When I was a child, my aunt and uncle owned a small, one-room cabin up in the mountains of northern New Jersey – no electricity, no running water. We had an outhouse, collected our water from a nearby spring, brought a large block of ice from an ice man to place in the ‘ice box’ to keep food for the weekend, and lit the cabin with oil lamps. It was a beautiful (to me), rustic, secluded place where my family spent many a weekend in my younger years. Some of my fondest childhood memories were fashioned there – swimming in the creek, hiking in the woods …
Not far from that cabin was a small, run-down horse farm that gave trail rides. I adored horses (and still do), but my folks couldn’t afford the trail rides, so I would save up my allowances, and do odd chores for neighbors during the week, in order to be able to afford trail rides up there during the spring, summer and autumn.
At the farm, I fell in love with a tiny pinto horse named Tonto. He was not considered a beautiful horse, but he was the gentlest, most affectionate horse I have ever known, and he seemed to have a special affinity for me as well. He was so gentle with children that on Friday and Saturday nights one of the farm hands would take him to a nearby drive-in theater so that the children who were there with their families to see the movie could have a short ride in front of the big screen before the skies grew dark and the movie began.
At the farm, one of the farmhands was required to accompany a rider on trail rides. But Tonto and I developed such a special rapport that the owner of the farm eventually allowed me to ride him unaccompanied, and in that way my ride cost was cut in half from $1.50 to 75-cents an hour. So, not only was I able to ride much more frequently, but Tonto and I were able to ride in solitary. The two of us spent many wonderfully serene and carefree hours riding through those fields and woods together.
One weekend back in ’60, I had managed to save up enough money for a two-hour ride, and was counting the minutes until our Friday night departure for the cabin – knowing that, come Saturday morning, Tonto and I would be galloping through those beautiful pristine fields and woods.
When I arrived at the horse farm that day, the owner was in the corral working with one of the other horses and, when he saw me running up the long dirt driveway to the stables, he put down his equipment, unhitched the gate, and came over to me. I knew immediately that something was terribly wrong.
To make a long story short … the previous night, when one of his hands was riding Tonto back from the drive-in theater, a drunk driver had run into them. Tonto was badly injured and had to be destroyed on the spot. The farmhand was hospitalized (he completely recovered, after a brief hospital stay).
The death of that gentle and beautiful (to me) horse represented my first real taste of personal loss. I grieved for many months … shed an ocean of tears … and stopped riding altogether. Attempted to get back up on a horse years later when visiting a friend in the country, trying to recapture the joy of riding once again … but it was never the same.
Below is the only photo I have of Tonto and me. I was eleven. He was five.
Thanks (grateful and sincere) for the chance to remember him again. :)
~ joanie