HAROLD AND HORSES

Written 15 May, 2004

Harold’s memories of horses were not happy ones.
They were of the horses of the New York City Police Department mounted officers during the depression.
The Police Officers used their horses to control the "mobs" of people trying to line up for food or in rent strikes. He remembered once being trapped in a doorway by an enormous black horse with an NYC Police Officer speaking in an Irish idiom yelling at the women around him, "Git Back out of the way... This is no place for you to be linin’ up and yellin’. This is a government office don’t ya know. Move along now, you be movein’ along..."
For most of his life Harold had nightmare’s about those giant horses coming to stampede over him.
So, when he and Shullie came to Tucson in 1943 and parked their 18 foot airstream trailer in the Desert Shores Trailer Park at 1067 West Miracle Mile, imagine his emotional state to find HORSES stabled there! Lots of the residents had livestock and lived there so they could care for the animals without using gas rations.
Shullie had always gotten along with horses, she had the opportunity to learn to ride as a kid on the family Lodge in up-State New York with the summer lodgers. (More about that in other stories), But Harold...
At Desert Shores it became unavoidable that at some point, Harold and the park bully would get into a discussion about the horses and his dislike for the beasts came out. He was, of course, challenged to a ride. He apparently declined a few times, but after a while he was backed into a corner. Coming home from work one day, the bully was waiting for him.
The man brought out his biggest horse, a stallion, saddled and ready to ride. Harold was not happy about the whole idea, but walked up to the horse and put his left foot in the left stirrup and began his swing over the giants back. Just as he began to swing his right leg into the stirrup, the big dark horse took off running at top speed.
Harold said he plopped down on the saddle, grabbed the traces and the saddle horn with both hands. Never did he find the right stirrup, he was too busy trying to figure out how to get the monster to stop! But, apparently looking like he knew what he was doing, he and the "monster" made one turn around the whole park road, about 3/4 of a mile, mane and tail flying, only to pull up short in a dust cloud on the exact spot from which they left.
The bully, in shock, said, "I thought you couldn’t ride?’.
Harold, trying to look cool, stepped down. "I never said I never said I couldn’t ride, I said I did not like horses!"
He walked past all the gawkers and into the tiny trailer he and Shullie shared and collapsed into a chair, shaking all over.
Shullie was still outside with everyone was looking at her. She said she just looked over the crowd and followed her badly rattled husband. Looking back at them from the doorway as if to say this ends all this pushing her husband around forever!
Once the door closed and the curtains drawn, the two clung to each other knowing full well Harold had never voluntarily been that close to a horse before, much less aboard one!