My first Halloween?
A little background.
When I turned 21, I was still living at my mom's house, and things were getting a bit tense. She wanted an accounting of all of my activities - at one time taking my car keys away, and... well, it was a nightmare.
So... in November of 1976, I decided it was time to leave home. I found refuge in a small one-bedroom cottage out along the San Antonio River, and thus began my chapter in life as a bachelor. The area around this cottage was pretty isolated, and it was almost like living in the country, even though it was well within the city limits.
I remember just prior to leaving home, in October, I had made friends with a fella named David, who lived in a house right next to this cottage. He was a sorta caretaker for the landlord, who stabled a couple of horses there. There were other horses stabled there also, for a total of about 4 or 5 horses.
It was on Halloween night, when I visited David, and I had taken Mike - also a friend with me to just hang out - like guys do. David decided that we could ride the horses that night, and being dumb - and never having rode a horse before, I agreed.
Of course, David made it sound relatively simple to ride horses. But - for a first-timer, these huge beasts were intimidating
Oh. An important detail... we had no saddles - these were expensive items, and the owners would bring those from home whenever they needed to ride.
What we DID have were bridles and bits that David used to help us guide these large animals. David picked out 3 of the horses that were the 'tamest' ones, and we all got ready to go out riding. Getting up on these tall things was a challenge, but there were fences or other things that we were able to get on that put us up high enough to get up on the horses.
We left and started up alongside the river. The silly horses were all interested in the lucious green grass, and would continually drop their heads to snag a patch as they kept walking casually along.
Not ever having ridden a horse before, I was not sure just how to get the horse to 'behave'. David was giving all sorts of 'advice', none of which, my horse seemed to listen to.
We came upon a walk bridge made out of large timbers that spanned a small ravine. The bridge was very well built, and fairly new, too... but the horses - or at least mine - absolutely - refused to cross this bridge. It made a lot of noise, and swayed, waaaay too much for this horses' liking.
David was giving me all sorts of 'Do this...' and 'Do that...' type of advice - none of which worked on the lunkhead horse that I was riding.
We finally wound up going through the ravine, as that was the only way that these horses would go.
We went on further down, and eventually wound up near a graveyard. I don't think that we went through it, but we DID go through the parking lot near the chapel - and got some strange looks from mourners that were there... and oooh's and ahhh's from the little ones.
Onward we went. We had a destination in mind - a friend of mine who lived a few more miles away. I am not sure if we let her and her husband (Karl and Sammi) know that we were coming... or were going to surprise them... most likely it was going to be a surprise.
As we went further, we went through a schoolyard. By this time the sun had just dropped below the horizon, and it was getting a bit darker. We passed a few kids out with their parents - out 'Trick or Treating'. The kids all wanted to touch and pet the horses! They thought it was really neat, and part of Halloween!
David stopped his horse, and we all let the kids carry on a bit, before we continued on. Oh - while walking, Davids' horse went to sleep - but was still plodding along at a slow pace. David noticed it, and just let the horse walk... right into a telephone pole. Whack! The horse woke up after that.
We got to my friends' house, and it was pretty dark by this time. We left the horses outside to graze and went inside where we were offered 'hot toddies'. (Translated as... hot tea with rum) Since I wasn't driving, I went ahead and had one... or two... but who's counting?
We all got a big laugh out of the neighbor who was freaking out over the horses pooping in his yard. He didn't want all that fertilizer, I suppose. So we had to try to keep them out of his yard.
Well, all good things have to come to an end, and it was only getting later and later, so we mounted up and pointed the horses in the general direction of David's house.
Looking back, I never really realized it, but I suppose I went 'Trick or Treating' that night with all of the other little ghosts and goblins, the only difference being that I had more fun, and got a lot less candy.
Regards,
Jim TX