Memory Lane Monday The Trail Ride!

Good morning to all of you. First of all I my heart and prayers this morning are with all the families involved in the horrible shooting this morning at a school in Ohio. I just turned on the news this morning which is rare for me and found this sad news. Any time this happens it leaves all of us asking What has happened to our country?

Yesterday I realized that this was the last week in February so that meant it was time to join Donna at Brynwood  Needleworks for her Memory Lane Monday. I thought I would tell the story of the day my son Clint was born since it was the week of his birthday. Well thank goodness this ole lady checked former post in February and found she had already did this post. haha If you missed the birth of my second child you can click this link  Happy Birthday Son and it will take you to that story.

Now what do I write about since the story of Clint was already told. It seems the last week I have been doing a lot of writing about past memories of my life in prison. You need something different so since this time of the year in my area is the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo why not tell you about me riding the famous Salt Grass Trail Ride.

The Salt Grass Trail Ride was conceived in 1952 while then the mayor of Brenham Mayor Reese Lockett was having cocktails with a Houston Post editor and the president of KPRC-TV in Houston. They were laughing about a trip to the Orange Bowl. The mayor of my small town had vowed to them never to travel anywhere again where he could not get back home on horseback. So in turn, to get to the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo that year, Mayor Lockett insisted he would ride from Brenham to Houston on his horse. In this cocktail-inspired, half-serious pledge, the group recognized a brilliant idea that would simultaneously generate publicity for the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo and celebrate Texas’ colorful history.

That year on Jan. 30, 1952, 17 riders trotted out of Brenham towards Houston, following many of the trails ridden by Texas cattlemen decades before. The following year, 80 riders made the ride; in 1954, 800; in 1956, the ride’s fourth year, more than 1,400 riders hit the trail for Houston. In short, the 1952 ride that sprang from the lunchtime banter at the long-since closed Cork Club evolved into the largest organized horseback movement to take place in modern times.

Skip ahead twenty years and you have me a young mother of one son and married to a man who thought only of being on a horse or with his horse.  We rode local trail rides on and off but the big daddy of all trail rides was the Salt Grass Trail Ride which by this had grown from 17 riders to more than 1,600 riders organized into approximately 40 wagons, which functioned as separate yet intermingling groups.

We left Brenham on a Saturday morning headed for Houston to join other trail rides for the huge parade in downtown Houston that kicked off the Livestock Show and Rodeo.

My favorite horse at the time was not ready to be ridden a 100 miles in seven days so the hubby opted for me to ride one of his. He failed to tell me that he was still training this particular horse and it was feisty.

It was custom back then to start the ride with a parade through the small town of Brenham. I was excited yet apprehensive since I was not familiar with the horse Brandi Wine and seven days was a long time to be straddled across a horse when the most I was use to was short trail rides two days at the most.

Brandi Wine and I turned on Main Street where the local town’s people were cheering us on and celebrating. She took maybe four steps forward and then two steps back and then the rodeo started. Never mind that we were a hundred miles from the real rodeo, she decided to have her own one horse show in the middle of a one horse town. (Sorry I could not resist) At the time Brenham was just about that to me coming from a much larger town on the beach near Houston.

Instead of a slow ride following along behind all the other wagons and riders we did a fast bucking ride all the way from one end of town to the next. She bucked so high that I can remember at times that I could actually see the tops of some of the covered wagons.

All I could do was hang on. After the parade ended so many riders patted me on the back and congratulated me for not being thrown off. Honestly how I stayed on is a miracle but I knew that I did not want be thrown through a glass plate window in one of the shops and I held on for dear life.

If this were a fairy tale and I was a princess the story would end here with me safe and sound. Not to be.

The same morning ten miles down the rode an older gentlemen wanted to help me adjust something on my saddle to make it more comfortable for me to ride so he told me that he and I should ride about six wagons or more ahead where he could adjust my saddle and by then our wagon would have caught up with us. I trusted the ole guy and did what he asked.

We were riding ahead when we came up to a wagon with a horse tied to the back of it. The horse tied to the wagon kicked at my horse making contact three times with my left leg. The third kick sent me flying over my horse onto the ground.

By the end of the day my leg was swollen twice it’s size and the pain was like nothing I had ever experienced. My jeans were cut to my knee because of the swelling.

When we stopped for lunch that day I was inside the wagon with ice on my leg from what else but the beer keg and I overheard some guys talking to my husband. He told them there was no way with that injury would I be riding any further. Being the three stooges that they were they were envious of him for not having a wife that was going to be tagging along. Well that’s all it took. I never knew how hard headed I was until that moment.

I finished the hundred mile ride to Houston with a leg that looked like it needed a cast and I did it with out the help of alcohol or pain killers. Thinking back I might have been the only sober rider the day we rode into Houston but probably the dumbest since I rode all week injured. Since I did not drink alcohol I fit in that group about like I fit into the parties I attended in South Carolina for the GOP debates.

Did Brandi Wine behave that week? No there were several more incidents but not time to tell you now about them. Did my hubby behave? About like Brandi Wine behaved. What happened to the horse that was tied up behind the wagon and kicked the fool out of me. Well it turns out they found him that night kicking   the side of someone’s wagon and he and his owner were taken off the ride. I also had heard before he kicked me three times on my leg he had kicked a man earlier in the head. I never knew if this was true or not. I was hoping it was just a rumor.

After one long week we reached Houston Memorial Park and the next morning we rode our horses in the parade downtown. Thank goodness my husband had the sense enough to ride close to my horse and with the ole man on the other side of me they managed to keep Brandi Wine from doing a repeat performance of the rodeo she put on in Brenham. I had never been in such a big parade and  Houston looked totally different from the top of a wild horse.

Til to this day I can feel where the horse kicked me. He cracked a bone in my leg and if you feel that spot you can feel the indention in my bone.

Riding the Salt Grass Trail is one of those things when I think back on it now I can't believe that I did it. Even though I can remember as a child standing on the side walks of downtown Houston I would tell my girl friends one day I would be in that parade.  Never knew I would be so lucky. hahaha

Sorry for such a long post. I left out the whole week of incidents. If it could go wrong it did on this trip but I was lucky and made it home safe back to my son Chad. Never did I ever leave him for a  whole week again until he was grown.

Have a lovely week. Hope you are well and to my son Clint I hope you have the best Birthday ever. I will see you this weekend.

Click over to Donna's and join her Memory Lane Monday's at Brynwood Needleworks,

My love to all of you

Maggie

PS: Wish I could find the pictures of me on this ride but it was so long ago I have no idea what happened to them. These are just pictures off of the web. The last picture says it all. lol