by Peggy Rowe
We were halfway home that afternoon when a police car with flashing lights pulled us over. What followed, was a performance deserving of an award.
“What’s the matter, Officer? Is there something wrong with my car?”
“Yes ma’am, it was going too fast—45 in a 30-mile-an-hour zone. Your license and registration, please.”
“Me? Speeding? You’re mistaken. I’ve been driving since I was twelve years old. I’ve never gotten a ticket—never even been pulled over.”
“Your registration, please, ma’am.”
My mother put her hand over her heart and began breathing faster and coughing. “I don’t feel well. This has never happened to me before!”
“You’ll be all right, ma’am.”
I took a card from an envelope in the glove compartment, handed it to the policeman, and slid lower in my seat.
With her hand still over her heart, she whispered, “Are you sure? Because I’ve never . . .”
“I’m sure, Mrs. Knobel,” he said, writing in a book. “I’ll just give you a warning this time, but you need to slow down and drive safely. You have precious cargo.” He glanced in my direction, probably impressed by my boots and Dale Evans skirt.
Mom’s eyebrows shot up onto her forehead but, of course, the policeman didn’t know her well enough to be intimidated. Her heart attack was a mild one, apparently, and the incident was never mentioned at home. There were too many other things for us to talk about. We had seen wild ponies and had met an actual literary celebrity!
We were like two friends.
Religion and Horses
Some of our neighbors spent their spare time at the American Legion. Others frequented the bowling alley and the local tavern. My family hung out at the little gray church on the corner, a block from our house. It wasn’t my idea, but if you had to be religious, Presbyterian was the way to go.
My best friend, Laverne, was Catholic and had to go to confession on Saturdays when children were supposed to be having fun. I marveled that somebody so good could have anything to confess. I used to wonder if Laverne had to make up sins, but that would probably have been a sin itself. She never sassed her mother or chewed gum in school. If I’d been Catholic, I could have spent a whole day in confession.
Everybody felt sorry for the two Methodists in my sixth-grade class. They weren’t allowed to play cards or go to the movies. My sister knew a girl in the ninth grade who couldn’t dance, wear make-up, or wear shorts in hot weather because her church didn’t approve. I’m not even kidding!
The best thing about Presbyterians was that we didn’t get all excited in church, throwing our hands in the air and shouting “Amen!” or “Hallelujah,” or calling out in “tongues.” Our congregation just sat there quietly until it was time to sing a hymn, then the people who were still awake were allowed to stand up.
I gained even more appreciation for the Presbyterian church the summer our Baptist neighbor invited my sister to a revival meeting.
Her daughter was twelve years old like Janet. I tagged along because it was being held in a big round tent like the circus our parents had taken us to earlier that month, and I was curious. Big mistake.
This tent was crowded and stifling. It smelled worse than the circus and only had one ring. The ringmaster wore a black suit and carried a book. He looked like a magician, but Mrs. Smith said he was called an evangelist. He stood up after the choir finished singing.
He began calmly enough, this evangelist, sounding a lot like our preacher. But after a while, he took off his jacket, then his tie, and he rolled up his sleeves like he was going to change a tire. He shouted. He ranted. Saliva flew through the air as he waved the Bible and got up close to peoples’ faces. He was kind of like a circus animal, and I was glad we were not seated on the aisle. Janet’s eyes were as big and round as jelly donuts, so I tried to lighten the mood.
“We should have brought that roll of paper towels from the kitchen. We could probably sell them.” But Janet shushed me and nodded toward our neighbor, whose expression reminded me of Dorothy’s when she was clicking her heels and saying, “There’s no place like home, there’s no place like home.”
For the better part of two hours, this evangelist dominated the steamy tent, preaching hellfire and damnation until his face was as red as the flames of hell, and he looked like he’d been standing under a lawn sprinkler. His shoes made squishy sounds when he walked by. All in all, he was scarier than any wild circus animal.
