Monday Memoir July 3, 1965

 All at once it was July. Of course very little changed in the daily routine. I had just begun to ride Ginger. 

July 3, 1965 Sat

Got up usual and did my morning chores. Cleaned up the first SW corner of the shop yard. That’s a small start on an incredible job. Ate and rode out. We crowded right along and got back even with Ginger by 9:30. I rode her around and she did famously for her second ride. She really is fine. I led Leo and the two small ones while Mom went to Cottonwood for feed. Then I ate lunch and rode out. We spent most of the afternoon up in the canyon watching the stock graze. It was hotter than Hades. I worked on arranging my poems in the meanwhile. I’ve written quite a few to Dusty, I find. And he has a few that I didn’t keep copies of, too. We took Chief out and bred Patsy tonight. Trimmed Patrick’s feet, too. I hope we’ll go out in the a.m. tomorrow and Monday. But one can never tell. I took a shower before supper, mostly in cold water. That felt grand. Finished my poems. I’ve written approximately 550 since 1952. That’s quite incredible but only about 10% of them are worth a damn. Well, it’s 1100 and everyone wants me to go to bed so I guess I must. How many more evenings will I sit home before??!! I plan to have Dusty read my stories and extra letters while I am with him if possible. So I can watch and explain!

I can see that the big clean up effort Charlie Mike and I were undertaking was not nearly finished. We had completed the yard around our "home house" but the yard next door around the office/shop/storage house was yet to be done. The southwest corner was the far rear, past the garage we used for hay storage and the smaller shed that in time Charlie Mike and I kind of took over and made our space. One could barely get through the wide gate into that yard with all the 'stuff' stacked and jumbled around. Between us we could lift and rearrange most of it where either alone might have had trouble. More and more we learned to cooperate and tackle hard jobs with teamwork. That old practice served us well on the two big moves from Colorado Springs to Alamogordo in 2011 and from Alamogordo to here in 2019.

Ginger was going to be a bit taller than her mother but had the level disposition and biddable nature of her mom and also a good bit of Chief's steadiness and good manners. I was really happy with this.  She was the first one I totally trained from day one and for the most part Dad was busy otherwise and did not have much input at all. That made it go much better as you might imagine! I had done a lot with Buzzie and also Lyno and Leo, but just less independently up to that point. So Ginger, the two year old paint mare, got her second ride that day...  I have no photos but I think I used a McClellan saddle on her and the familiar hackamore bridle. I rode her for under an hour and just around close to home there in Clarkdale.  For a few weeks I brought her in from the pasture after the morning chores, rode her a bit,  and took her back out when I did the midday rotation since we had the corrals at Clarkdale mostly filled. Her training really went without a single issue or misbehavior requiring any punishment. She had known me from day one and trusted me which made it that much easier.

In the heat of the afternoon Charlie Mike and I went up in the canyon and let either the two red mares --Lyno and Buzzie--or Chief and Leo graze. That year it was still pre-monsoon and hot and dry as it is now. I had written poems on scraps of paper, pages out of notebooks or the backs of old school papers and stuffed most in a big envelope. I wanted to get them organized in folders and saved a bit neater.  That turned out to be a rather large project when I began to count how many! I recognized there were a lot of very juvenile and doggerel verses which I termed "not worth a damn" but I still kept them all! Of course since then I have written hundreds or even thousands more and not all of them are fantastic either! But I always had a bent for rhyme.

Still no word from Dusty or when B&B 6 would finally get back to Clarkdale. My nerves were more than slightly frayed but I dug in and held on since there was really nothing else to do. The next day was one of my all-time favorite holidays but I doubt we did much to celebrate except sit out on the front steps and watch the fireworks that evening. Otherwise it was likely business as usual if not some sudden catastrophe that had to be attended to at once! 

Photos tend to be scarce. I seldom could afford film for my little camera and saved what I had for new colts and a few special things here and there.  So a few notes: I had to dress up now and then to remind myself I was still a regular girl; I'm not sure what the occasion was but I remember making the dress and playing with piling my hair up.  Next is Charlie Mike that summer.  He was getting into the rebellious phase I had hit when I went back to school after the mule year, similar age and probably worse circumstances. He hardly ever smiled.  Next is Susie and Ginger in the spring of 1963 when Ginger was a baby. She had more white than Susie did. Then two shots from 1965 of me and then Charlie Mike with Ginger. At one point she was allegedly his horse but he was not yet to the point of being able to train her so of course I did. "Ownership" was mostly a fleeting and dubious distinction anyway. The only absolute was Tina who was forever truly mine.