the Willys Jeep CJ3B we all recognized by sound ... small black-and-tan Jeep dog ...
McCoy's Market, the last stop, for sodas, dog bones, canned dog and cat food ...
metal gate near the main road, barbed-wire gate for the dirt road to the barn ...
Flaxie, Shasta, Martha, Butterbeans ...
windmill water, streams, tanks to swim in ...
devil's claw seed-pods, prickly pear, mud and sand ... big horsefiles but no mosquitoes ... that i remember.
Trying To Get It Right This Time, by Mary Leue
Used with permission.
Volume II, eChapter 23
Learning to Enjoy Being Texans: Padre Island
... In January, 1955, two events occurred to brighten our lives considerably - Bucky, arriving back from her Christmas with her nephew Bob Freeman's family in San Francisco, insisted on buying us a dryer, having experienced the convenience of one during her visit. We accepted gratefully. But her present to Peter turned out to be the best of them all, although we all enjoyed ours very much. She made a marvelous Bucky card for him - written by the horse himself, of course - announcing horseback riding lessons! It was a gift that was to make all the difference in his life, and the story deserves its own place!
That story involves a prototypical Texan lifestyle pattern. I may have said something to the Woodses, our Unitarian veterinarian friends, about the pattern of frequent illnesses Peter was still experiencing - or perhaps it came up in some other way. However it was, sometime during December Alan Woods mentioned the great value his sons had been deriving from riding lessons they had been taking with a lady who owned a pony ranch north of town. He suggested we might consider asking her to take on our Peter as a pupil, giving us a lot of information about the ways in which riding with Branche Williams, the lady in question, could turn a boy's life around! It sounded very good to me, so I suggested to Bucky that she could make it her Christmas present to Peter if she liked the idea. She did, and the rest … as they say … is history.
First I must tell you about Branche Williams, because she's the key. Her father, Will Williams, a pioneer in Denton County, had started out as a poor boy who developed a pony ranch north of town. He ended becoming the president of Denton County National Bank! But it's about his daughter of whom I would speak - or sing might be more appropriate. By the time I got to know Branche, she had become a kind of benevolent female pirate - in appearance, at least. She had the most fully engaging smile of anyone I've ever met. It lit her face, wreathing it with benevolence and showing her white, white teeth, making her blue, blue eyes even bluer! You felt you would do anything to elicit that smile. Her hair was white and curly, her body was wide but not fat. She dressed in blue chambray work shirt and blue jeans stuffed into rubber boots and drove a jeep with the tattered canvas that had once covered the frame over the driver's seat flying in the breeze of her passage. She trailed a wooden stake-sided trailer whose occupants stood and held onto the sides as she drove. These occupants were all children between the ages of eight and twelve.
Branche didn't like adults all that much, as Alan Woods had warned me right from the start. That was OK with me. Somehow I knew Peter would be fine with her! I let him climb into Branche's parked trailer without a qualm and drove away before she even came out of the house where she lived with a maiden lady faculty member at TSCW, waving to Peter as I left. I was right! Knowing Peter, I knew he would either make friends with her and get along well or I would hear about it in spades when he got back, and I would cancel the deal.
It was after nine PM when I heard the sound of the jeep motor and knew Peter had returned. He came in, almost staggering with fatigue, wolfed down a plate of Italian spaghetti and tumbled into bed, asleep almost before his head touched the pillow. From then on, I never looked back, growing less and less apprehansive as Saturdays arrived, week after week. When it rained, he would come home drenched to the skin and covered with mud - and at first I had worried that he would come down with a cold, since he had always had so many upper respiratory infections - but he never did! Every Saturday I drove him over to where Branche's jeep was parked, he waved goodbye and I didn't hear another word until he tumbled in the front door, exhausted but happy.
A few times over the years he would bring me a gift from Branche. Once it was a little box filled with wild persimmons; another time it was wild apricots; still another time, a little box of tiny banty chicken eggs nestled in wisps of hay! It became clear that she had a special relationship with Peter. Once she even tolerated my driving out to see the ranch. As I arrived, she was stabbing upward with a pitchfork to pull down a five-foot chicken snake that had twined itself around the rafters of the barn and was threatening her banty chickens. The six or so kids who were riding with her at the time stood watching the process with great interest.
