The oldest memories

This is the oldest photo I have of myself at a horse show. The pony I'm riding was the second one I had owned and his name was Nightmare. A Nightmare he wasn't. He was a really good, well trained pony and the first one that taught me the value of a broke horse. You see the first pony I owned was named Spirit and quite frankly I'm pretty sure he earned it. He was all white, hyper, and a handful. Not only was he my first pony and I had to learn to ride on him, my father flat refused to by me a saddle because back then the price tag on a used saddle was 2x the cost of the pony. Board was $25 a month. Lucky for me the stables was within walking distance of my suburban neighborhood on the south side of Indianapolis near Beech Grove, In.

The place was called Dalton Stables and the man in charge of it for many years was known as Pic Dalton. His common law wife Betty Day lived there with him for many years in the little old white run down farm house on the hill. Dalton stables had several hundred acres, pasture, woods, and an adjoining unused property with several hundred more acres that you could slip through the ancient barb wire in places and ride on even more land. As you can imagine it was a 10 yr old child's paradise. Back then kids my age could disappear from after breakfast until dark without a parent's frantic worry.

I leaned much about horses and people at that stables even as a child. There were a couple of roping horses Speedy and Razor and their cowboy owners were a header, and heeler team. They used to practice team roping in the old run down arena at the base of the hill to the left of the huge many stall boarding barn. I used to enjoy watching them "doing their thing".

 I also became aware of owner neglect even way back then when a pathetic Tennessee Walking horse that never got out of his filthy stall went from healthy, to thin, to starved over a period of just a few months. I remember feeling so sorry for that horse I cleaned his stall consisting of a foot of urine soaked and packed feces. Being I was just a kid with no form of income of my own that was all I could do at the time. Even so I imagine the poor horse appreciated it.

The happier times were spent riding bareback through the hundreds of acres of woods on my pony. I spent about five years boarding at that place, riding those woods, and enjoying every minute of it. Learning to ride or die trying on Spirit, and later enjoying the pleasures of a well mannered pony named Nightmare that really wasn't. I even got my start in horse showing on Nightmare and the picture is of he and I on a barrel pattern. I'm sure I did not have a saddle and that hand you see is gripping nothing more than a handful of mane.