Growing Up Catholic in a Small Texas Town
The Horse I Almost Rode in On
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about my Texas roots. It’s as if the Lone Star State is calling me home, saying, “You were born here, and by golly, you’ll die here.”
Anyway, you know how one thought leads to another and another and another. For this blog post, I was thinking about the new red cowboy boots I just bought (identical to my old pair), and the first pair of red boots I had when I was two. Then I thought of the blue boots I wore when I lived in Austin; and then Ned, the horse I used to ride when I led trail rides on Sundays at Nameless Valley Ranch west of the city. Finally, there was the memory of my burning desire to have a horse when I was a child. I imagined riding him everywhere: to Karlik’s Grocery, to St. Mary’s School, to church. I’d wear my cowboy boots and be the coolest kid in town.
It never happened. I remained horseless.
Some years ago, when visiting my parents, I had decided to clean out the drawers in Mom’s utility room. (She wasn’t at home at the time.) What I found surprised me: first, a bunch of useless mementos I’d thrown out once when Mom was helping me move. She’d evidently gathered them up without me knowing and took them home. But what else I found was a shocker. It was an old black and white photo of our backyard.
Guess what was standing by the fence near our clothesline?
A horse! A dadgum horse! I showed it to my dad. He said, “Oh, that’s Champ, your mom’s horse.”
“Mom had a horse?”
“It was before you were born. She and two friends used to ride their horses around town.”
“What happened to it?”
Then I got the answer I usually got when my parents wanted to change the subject. “I don’t remember,” Dad said.
When my Mom came home, I asked her and got the I-don’t-remember answer again.
I wanted to scream, “Really! How could you not remember?”
Frustrated with the silent treatment, I tried to figure things out myself.
I surmised that Baby Kathleen was born, and Mom had no time for the horse, or since my parents weren’t wealthy, they couldn’t feed both baby and horse. Champ had to go, or maybe he died of a broken heart because of the new baby in the house.
Back to me wanting a horse when I was little. I had almost got my wish when I was about nine or ten years old. My parents’ friends, who lived on Tokio Road, wanted to sell their house and a few surrounding acres. My dad wanted this place badly. My Mom didn’t. I took my Mom’s side because I didn’t want to leave our house on South Harrison. Then, Dad took me aside and told me that I could have a horse if we moved out to the country. It took me all of three seconds to start packing my bags. Yep, we were moving, and I was getting a horse, but Mom put her foot down. We didn’t move. I didn’t get a horse. My parents didn’t speak to one another for what seemed like forever, and Mom gave me the silent treatment.
Forty-something years later and still contemplating this horse incident, Catholic guilt stabbed like a dagger. I suspected that Mom never forgave me for being born and having to give up Champ, and that’s why she refused to sell the house and move.
Why else would she not tell me that she used to keep a horse in the backyard?
Why else would that photo be hidden in the utility room drawer?
How dare my dad use me as a pawn in his plan to move to the country?
What did I do with all these traumatic discoveries? I went home and wrote a play about the incident, Ernest Biddle’s Dead. It was staged at the San Juan Island Community Theatre. It started as a drama and ended up a comedy.
Because sometimes, all you can do is laugh.
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