I learned more about her methods with the kids as time went along. Branche did not believe in forcing a horse or pony to endure having a cold metal bar in its mouth, which is what is involved in making a horse wear a bridle. Instead, she used split reins attached to the cheek rings in their halter which the rider held crossed over the horse's nose. The rider guided the horse by pulling on one or the other rein. It worked fine! She also did not believe in saddles. She had one herself, but only in the interests of guiding her pupils. It had a wide leather piece across the back to which she attached leads from the ponies being ridden by her pupils, who rode bareback behind her at a leisurely pace, their bare legs dangling. She warned them never to "tight-leg" a horse! Her kids would come once a week and ride among the cluster of ponies who ambled behind Branche as they rode all over the miles of her ranch. When one of the new kids complained of thirst - and it was HOT and DRY all summer! - she would remind them that they would all drink their fill when they got back to the barn. And they would learn not to beg for any special indulgence, but to wait until the proper time. Water trickled from the end of a rusty pipe fed by an old well and pumped into a shallow trough by an old wooden-slatted windmill.
When Branche was sure each of her kids was ready, she would simply undo the lead and set them free! Off they would go, sitting loose and easy on their ponies, who would take them running, so glad to be free! And after so many months of easy riding on their ponies' backs, their riders were completely at home on horseback, and could ride as if born on a horse! It was a brilliant method of teaching. And of course, learning to ride was only one of the many elements in her teachings!
As the weeks went by and Peter continued to ride with Branch every Saturday throughout that summer, I began to see changes for the better in his entire state of being. He put on weight, ate more heartily, fought with his brothers less often, seemed to be enjoying life more. I don't remember if it was during that same summer that I enrolled Tom in Branche's riding group, but I did, somewhere along the way, and eventually enrolled Billy as well - and they all benefited from the experience.
[These three volumes encompassing reminiscences of Mary's life are available from Mary Leue at the following link: http://spinninglobe.net/spinninglobe_html/contents2.htm]
McCoy's Market, the last stop, for sodas, dog bones, canned dog and cat food ...
metal gate near the main road, barbed-wire gate for the dirt road to the barn ...
Flaxie, Shasta, Martha, Butterbeans ...
windmill water, streams, tanks to swim in ...
devil's claw seed-pods, prickly pear, mud and sand ... big horsefiles but no mosquitoes ... that i remember.
Trying To Get It Right This Time, by Mary Leue
Used with permission.
Volume II, eChapter 23
Learning to Enjoy Being Texans: Padre Island
... In January, 1955, two events occurred to brighten our lives considerably - Bucky, arriving back from her Christmas with her nephew Bob Freeman's family in San Francisco, insisted on buying us a dryer, having experienced the convenience of one during her visit. We accepted gratefully. But her present to Peter turned out to be the best of them all, although we all enjoyed ours very much. She made a marvelous Bucky card for him - written by the horse himself, of course - announcing horseback riding lessons! It was a gift that was to make all the difference in his life, and the story deserves its own place!
That story involves a prototypical Texan lifestyle pattern. I may have said something to the Woodses, our Unitarian veterinarian friends, about the pattern of frequent illnesses Peter was still experiencing - or perhaps it came up in some other way. However it was, sometime during December Alan Woods mentioned the great value his sons had been deriving from riding lessons they had been taking with a lady who owned a pony ranch north of town. He suggested we might consider asking her to take on our Peter as a pupil, giving us a lot of information about the ways in which riding with Branche Williams, the lady in question, could turn a boy's life around! It sounded very good to me, so I suggested to Bucky that she could make it her Christmas present to Peter if she liked the idea. She did, and the rest … as they say … is history.
