Monday Memoir, March 11, 1966

This was the start of several bad, sad and hard weeks. I can get a bit teary and even mad now remembering but they are water long over the dam or under the bridge and really even the trauma has long since faded. The scars were deep but mostly they healed well over time. 

March 11, 1966

I was sick all this week with the flu, tonsillitis and strep throat and came within a very narrow ace of going out like a light more than once. I got up today (the 11th) with a fever and had to open my big mouth and foul things up so by 10:30 I was in bed instead of on the road to Cottonwood.  I wrote Dusty a fast frantic note but he was gone before Charlie Mike got it delivered so on  up to the post office. That evening I nearly took a baker’s dozen of aspirin and went to sleep--a very long sleep--with his picture in my hand.  But that‘s a silly theatrical gesture and worthless. Before the week ended, the Boss nearly eloped off with the boys--I mean things got pretty hairy. Still ill, I was rather peripheral to the main kerfuffle but it was discouraging to say the  least.

Then on Thursday the 16^th, Tina went to sleep and I had not gotten out there to talk to her, to encourage or try to help her.  I got sick at a hell of a bad time. I can’t help but think if the folks had squared up and settled their disputes that she could have been saved but I know it is partly my fault too. In a way that breaks my last link with the past. I really could walk off now and not feel that I was leaving much at all. But I do have Little Dusty because I chose him instead of Rico, I don’t have anything of Tina at all except memories and that’s the way I want it, really. I truly loved her. She won’t suffer any longer and few horses were ever loved more. Rest in peace, Chiquita Mia. Until  I see you again someday

At this period, the folks were bickering and fighting all the time and the damn lawsuits were the biggest issue and source of trouble.. I usually felt my health was of small concern but somehow the old practice that if one had a fever they had to be in bed seemed to linger. I might have gotten up and gone on but then might have ended up in really bad shape, too. I was sick.  Anyway, them having to pick up the absolutely necessary part of the chores--animals had to at least have feed and water--was an unwelcome burden and not done cheerfully for sure. Charlie Mike was in school and either did not volunteer to stay home and do more or they did not insist on it. I cannot recall. 

Learning Tina had died almost broke me. She had been a key part of my life for ten years and left a huge hole that was never really filled. I did not bond with the colts as I had with her which may have been wrong but there were some other issues involved. Sadly, I did  not have Little Dusty much longer either but that tale is for a few weeks ahead. 

Really Tina had not been well since getting sick after Rico was born in April 1965. I know I came close to losing her several times. She was only 11 which is not old for a horse but things began to go wrong for her. Having two colts in two years as an older mare was too much and then being bred again when she seemed to recover after Rico was insanity. In that I do take some blame; I truly did not know better and listened wrongly to Dad who probably knew really very little more about horses and other animals than I did, if the truth be told. But he was an "expert"--yeah, right. So she died. No, very few horses were ever loved more and as I could, I always took as good care of her as was possible. I trust she will come to meet me when I get to the other side as my many dogs will and maybe some more horses, mules and donkeys I had invested a lot of myself in those years. This was an end of an era in many ways with a few more anti-climax events still to come. But a big cable began to fray. 

The only possible pictures here are of her. They end up in kind of reverse order.. The first is with Bravo when he was a few weeks old. Charlie Mike is with them. Next is Tina with Rico, her second colt. Then she herself probably between the two little ones, showing her thoroughbred look, tall and lean despite some added bulk from foaling. Then a favorite shot of me with her --about 3 years old then and such a good rough-country horse and so steady for hunting, and any work asked of her. I have a painting a dear friend made from this photo.  Then as a two year old, summer 1957, not long before she accidentally broke Charlie  Mike's left leg.  Then as she was being trained; there was never any 'breaking' required. She seemed to be born knowing how to be a good saddle horse and cow-pony. And finally, February 1956 when she had just come home to be mine. What special memories of this great blessing of a once-in-a-lifetime horse. It was an honor to have her for ten wonderful years.