He had the name before Grandpa bought him. I don’t know what I’d have called him if he needed one, but Patches suited him so it stuck.
He was a black & white pinto equine, sized halfway between a pony and a horse. His lineage was subject to speculation on the part of my uncles; my guess today is that he was part of the gene pool that eventually grew into the Pony of the Americas (POA). The latest entry on his resume was a position in a carnival pony ride, as the mount they put the overgrown kids on. This would prove to have fallout. Stay tuned.
Early summer in Wisconsin produces some of the best weather on the planet. The morning Grandpa and Dad and I climbed into Grandpa’s Chevy pickup (ass-ugly sea foam green, with matching ass-ugly sea foam green side panels enclosing the bed), it was sunny and mild. I was 11. Earlier that year, Malcolm X had been gunned down in New York, and the first U.S. combat troops arrived in Vietnam. It was that year Lyndon Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act, and the act that created Medicare and Medicaid. I was only vaguely aware of those things in 1965 when they happened, and that morning nothing existed except the lush green landscape, the smooth hum of the Chevy, and the pony we were driving to see. There was, as ever, a Camel smoldering in Grandpa’s mouth, which he would periodically flick with his tongue to knock the ash off.
When we got to the place, the seller didn’t have a saddle, and we hadn’t brought one. Dad gave me a speculative look, then hoisted me up on Patches’ back, handed me the reins. I did what I’d seen at the movies: dug my heels into the pony’s sides. He shot forward and I had the sensation of being suspended in mid-air before landing on my ass on the mown hay field where we were. I could hear my Dad and his dad laughing as they came up to see if I was alright. They had both taken this little flight at least once. Anyone who rides horses regularly has flown Air Dobbin.
Horsemanship Rule #1: Scared shitless or not, get back on. This time Dad held one of the reins and the operation went smoother.
Horses in summer have a certain smell. It’s one of my ur-aromas, like woodsmoke, frying bacon, onions, old barns, cut oak. Things that, whenever you smell them, immediately conjure strong memories. The sweat of a horse in warm weather always zaps me to that moment in 1965 when I sat in the sun on that pony’s back, hacking around the field at a walk while my Dad showed me how to hold the reins properly, how the pony neck reined.
Grandpa stood talking to the seller meanwhile, and I had an oh-shit-oh-god-oh-boy moment when I spied money changing hands.
I was heart-broken a few minutes later when we climbed back in the truck and left, without the pony. Grandpa acted like nothing was going on, so I kept quiet. He had paid the guy for something, right?
We got back about noon, and Grandpa took off in the truck again right away. My Dad told me he had errands in town, so I figured that was that and sat down on the farmhouse stoop to help Grandma peel potatoes for a while. I was just finished dumping the peels over the fence to the hogs when Grandpa got back. I don’t remember pissing myself when I saw Patches’ head above the rack, but I might have.
To this day, I don’t know how the pony got into the pickup bed, but Dad and Grandpa used the stone boat (a horse- or tractor-drawn wooden skid for picking stones out of tilled fields) tilted up as a ramp to get him out.
Grandpa hauled out an old military saddle and a headstall and one of my uncles showed me how to tack up. The neighbor kids from across the road were all standing around as I climbed aboard and walked off. I took a slow lap around the 40-acre field next to the barn and returned to the dooryard.
Patches was big enough to carry an adult, so Grandpa decided to try him. When he turned the pony toward the road for a tool along the ditch, Patches balked, shook his head and started along the same path I had taken with him. No matter what Grandpa did, he would go nowhere else. I watched them all the way around that field, Grandpa trying to get the little horse to turn, Patches shaking his head and sticking to the route.
I got back on him, same thing. Finally somebody, maybe my Dad, remembered what the pony had been in his previous life and the lights went on. He was only doing what he thought was expected of him: walk the same path over and over again, with a different rider each time. Everybody had a chuckle about it, except me. I was pissed, having already had visions of riding all over Lewiston Township, which has mostly back roads with wide, grassy ditches, showing off.
I eventually broke the deadlock by leading the pony up the road to where he couldn’t see the house and mounting up. It took a couple weeks of starting off like that, always in a different direction from the time before, but I was finally able to take him anywhere I wanted.
The rest of that summer and the next two, I rode nearly every day. I lived with my grandparents for weeks at a time, sharing a bedroom upstairs in the old house with their hired man, Tom (another story). I had my own set of chores, helped in the field, learned how to drive the Ford 8N tractor, milked cows by hand, learned to herd them a little from the pony (“hayburner” to my uncles).
I grew up in a culture that essentially does not exist now, in many places, particularly where family farms have been decimated by industrialized agriculture or development. My childhood blessed me in ways I am only now beginning to understand.
The third summer, 1968, I didn’t get to the farm much. I had become afflicted with music, bass-playing in particular, and girls. Adolescence in the late 60s with a cop for a Dad was distracting enough without the test of wills over the music. The pony had company, though; Grandpa kept him around a long time for the other grandkids. He was eventually sold, and I lost track of him. It would be a decade before I had another horse (yet another story).
It’s been 50 years just about now since I rode Patches for the first time. We’re still having stupid, greedy adventures in countries that don’t want us around. The Voting Rights Act is under attack, and Medicare and Medicaid are being blitzed. Representative government in the U.S. is being subverted to codify avarice and religious fanaticism, and the media are, for the most part, untrustworthy and useless. And so on.
I have a state job under a regime where any pretense at a separation of powers has been destroyed. The governor’s office, the legislature and the state supreme court now function as a single entity.
So pardon me. I have to go play with my horses; they’re honest. They keep me honest.
Brooklyn, Wisconsin
June 17, 2015
I haven't found a photo of Patches to scan; meanwhile, here's one of my Paint filly Lakota, who just turned 3 a few weeks ago. This was taken at 6 months.