First I must tell you about Branche Williams, because she's the key. Her father, Will Williams, a pioneer in Denton County, had started out as a poor boy who developed a pony ranch north of town. He ended becoming the president of Denton County National Bank! But it's about his daughter of whom I would speak - or sing might be more appropriate. By the time I got to know Branche, she had become a kind of benevolent female pirate - in appearance, at least. She had the most fully engaging smile of anyone I've ever met. It lit her face, wreathing it with benevolence and showing her white, white teeth, making her blue, blue eyes even bluer! You felt you would do anything to elicit that smile. Her hair was white and curly, her body was wide but not fat. She dressed in blue chambray work shirt and blue jeans stuffed into rubber boots and drove a jeep with the tattered canvas that had once covered the frame over the driver's seat flying in the breeze of her passage. She trailed a wooden stake-sided trailer whose occupants stood and held onto the sides as she drove. These occupants were all children between the ages of eight and twelve.
Branche didn't like adults all that much, as Alan Woods had warned me right from the start. That was OK with me. Somehow I knew Peter would be fine with her! I let him climb into Branche's parked trailer without a qualm and drove away before she even came out of the house where she lived with a maiden lady faculty member at TSCW, waving to Peter as I left. I was right! Knowing Peter, I knew he would either make friends with her and get along well or I would hear about it in spades when he got back, and I would cancel the deal.
It was after nine PM when I heard the sound of the jeep motor and knew Peter had returned. He came in, almost staggering with fatigue, wolfed down a plate of Italian spaghetti and tumbled into bed, asleep almost before his head touched the pillow. From then on, I never looked back, growing less and less apprehansive as Saturdays arrived, week after week. When it rained, he would come home drenched to the skin and covered with mud - and at first I had worried that he would come down with a cold, since he had always had so many upper respiratory infections - but he never did! Every Saturday I drove him over to where Branche's jeep was parked, he waved goodbye and I didn't hear another word until he tumbled in the front door, exhausted but happy.
A few times over the years he would bring me a gift from Branche. Once it was a little box filled with wild persimmons; another time it was wild apricots; still another time, a little box of tiny banty chicken eggs nestled in wisps of hay! It became clear that she had a special relationship with Peter. Once she even tolerated my driving out to see the ranch. As I arrived, she was stabbing upward with a pitchfork to pull down a five-foot chicken snake that had twined itself around the rafters of the barn and was threatening her banty chickens. The six or so kids who were riding with her at the time stood watching the process with great interest.
I learned more about her methods with the kids as time went along. Branche did not believe in forcing a horse or pony to endure having a cold metal bar in its mouth, which is what is involved in making a horse wear a bridle. Instead, she used split reins attached to the cheek rings in their halter which the rider held crossed over the horse's nose. The rider guided the horse by pulling on one or the other rein. It worked fine! She also did not believe in saddles. She had one herself, but only in the interests of guiding her pupils. It had a wide leather piece across the back to which she attached leads from the ponies being ridden by her pupils, who rode bareback behind her at a leisurely pace, their bare legs dangling. She warned them never to "tight-leg" a horse! Her kids would come once a week and ride among the cluster of ponies who ambled behind Branche as they rode all over the miles of her ranch. When one of the new kids complained of thirst - and it was HOT and DRY all summer! - she would remind them that they would all drink their fill when they got back to the barn. And they would learn not to beg for any special indulgence, but to wait until the proper time. Water trickled from the end of a rusty pipe fed by an old well and pumped into a shallow trough by an old wooden-slatted windmill.
When Branche was sure each of her kids was ready, she would simply undo the lead and set them free! Off they would go, sitting loose and easy on their ponies, who would take them running, so glad to be free! And after so many months of easy riding on their ponies' backs, their riders were completely at home on horseback, and could ride as if born on a horse! It was a brilliant method of teaching. And of course, learning to ride was only one of the many elements in her teachings!
As the weeks went by and Peter continued to ride with Branch every Saturday throughout that summer, I began to see changes for the better in his entire state of being. He put on weight, ate more heartily, fought with his brothers less often, seemed to be enjoying life more. I don't remember if it was during that same summer that I enrolled Tom in Branche's riding group, but I did, somewhere along the way, and eventually enrolled Billy as well - and they all benefited from the experience.
[These three volumes encompassing reminiscences of Mary's life are available from Mary Leue at the following link: http://spinninglobe.net/spinninglobe_html/contents2.htm]
the Willys Jeep CJ3B we all recognized by sound ... small black-and-tan Jeep dog ...