Toward the end, it was like a funeral. Men and women were sobbing. Some streamed to the altar at the front of the tent and fell to the ground pleading to be saved. When a lady in the next row fainted, one of the ushers held something under her nose until she woke up. That’s probably why it was called a revival.
I couldn’t wait to tell my parents about this scary tent attraction that not only lacked clowns and cotton candy but was filled with creepy drama. Their reaction was even more shocking than the events of the evening.
“We had revivals down home,” Mom told us, waving her hand to the side and making them sound as mundane as a church picnic. “I went once or twice to keep Mama company, but they’re not for me.”
“To each his own,” Dad said, dunking a cookie in a cup of milk. “Some people put a lot of stock in revivals.”
I thought my mother must have been mad to allow her innocent, impressionable daughters to attend such a gathering. But there was a method in her madness. After that night, I never again complained about going to church and sitting through boring sermons.
Well, hardly ever.
There was something going on in our church every day of the week: Youth Group, Women of the Church, Men’s Club, church dinners, Scouts, and so on. When the steeple bell chimed on Sunday mornings, it was more than a call to worship; it signaled the most important day of the week for the little gray-shingled church at the corner of Fullerton and Kenwood Avenues. My father was an elder and Sunday School superintendent. As his assistant and secretary, as well as president of the Women of the Church, Mom knew everything that was going on. It had been said more than once that Thelma Knobel had her finger in every pie.
Clearly, our family was religious, and when my mother told me that Jesus wanted me for a sunbeam, I believed her. People even joked that our dog had received a calling the Sunday morning he slipped through our front door and tracked our scent to church. He walked down the aisle during the sermon and flushed us out like a bevy of quail during hunting season—which was fine with me as I got to leave church early and take him back home. That said, my parents were not fanatics. They didn’t approach innocent strangers and quote Scripture.
With freshly shampooed hair and polished shoes, we were among the first to arrive at church on Sunday morning and the last to leave Sunday afternoon. In good weather, we walked the block and a half from home. Most of the members knew me, which made slipping out of the sanctuary during sermons tricky. Through the years, Jesus’s little sunbeam lost her shine from time to time. One Sunday I slipped through the side door on the pretext of using the two-seater, state-of the-art outhouse behind the church. With the sermon droning on and my allowance burning a hole in my pocket, I bolted across the street to Neutzel’s Grocery Store. Minutes later, with all four sections of a Sky Bar crammed into my mouth and juice dripping on my chin, I climbed the wooden steps to the church porch in time to hear the benediction through the open door.
The adrenalin pumping through my body was almost as satisfying as the delectable blending of my four favorite flavors as I merged into the stream of exiting worshipers.
“Is that chocolate on your face?” My mother asked when I joined her in the aisle. I swallowed the last sweet morsel and shook my head no, without a trace of guilt.
At the age of eight, I had no doubt that I was the most religious person in our family. I certainly spent more time in prayer than anybody else.
“Please, please God can I have a pony? There are so many in the world, and all I want is one.
I promise to take care of him and do all my schoolwork and chores. Please, God!”
Who knew anyone was actually listening? Or that religion would be paying off for me in such a spectacular way—even if it did take so long?
I was eleven the year religion finally paid off in the form of two strangers who appeared in our pew one Sunday morning—kind of like the angels who appeared to the shepherds in the Christmas story. After the service, my parents greeted the couple, as was their custom, and learned that they lived on a nearby farm.
And they had horses!
I was in the company of real horse people and stared until my eyes watered. The attractive, slender woman had dark hair pulled back into a neat bun like those women in foxhunting prints. Her name was Lois, and I pictured her in a derby, black jacket, britches, and high boots, mounted on a sleek chestnut hunter. He was Mr. Jackson, country squire, in a worn tweed jacket with a pipe and tobacco pouch protruding from the breast pocket. They were both brown and wrinkled from hours spent in the hunt field astride their warmblooded half-breds.
Without warning, Mom reached out and nudged me in their direction. A normal mother might have described me as horse-crazy. Not mine.
