Saturday, January 12, 2013

Did Gus ever smoke?

When I lived in Denver in the early 1980s, I helped three women, who owned a small training firm, conduct a stop-smoking program at a major employer. We went to their office on three Wednesday afternoons for a one-hour session at the end of the workday. I was their "token male" on the training team.

At the last session one participant approached me and asked if I had ever smoked?

"Yes," I answered.

"How much did you smoke?" she asked.

"Not that much," I answered.

"Was it hard to quit? she asked.

"Not that hard," I answered.

"How long ago did you quit?" she asked.

"It was a while back," I said.

She stepped up really close to me and grabbed my coat lapels. "Listen, buster, how old were you when you quit?"

"I was seven. Mom said I was never going to live to see eight, if I didn't quit."

She said, "I knew you had never smoked!"

I think that woman had probably smoked more years than I had lived, and she could tell that I was a non-smoker. Clellie will fill in the rest of the story about my smoking. (Right, Clellie?)

I never did smoke cigarettes. After college when I was working in the Chicago Loop, I had smoked a pipe for a little while, but it was a pain in the neck, having to wrestle with tobacco and cleaners, and not enjoying it very much. One day i walked into a smoking shop and was looking at pipes.

The clerk said, "You look like a 250 pipe man." She meant a $250 pipe. No way!

Sunday, January 6, 2013

Remembering the farm

Sitting here on a cold day in January in northern Illinois, I've thinking about the farm. The horses, The old house. The addition with the fireplace built by real craftsmen. The old barn. And the flowers that Mom painted around the base of the toilet in the new bathroom. Didn't she paint a snake, too? Or a skunk?

Remember the horses? Itsy Bitsy. Sonny Peavine. Rusty. Billy, the retired St. Louis Police horse. And Denver.

Remember when Billy got his leg caught in the barbed-wire fence? And how he just stood there until we found him? He didn't pull at all. He didn't have one cut.

I think Denver was the horse with the reputation for dumping riders. When he was at Missouri Stables, one renter always took bus fare with her, because she knew she was going to get dumped halfway around Forest Park. I rode him one day. When we crossed under the highway through the tunnel and came up on the other side, I kicked him into a gallop as we passed the old quonset hut. Then he suddenly planted his front feet and whirled around to go back. I don't know how I stayed on, but I did, and he never tried that with me again.

And the nasty old barn that was falling down? Where the saddles were kept? And where Dorothy had to sleep. Yikes!

When I was at Stephanie's in Columbia, S.C. last September, I rode a horse that was taller than Itsy Bitsy, who was 16-2 hands. This horse was 17-2 hands. That's way up there! Good thing there was a mounting block nearby.

I remember one time at the farm when Mom was going run to Wetzel's Grocery. She told me to stay off the horses. Naturally, as soon as the taillights of the Ford wagon went out of sight, I was out in the  front field grabbing a horse to ride. Mom was smart. She turned around and came back. And caught me!

Someday I am going to dig into some boxes I've got and see if I have old family pictures. Then I'll find out if they can be digitized.