Dude

When I would visit my grandfather, we got up real early to work in the avocado grove, pruning and picking, or whatever needed to be done.  There is always something to be done on a farm.  After a couple of hours, we would come back to the house, where my grandmother had breakfast ready.

Right after we ate, we would gather in the den, where Granddad stoked up his pipe, and Grandma picked up her knitting.  He opened the family Bible, and we spent some time in daily devotions.  They followed this routine religiously all the days of their lives.

Granddad and I would head back out to the grove; and while following him around like a border collie, I listened to his stories.  As he got older, the stories got repeated over and over, but that didn’t bother me.  I never tired of hearing about the duck with the broken beak, or about the time he threw the thief off the trolley car, or about great-great grandpa Johnson who fought with Sam Houston at the Battle of San Jacinto.

My favorite story was about the time he saddled up and rode his strawberry roan from Austin to San Antonio.  Today by car it is a 90-minute drive, but it took him four or five days each way, enjoying the hill country on horseback, dodging coyotes, and sleeping under the stars.  The year was “eighteen ‘n’ ninety-six.” He was nineteen years old. 

Every kid wants to own a horse, right?  My chance came when my friend Ben had a horse for sale, name of Dude.  I bought the horse and saddle, kept him at Ben’s place, and paid for feed and board.  Dude and I spent a lot of time with Ben and his horse Pete — riding through nearby hills and dales, but nowhere as far as Austin to San Antonio.     

Dude was a quarter horse, a big bay with a white star on his face.  As a younger colt, he was trained to carry a pick-up rider in the rodeo, but that kind of horsemanship was way beyond my pay grade as a cowboy.  He was also well-mannered and schooled in Western showmanship.

And he loved the work.  Whenever we came to the corral, Dude would turn his hip toward the gate and sidle up, like a ship using its thrusters to move sideways into the pier.  With my left hand on the reins, I reached out to unlatch with my right.  While I held on to the gate post, Dude shuffled sideways to open the gate widely.  With my gentle pull on the reins, he would pivot backwards around to the other side of the gate and shuffle sideways again to close it.  Dude knew how to go through gates without the rider having to dismount.  

However, after retiring from rodeo and show work he developed a bad habit. He was barn sour, which means that when you turned for home, he did not want to waste any time. Going out he was mellow; coming back to the barn he was a handful unless you wanted to flat-out gallop. After a few months I had learned how to relax and take charge, and Dude had learned who was boss.  On the days he was rarin’ to go, we compromised on a brisk trot.

When I told my granddad about the horse, he reminded me that next to his grove there was a half-acre of cleared land, completely fenced, where a horse might graze on sweet grass.  He invited me to bring Dude for a visit.

Ben loaned me his truck and horse trailer, and my mom hitched a ride with me to visit her Papa.  When we pulled into the driveway, Granddad was sitting on his front porch; and seeing the truck and trailer, he leaped off his Adirondack.  That moment is frozen in my memory.  There he was in a sweat-stained Stetson, pipe in hand, in his workday uniform of khaki pants, long-sleeved khaki shirt, and those high lace-up shoes with the eye hooks.  He was eighty-eight years old, and he was a kid again, eagerly wanting to know how soon he could take a ride.

He needed a little boost getting up in the saddle; but once he got there, no one needed to tell him what to do.  It had been all of fifty years since his last time on horseback, but nothing was forgotten.  Like riding a bike or kissing a girl, it all came back to him: his back was ramrod straight, his feet perfectly set in the stirrups, his heels down and in, his left hand gently but firmly holding the reins, and his right hand resting comfortably on his right thigh.  He had been there before. 

And off they went. Without so much as a by-your-leave, Grandfather and Dude went down the road and disappeared around the bend.  Only after he had gone did I remember about Dude’s habit of stampeding home at the end of a ride.  We did not want to hurt my grandfather’s pride by telling him not to go very far, but we also did not want him to get thrown by a horse in a hurry.   We waited — my grandmother, my mother and me. Fifteen minutes! Thirty minutes!  Forty-five minutes!  Still no sign of horse or rider.  Just when we began to consider a search party, here came the sound of hoofbeats, clip-clopping on the road.

When they came into sight; oh, what a sight!  He was tall in the saddle, and Dude was trotting along under perfect control and in no apparent hurry.  The horse just knew that he had real horseman up top.  And Granddad was singing an improvisatory tune as he came along—something about a Texas cowboy riding on his horse.  He had gone around to a few neighbors to say, “Howdy!”  Nothing to worry about!

After lunch we sat on that porch and watched as Dude enjoyed the pasturage, and my granddad asked several questions:  Do you have a nice place like this for Dude?  Is there sweet grass up there?  Does he get ridden enough?  He never did ask the real question, and I never answered it. 

Over the years I have thought about getting another horse.  Maybe a strawberry roan!  But it would not be fair to put a horse under anything less than the best rider I ever saw.