Christine Johnston
Favorite Childhood Memory
I grew up in Kentucky – horse country. I was very lucky in that my best friend’s mother purchased a farm in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains when we were third or fourth grade and the farm came with horses! As far as we were concerned, the horses were JUST for us – siblings? What siblings?
In addition to being in horse country, I had what I have heard referred to as a “free range” childhood. We took those horses out just about every morning we were on the farm – there were pastures on that farm as well as neighboring ones that we could ride through and over. We raced each other. We re-enacted Wild, Wild West episodes. We just sat on, with or by those horses doing all the things young girls enjoy doing together. We invented our futures. We designed our Hobbit Houses. We invented new families. We invented spies that were tracking us.
Every December 2 I think of the best memory of these days. And I smile.
We had taken the horses to the farm “next door”. Getting there involved riding along the bottom of the hill to the gate, through the gate and along the tractor path in the woods. This trail led us to the bottom pastures along the Red River (or, more likely, a creek that flowed to the river). We had brought lunch with us (sandwiches and fruit) and left that by the creek as we raced back and forth again and again across the two pastures. We always rode bareback. Mare (my horse) always won the first half and Diamond (Page’s horse) always won the second. I think it was an agreement between the animals as Diamond could be grumpy if he didn’t get his way (typical male, eh?).
After the morning races, we went to the creek to get the horses water and to have our lunch. Diamond decided to try an orange and took a big bite of it. I don’t think I will ever forget the look on his face when all the juice squirted back in his face!
Thanks for reading # 89 of 7777.
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