McCoy's Market, the last stop, for sodas, dog bones, canned dog and cat food ...
metal gate near the main road, barbed-wire gate for the dirt road to the barn ...
Flaxie, Shasta, Martha, Butterbeans ...
windmill water, streams, tanks to swim in ...
devil's claw seed-pods, prickly pear, mud and sand ... big horsefiles but no mosquitoes ... that i remember.
Trying To Get It Right This Time, by Mary Leue
Used with permission.
Volume II, eChapter 23
Learning to Enjoy Being Texans: Padre Island
... In January, 1955, two events occurred to brighten our lives considerably - Bucky, arriving back from her Christmas with her nephew Bob Freeman's family in San Francisco, insisted on buying us a dryer, having experienced the convenience of one during her visit. We accepted gratefully. But her present to Peter turned out to be the best of them all, although we all enjoyed ours very much. She made a marvelous Bucky card for him - written by the horse himself, of course - announcing horseback riding lessons! It was a gift that was to make all the difference in his life, and the story deserves its own place!
That story involves a prototypical Texan lifestyle pattern. I may have said something to the Woodses, our Unitarian veterinarian friends, about the pattern of frequent illnesses Peter was still experiencing - or perhaps it came up in some other way. However it was, sometime during December Alan Woods mentioned the great value his sons had been deriving from riding lessons they had been taking with a lady who owned a pony ranch north of town. He suggested we might consider asking her to take on our Peter as a pupil, giving us a lot of information about the ways in which riding with Branche Williams, the lady in question, could turn a boy's life around! It sounded very good to me, so I suggested to Bucky that she could make it her Christmas present to Peter if she liked the idea. She did, and the rest … as they say … is history.
First I must tell you about Branche Williams, because she's the key. Her father, Will Williams, a pioneer in Denton County, had started out as a poor boy who developed a pony ranch north of town. He ended becoming the president of Denton County National Bank! But it's about his daughter of whom I would speak - or sing might be more appropriate. By the time I got to know Branche, she had become a kind of benevolent female pirate - in appearance, at least. She had the most fully engaging smile of anyone I've ever met. It lit her face, wreathing it with benevolence and showing her white, white teeth, making her blue, blue eyes even bluer! You felt you would do anything to elicit that smile. Her hair was white and curly, her body was wide but not fat. She dressed in blue chambray work shirt and blue jeans stuffed into rubber boots and drove a jeep with the tattered canvas that had once covered the frame over the driver's seat flying in the breeze of her passage. She trailed a wooden stake-sided trailer whose occupants stood and held onto the sides as she drove. These occupants were all children between the ages of eight and twelve.
Branche didn't like adults all that much, as Alan Woods had warned me right from the start. That was OK with me. Somehow I knew Peter would be fine with her! I let him climb into Branche's parked trailer without a qualm and drove away before she even came out of the house where she lived with a maiden lady faculty member at TSCW, waving to Peter as I left. I was right! Knowing Peter, I knew he would either make friends with her and get along well or I would hear about it in spades when he got back, and I would cancel the deal.
It was after nine PM when I heard the sound of the jeep motor and knew Peter had returned. He came in, almost staggering with fatigue, wolfed down a plate of Italian spaghetti and tumbled into bed, asleep almost before his head touched the pillow. From then on, I never looked back, growing less and less apprehansive as Saturdays arrived, week after week. When it rained, he would come home drenched to the skin and covered with mud - and at first I had worried that he would come down with a cold, since he had always had so many upper respiratory infections - but he never did! Every Saturday I drove him over to where Branche's jeep was parked, he waved goodbye and I didn't hear another word until he tumbled in the front door, exhausted but happy.
A few times over the years he would bring me a gift from Branche. Once it was a little box filled with wild persimmons; another time it was wild apricots; still another time, a little box of tiny banty chicken eggs nestled in wisps of hay! It became clear that she had a special relationship with Peter. Once she even tolerated my driving out to see the ranch. As I arrived, she was stabbing upward with a pitchfork to pull down a five-foot chicken snake that had twined itself around the rafters of the barn and was threatening her banty chickens. The six or so kids who were riding with her at the time stood watching the process with great interest.
