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.
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
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