On a Sunday Morning

I get up each morning around 4:00am. I don’t use an alarm clock, I’m wired that way. I check social media to see what the other side of the planet was up to as I slept, which is really nice when there is a bike race in Europe. Next, I check the news then The Atlantic, The New Yorker, and finally Garden and Gun which is chocked full of bourbon advertisements, which for an alcoholic is like sending a fat kid into a Krispie Kreme with the hot light on and telling him he can smell but not eat.

?On Sunday I tend to look for a feel good story, something Charles Kuralt might have covered. Sadly, the news is full of mostly depressing stuff. You can guess the headlines today: Trumps fraud, Navalny’s death, the Ukraine and Israel. I was searching for a feelgood story, which is what sent me to Garden and Gun. Rick Bragg often writes a piece for them, but no such luck today. Dissatisfied, I decided I’d share a lighthearted memory of my own. ?

?On November 2, 1976, Jimmy Carter defeated Gerald Ford to become the 39th President of the United States and that suited Pa just fine because Jimmy was a Democrat. The election created a buzz in Calhoun for several reasons. First, President Carter’s son Jack lived in Calhoun, so that meant inevitably that the president would, at some point, visit Calhoun, Georgia. Second, President Carter appointed Thomas Bertram “Bert” Lance of Calhoun as the Director of the Office of Management and Budget. It was an exciting time in Calhoun and the barbershop never lacked for conversation.

?It was at that same time Pa decided that I needed my first real horse, sort of. Technically, the first horse I ever owned was a plastic one, a Radio Flyer powered by four springs and an enthusiastic boy. It had a wooden handle through its ears for me to hold on to and it never got tired. I’d mount that thing and pretend I was the Lone Ranger going to stop a train robbery. I wore a cowboy hat, boots and carried a cap pistol in a hip holster that I used to shoot imaginary outlaws at a full gallop.

Pa thought I was ready for a real one, so he bought me a palomino Shetland pony that I named Sugar Babe, which some people seemed to think was a sissy name for a boy. But he liked to eat sugar cubes, so I thought it just kind of fit. L.M. Lovingood, the local horse authority, warned Daddy. “Carl,” he said. “A pony is a hell of a lot meaner than a horse. You’d better watch him or that pony’ll kill that boy."?

They ought to have listened. Sugar Babe was stubborn most of the time and just plain mean the rest of the time. He would wait until I was least expecting it, then he would bite, kick, or stomp me, and when I wanted to ride him, he’d run circles around the pasture until I finally cornered him and put a rope around his neck or tricked him.

I’d get the metal feed bucket and rattle it around with some sweet feed in it. He couldn’t resist sweet feed, so I used his weakness against him. He’d ease up to me real slow, knowing I had a rope in my hand. He’d stand as far away from me as he could then stretch his neck and head out just as far as physically possible. Then he’d reach with his lips trying to keep out of arms reach yet determined to get a mouthful of that sweet feed, just a grain or two with his lips. Once he got a taste and began to chew, he simply had to have more. That’s when I’d slip the rope around his neck.

Everything was a test of wills between me and that pony. He didn’t like walking on board bridges, but we had to cross them to explore the places I wanted to go. He didn’t like climbing steep banks, but I figured a horse that would not climb a bank was about worthless. He didn’t like jumping ditches, so I would run him at them over and over until he finally relented. In the end, I coached him into doing just about everything I’d seen on TV westerns, yet somehow, he seemed to keep a tally in his head and set his mind on exacting revenge for everything I coerced him into doing.

I’d kick his ribs and pop him on the rump with the reins until he eventually jumped a ditch or crossed a bridge. Then, once we were safely on the other side, me proud for having won the test of wills, and assuming it was all over, he’d reach back and bite me on the leg. From the time Pa bought him, I rode him nearly every day until the weather got too cold.?

Come spring, the spring of 77, I was right back at it – riding Sugar Babe like I was a wrangler on a Texas cattle ranch. I figured since he got the winter off, I’d need to whip him back into shape.

One day I was racing him around Ma and Pa’s house. I’d start him at the corner of the house. We’d race along the pasture fence behind the house, then down the hill by the garden, up the hill in the front yard through the pine trees, across the driveway, and back to the corner of the house. I insisted that he run each lap faster than the last. After four or five laps, Sugar Babe was in a hot lather. He was quickly tiring of the game and getting more than a little pissed off. On what must have been the tenth lap, that pony decided if he couldn’t throw me, he’d get me off his back somehow.

His first attempt to knock me off was coming up the hill in the front of the house. He deviated from our course and ran me under a pine limb. The limb was just above his head, but I saw it in time to fend it off with my arm. Then at a full gallop, we rounded the corner of the house. Instead of following the fence line, as we’d been doing, he darted right and headed straight for the clothesline. I saw it coming, but we were moving so fast I sat frozen in terror on Sugar Babe’s back. The pony slipped effortlessly under the nylon cord, but I got clipped in the neck, just under the chin. The force ripped me off the saddle, where it felt like I sat suspended midair for a second or two as Sugar Babe ran free. I swear that pony whinnied in a giggle as I hit the ground, grabbing for my neck, gasping for breath, and unable to speak. Forcing air into my lungs, writhing like a worm in hot ashes, I cried out, well cough-cried out, and when I pulled my hands back and saw them covered in my own blood, I thought my throat was cut.

Sugar Babe turned to watch as Pa came running out of the house to see what the screaming was all about.?

“Son quit that squalling. You ain’t dying,” he said, too quick for my comfort. He wasn’t the one with his throat cut, and he had yet to even inspect my injuries.

He squatted down to take a look. “Here, now, let me see.” He pushed my hands away and looked at my neck. “He got you good, boy, but we’ll put a Band-Aid on it in a minute. First, you go catch that pony, unsaddle him, and put him out to pasture. I think you’re done for today.” He nodded, indicating that Sugar Babe had won this round soundly.

I got to my feet, still coughing from the blow to my neck, only to see Sugar Babe already standing at the gate to the pasture – head held high, flicking his tail victoriously.

?

?