“This is our daughter, Peggy. She has been a devoted student of all things equine since she was born.”
She sounded like a used car salesman and did everything but kick my tires. Normally, I’d have found her pretentious dribble and shameless promotion embarrassing, but I was mesmerized and fighting the urge to sniff their clothing.
Before leaving church, the couple invited me to visit their farm that very afternoon. They were angels for sure, leading the way to paradise. Mom seemed to understand when I was too excited to eat a bite of lunch.
All the horse books in the world could not have prepared me for the moment I slid onto that cow pony’s round, furry back. I had spent the first eleven years of my life waiting for this moment and knew instinctively that having a living, breathing horse beneath me was a more spiritual experience than church could ever be.
Lois led the horse around the paddock the first time then turned the reins over to me and joined my mother at the fence. Chico’s warmth radiated through me on that chilly April afternoon as I rode around and around the paddock bareback like a Comanche Indian. The books hadn’t told me that, without a saddle, I would feel each and every movement of his powerful body.
“Are you sure she hasn’t been around horses before?” I heard Lois say as I passed. “She is a natural! And so athletic!”
As I rode out of earshot, I hoped that my mother wasn’t telling Lois about my backyard pony. That would be so embarrassing! As I’ve already mentioned, the thick grapevines that formed a border between our backyard and the alley were supported by a long, sturdy pole. For the past four years, that pole had served as my virtual pony. With an old sofa cushion for a saddle and clothesline for reins, I rode the prairie and rounded up strays.
Some mothers would have considered counseling. Mine, however, made saddlebags out of two old pocketbooks and, after my chores were completed, sent me off on cattle drives with a sandwich and grape juice, horse books, and a slicker for bad weather.
I rode my backyard pony in the heat of summer while my father cut the grass and my mother hung out the laundry, propping sagging lines high in the air with long wooden poles. I rode on autumn days when the wind howled through the canyons and tumbleweeds spooked my pony. I ignored the irony of a mount that shed in the fall instead of in the spring like other ponies and horses. In the dead of winter, when his coat had turned brown and fallen to the ground, he was little more than a skeleton of bare, twisted vines.
And then the angels appeared in Kenwood Presbyterian Church and sat in our pew.
I kept Chico at a walk that day, using the reins to turn him in big circles and change direction. As anxious as I was to jog and trot, I didn’t want to fall off and break my neck in front of an audience.
I slid to the ground an hour later when Mom said, “We don’t want to outstay our welcome, Peggy. I’m sure Lois has things to do.”
As I hugged Chico around the neck, breathing in the heavenly horsey scent, the angel said to me, “I hope you’ll come again, Peggy. I’m here every day.”
I stored the memories away for later—the sound of Chico’s hooves on the soft dirt, the jangle of the metal snaffle bit when he shook his head, the soft whinny to a stablemate, a magnificent bay Thoroughbred mare whose head hung over the barn door.
“Was it fun?” Dad asked at supper that night.
How could I tell him that I had felt at home on Chico’s back? Or that it was where I was meant to be. That would sound silly. So I merely nodded and smiled.
“Lois couldn’t believe that Peggy has never been around horses before,” Mom said. “She is a natural! That’s exactly what Lois said. She’s a natural!” Then she looked my father right in the eye.
“I wonder if Peggy might be one of those child prodigies I’ve read about.”
Dad just smiled and looked as happy as I felt, while Janet wondered if anyone else noticed a strange odor in the room. That night I gave the jeans that were covered in horsehair and sweat one last sniff before my mother took them off to the basement laundry room, but not before removing the handful of hay from the pocket for under my pillow.
Before long, I was spending afternoons and weekends in a little slice of horse heaven called Triangle Farm. Not only was I around horses, I was away from my mother, who couldn’t tolerate idle hands. There was no such thing as lounging on the floor with Topper or leafing through the pages of a horse book while she was busy. The Disciple of Drudgery was always working, flitting here and there. Had she been a horse, she’d have been covered in lather.
