When I was a kid, I wanted a horse of my own more than anything in the world. I had claimed one of Dad’s broodmares as mine when I was five, but she wasn’t a riding horse and I didn’t get to spend much time with her because she was always out in the broodmare pasture. So by about age nine, I was really wanting my own horse. In a childish act of desperation, I penned this note to my dad: “What’s the use of livin’ if you ain’t got a horse?”
I remember the next morning our neighbor Francis Wescott came over for coffee, and they were sitting at the breakfast table talking, and Dad showed him my note, and I was so embarrassed. But it wasn’t too long after that when my dad said I could pick out a colt of my own. I picked a two-year-old buckskin gelding named Sunday In Savannah, and was so thrilled to actually have my own horse! My sister Kellie had started training her own gelding Johannes, and I wanted to be working on mine, too. Our older sister Kandra had been training all of Dad’s horses, and she helped us start our colts in the round pen. We watched mostly, but when it came time to climb into the saddle, we wanted to be the ones to actually ride them.
It was fortunate that these colts were hand-raised, gentle-minded horses, because we could have gotten hurt with the little we knew of training colts. But we happily climbed into the saddle and just started riding. Johannes progressed much more quickly than my colt Sunday did, but Kellie was always more demanding of her horses than I was. I rode for fun, mostly.
I do remember one cattle drive was just a short trip out over the hill to another pasture, and I begged to go along on Sunday. He really didn’t have much of a handle on him, and I was just as green as he was. Sillier yet, I believe I rode him bareback, and we just got on and galloped after the other riders. Sunday was a very honest colt, so we didn’t get into any trouble, but I really didn’t have very much control over him. We got along okay that day, but I don’t think I ever rode him enough to consider him even “greenbroke.”
Sunday had a blue eye. We were never certain if he was completely blind in that eye, but we supposed he was. We never knew what might have caused it, if he had injured himself or had been born with a defect. It wasn’t a color he had inherited, as he was full-blooded Quarter Horse with a grulla mother and bay father. My dad always considered him defective, and a year or so after I claimed him, Dad decided to sell him. I was a little sad to see Sunday go, but Dad had promised me another colt to take his place, and I felt that Sunday didn’t have the potential I wanted. So he was sold along with several of my dad’s horses, and I never saw him again.
I’ve always loved his name, and his buckskin color. But I knew that there were better horses out there for me. It is so true that a good horse is never a bad color, and I’ve had plainer and uglier horses that were a pure joy to ride. A horse with a good mind and athletic conformation is worth much more to me than one with flashy color or a cute name. But I’ll always love Sunday, because he was my first horse.
