it out.
… Sorry Carol and Nancy.