I learned more about her methods with the kids as time went along. Branche did not believe in forcing a horse or pony to endure having a cold metal bar in its mouth, which is what is involved in making a horse wear a bridle. Instead, she used split reins attached to the cheek rings in their halter which the rider held crossed over the horse's nose. The rider guided the horse by pulling on one or the other rein. It worked fine! She also did not believe in saddles. She had one herself, but only in the interests of guiding her pupils. It had a wide leather piece across the back to which she attached leads from the ponies being ridden by her pupils, who rode bareback behind her at a leisurely pace, their bare legs dangling. She warned them never to "tight-leg" a horse! Her kids would come once a week and ride among the cluster of ponies who ambled behind Branche as they rode all over the miles of her ranch. When one of the new kids complained of thirst - and it was HOT and DRY all summer! - she would remind them that they would all drink their fill when they got back to the barn. And they would learn not to beg for any special indulgence, but to wait until the proper time. Water trickled from the end of a rusty pipe fed by an old well and pumped into a shallow trough by an old wooden-slatted windmill.
When Branche was sure each of her kids was ready, she would simply undo the lead and set them free! Off they would go, sitting loose and easy on their ponies, who would take them running, so glad to be free! And after so many months of easy riding on their ponies' backs, their riders were completely at home on horseback, and could ride as if born on a horse! It was a brilliant method of teaching. And of course, learning to ride was only one of the many elements in her teachings!
As the weeks went by and Peter continued to ride with Branch every Saturday throughout that summer, I began to see changes for the better in his entire state of being. He put on weight, ate more heartily, fought with his brothers less often, seemed to be enjoying life more. I don't remember if it was during that same summer that I enrolled Tom in Branche's riding group, but I did, somewhere along the way, and eventually enrolled Billy as well - and they all benefited from the experience.
[These three volumes encompassing reminiscences of Mary's life are available from Mary Leue at the following link: http://spinninglobe.net/spinninglobe_html/contents2.htm]
McCoy's Market, the last stop, for sodas, dog bones, canned dog and cat food ...
metal gate near the main road, barbed-wire gate for the dirt road to the barn ...
Flaxie, Shasta, Martha, Butterbeans ...
windmill water, streams, tanks to swim in ...
devil's claw seed-pods, prickly pear, mud and sand ... big horsefiles but no mosquitoes ... that i remember.
Trying To Get It Right This Time, by Mary Leue
Used with permission.
Volume II, eChapter 23
Learning to Enjoy Being Texans: Padre Island
... In January, 1955, two events occurred to brighten our lives considerably - Bucky, arriving back from her Christmas with her nephew Bob Freeman's family in San Francisco, insisted on buying us a dryer, having experienced the convenience of one during her visit. We accepted gratefully. But her present to Peter turned out to be the best of them all, although we all enjoyed ours very much. She made a marvelous Bucky card for him - written by the horse himself, of course - announcing horseback riding lessons! It was a gift that was to make all the difference in his life, and the story deserves its own place!
That story involves a prototypical Texan lifestyle pattern. I may have said something to the Woodses, our Unitarian veterinarian friends, about the pattern of frequent illnesses Peter was still experiencing - or perhaps it came up in some other way. However it was, sometime during December Alan Woods mentioned the great value his sons had been deriving from riding lessons they had been taking with a lady who owned a pony ranch north of town. He suggested we might consider asking her to take on our Peter as a pupil, giving us a lot of information about the ways in which riding with Branche Williams, the lady in question, could turn a boy's life around! It sounded very good to me, so I suggested to Bucky that she could make it her Christmas present to Peter if she liked the idea. She did, and the rest … as they say … is history.
