I thought of another horse story, including my mom, of course.  When she was a teenager, she and her dad, Wesley Smith, were horse racing 'down the lane.'  That is an old dirt road running north/south along the old house in Dry Hollow. 

She said they raced twice and he beat her both times.  Finally, she asked him to trade horses and race again so she could win.  They raced again and he beat her again, on her horse.  So, the jockey in a horse race does have a lot to do with who wins!  She thought that was a pretty funny story and still wondered how he accomplished that.

Another time, Grandma Annie told them to wash the diapers of the many babies that came along later.  They saddled up, rode to the nearest creek, probably Seekseequa Creek.  They tied all the diapers together and to the horses, then ran the horses up and down the creek until they were 'clean.'  They never told Grandma. 

I have so many horse stories that include my mother, I'm not sure if I've already told this one  Gloria said one day they were driving to Dry Hollow. Mom was riding Peg.  They raced for a while, Gloria said they were going about 35 mph and Mom was keeping up.  All of a sudden Peg, once again notorious for doing whatever he wanted when he was running, took off on a side road and away Mom and Peg went!  She didn't say when they came back, but I bet it wasn't until Peg was all worn out!

Every now and then Peg would throw his head back and come really close to clobbering whoever was riding him.  I think he did hit Pudge once.  He was real tall and had a long neck.  One day, she was prepared for him.  he threw his head back while she was riding.  She had a big stick with her and beat him over the head with it.  He ever did that again.

The grandparents would let us use one of their horses if we would go to Dry Hollow to get them.  We'd usually ride Peg double, get one of their horses, and bring it to our house.  Poncho was a big semi-workhorse size guy.  He was big and gentle.  He was Grandma's horse.  I liked to ride him because he could pace.  One day I went to the corral to catch him to go riding and he attacked me!  I got out of the corral, ran to mom and told her Poncho had gone crazy.  She marched down to the corral with a 2x4.  When he came at her, she whupped him upside the head.  He behaved himself after that.

Mom was so strong.  One day she went to visit her friend Sally Brunoe.  Sally had a big white dog that looked liked a husky cross.  Mom had visited Sally often but when she went to open Sally's gate, the dog jumped at mom.  She gave him the right cross to the head and he got the message.  Leave that woman alone!

Memories

Still going through my parents' stuff at our house.  There were clippings and a few pictures I sent to my sister, Gloria.  We laughed about some of them.  One of them was her announcement graduating from Oregon State COLLEGE, now Oregon State University, I think it was 1960.  I told her I liked the one of her riding a horse in a parade wearing regalia.  She laughed and asked me if I knew why she hated to ride horses.  She said when she was 3 or 4, when they (I wasn't present yet) lived at the little house, Aunt Zelma asked her if she'd like to ride her horse with her.  Of course she said yes and away they went, west on the Shitike Creek road.  When they turned around to go back home, Zelma laid Gloria across the saddle on her belly and whipped the horse to run fast. Gloria said all she could see was the road flying by, she was terrified! Zelma had no children so she probably didn't realize what she had done.

So, we started talking horse stories.  Pudge had a horse named Peg (Winnipeg).  Peg was notorious for not stopping when he started running.  We used to tie the toboggan to Peg in the winter and run him across the fields.  The toboggan would fly across the tops of the sagebrush.  One day Pudge asked Gloria to ride Peg so she could ride the toboggan.  Gloria was concerned about stopping him so Pudge told her to just run him into a fence, so that's what she did and he actually did stop.

That story led to another about Peg.  The fields just mentioned are just east of the 'town' of Warm Springs.  There is a housing development there now, where my house is.  At that time there was nothing but a field and it was cross fenced in a couple places.  The same thing happened to Pudge and me when we were riding Peg across the field.  We stopped at the fence, opened the gate, rode through, and closed the gate.  Coming back, we thought Peg would remember where the gate was but he didn't, we couldn't stop him.  He went right through the barbwire gate.  He stopped, we got off, and saw that the skin on his chest was sagging.  As I remember it, it was a slice horizontally across his chest, about 8 inches wide.  We took turns holding his chest together and holding his bridle, walking him home.  It was about 2 miles to home.  By the time we arrived home, it was holding on its own.