Mrs. Jackson—Lois—looked forward to my visits and said she was grooming me to ride in horse shows. Ever cheerful, she would set down the brown bottle that was her constant companion and demonstrate horse care and riding technique. I brushed dried mud from Chico’s coat, mucked the manure and urine-soaked straw from his stall, and rode bareback. Then I would hop on my bike and pedal the uphill-mile home where I stood on our tiny back porch and shed my offensive clothing while Mom shielded me from neighbors’ eyes with a robe.
By summer, I had graduated to Maresy Doats, the beautiful family Thoroughbred, a dark bay mare with a star on her forehead. Sometimes on weekends, Lois’s grown son, an accomplished rider, gave me lessons. A stickler for balance and form, he would lunge the mare on a long line while yelling, “Knees in! Heels down! Back straight!” while I rode with my arms folded across my chest. There was a God, no doubt about it!
“She used to be a racehorse,” I told my parents. “Now Maresy’s a hunter and pleasure horse with the most amazing gaits and perfect conformation!”
My mother couldn’t wait to tell family and friends that her daughter was riding a Thoroughbred—with a saddle no less!
After we finished in the barn, Lois and I would retire to the house for a beer (well, a soda for me). She was never without a drink as we looked at photographs of horses, ribbons, and trophies. Sometimes she would put down her drink and play the piano. She was a more accomplished player than I was, but then, who wasn’t? Typically, before I left for home, her speech would become slurred, and her eyelids heavy. One afternoon she even fell asleep in the paddock while sitting on Chico’s back, a beer in one hand and reins in the other. Afraid she would fall off, I woke her up. I didn’t mention it to my parents. There were no alcoholic beverages in our house; that would have set a poor example for my sister and me. I did, however, brag that my new friend was a talented musician.
Naturally, Mom told our preacher, who told the music director, who invited Lois to join the church choir. She had a deep voice and sang with the men. The choir loved her lighthearted spirit and sense of humor. “She keeps us laughing,” quipped one of my mother’s choir friends.
While I was combing manes and tails, Mom was combing secondhand shops for inexpensive riding clothes. She had a habit
of showing up at the stable unexpectedly while I was soaping saddles or grooming horses. One day I heard her voice as I picked dirt from Maresy’s hooves.
“You might have some nurturing instincts after all,” she called from the fence.
“Gee, Mom, every time I look up, there you are checking on me like I was a kid!”
She took no notice.
Never mind. She would soon be up to her neck in preparations for my sister’s sixteenth birthday bash to be held in our church basement hall. She’d forget all about me.
And still, she found time to stalk me.
That year my mentors took me to horse shows, club meetings, and even to taverns where I met an array of colorful, horsey characters— people who had nothing in common with my parents and their friends. Naturally, I kept that a secret. In contrast to his fun-loving wife, Mr. Jackson wore a perpetual frown. I had asked him once if he ever rode horseback.
“No,” he said, “I just pay the bills.” Lois’s nickname for him was “Grumpy.” They argued often and bitterly.
Before long, my mother was forced to face reality. Lois was up to the top of her riding boots in domestic turmoil and alcoholism. There were rumblings from choir members, as well.
“On rehearsal nights, the choir room reeks like a brewery! We have to open the windows!”
One Sunday morning, as the choir processed through the hallway on the way to the chancel, passing close to my mother and me, Lois paused. Polluting the air and slurring her words, she pronounced with exaggerated dignity, “I’ve memorized all fifteen verses of The Shooting of Dan McGrew, and I can’t remember one word of this damn hymn.” As Lois zigzagged down the aisle, my mother’s eyebrows disappeared into her hairline. That was the last Sunday Lois sang in the Kenwood choir. I was, however, allowed to return to the farm to ride. For the time being, at least.
The final straw came on the day of the annual equestrian club show. I was meant to be an observer, but, at the last minute, I showed a little gray hunter for a friend of Lois. It was my first blue ribbon, and I couldn’t wait to tell my parents.