First I must tell you about Branche Williams, because she's the key. Her father, Will Williams, a pioneer in Denton County, had started out as a poor boy who developed a pony ranch north of town. He ended becoming the president of Denton County National Bank! But it's about his daughter of whom I would speak - or sing might be more appropriate. By the time I got to know Branche, she had become a kind of benevolent female pirate - in appearance, at least. She had the most fully engaging smile of anyone I've ever met. It lit her face, wreathing it with benevolence and showing her white, white teeth, making her blue, blue eyes even bluer! You felt you would do anything to elicit that smile. Her hair was white and curly, her body was wide but not fat. She dressed in blue chambray work shirt and blue jeans stuffed into rubber boots and drove a jeep with the tattered canvas that had once covered the frame over the driver's seat flying in the breeze of her passage. She trailed a wooden stake-sided trailer whose occupants stood and held onto the sides as she drove. These occupants were all children between the ages of eight and twelve.
Branche didn't like adults all that much, as Alan Woods had warned me right from the start. That was OK with me. Somehow I knew Peter would be fine with her! I let him climb into Branche's parked trailer without a qualm and drove away before she even came out of the house where she lived with a maiden lady faculty member at TSCW, waving to Peter as I left. I was right! Knowing Peter, I knew he would either make friends with her and get along well or I would hear about it in spades when he got back, and I would cancel the deal.
It was after nine PM when I heard the sound of the jeep motor and knew Peter had returned. He came in, almost staggering with fatigue, wolfed down a plate of Italian spaghetti and tumbled into bed, asleep almost before his head touched the pillow. From then on, I never looked back, growing less and less apprehansive as Saturdays arrived, week after week. When it rained, he would come home drenched to the skin and covered with mud - and at first I had worried that he would come down with a cold, since he had always had so many upper respiratory infections - but he never did! Every Saturday I drove him over to where Branche's jeep was parked, he waved goodbye and I didn't hear another word until he tumbled in the front door, exhausted but happy.
A few times over the years he would bring me a gift from Branche. Once it was a little box filled with wild persimmons; another time it was wild apricots; still another time, a little box of tiny banty chicken eggs nestled in wisps of hay! It became clear that she had a special relationship with Peter. Once she even tolerated my driving out to see the ranch. As I arrived, she was stabbing upward with a pitchfork to pull down a five-foot chicken snake that had twined itself around the rafters of the barn and was threatening her banty chickens. The six or so kids who were riding with her at the time stood watching the process with great interest.
I learned more about her methods with the kids as time went along. Branche did not believe in forcing a horse or pony to endure having a cold metal bar in its mouth, which is what is involved in making a horse wear a bridle. Instead, she used split reins attached to the cheek rings in their halter which the rider held crossed over the horse's nose. The rider guided the horse by pulling on one or the other rein. It worked fine! She also did not believe in saddles. She had one herself, but only in the interests of guiding her pupils. It had a wide leather piece across the back to which she attached leads from the ponies being ridden by her pupils, who rode bareback behind her at a leisurely pace, their bare legs dangling. She warned them never to "tight-leg" a horse! Her kids would come once a week and ride among the cluster of ponies who ambled behind Branche as they rode all over the miles of her ranch. When one of the new kids complained of thirst - and it was HOT and DRY all summer! - she would remind them that they would all drink their fill when they got back to the barn. And they would learn not to beg for any special indulgence, but to wait until the proper time. Water trickled from the end of a rusty pipe fed by an old well and pumped into a shallow trough by an old wooden-slatted windmill.
When Branche was sure each of her kids was ready, she would simply undo the lead and set them free! Off they would go, sitting loose and easy on their ponies, who would take them running, so glad to be free! And after so many months of easy riding on their ponies' backs, their riders were completely at home on horseback, and could ride as if born on a horse! It was a brilliant method of teaching. And of course, learning to ride was only one of the many elements in her teachings!
As the weeks went by and Peter continued to ride with Branch every Saturday throughout that summer, I began to see changes for the better in his entire state of being. He put on weight, ate more heartily, fought with his brothers less often, seemed to be enjoying life more. I don't remember if it was during that same summer that I enrolled Tom in Branche's riding group, but I did, somewhere along the way, and eventually enrolled Billy as well - and they all benefited from the experience.
[These three volumes encompassing reminiscences of Mary's life are available from Mary Leue at the following link: http://spinninglobe.net/spinninglobe_html/contents2.htm]
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