A Tale of Two Horses

Hunter and I have spent the last couple of weeks getting our boat ready for deer season as well as helping friends get their rigs ready.  We’ve repainted a boat, upholstered seats and put a lift kit on a golf cart with off road tires.  I also have a friend who buys a Jeep every year and every year he needs me to attach his wench to the front of it.  This year I took the opportunity to add my unique design.  Now that I have a logo (thanks ScottysWeb!) I used a plasma torch to free handedly burn my logo into the bar.  Then I fabricated a couple of horseshoes and welded them to each side of the wench to frame it.  He really liked it.  I get a kick out of surprising people with more than they expected. 

 

 

 

What do you think?
 
I actually enjoy helping people and I love horses.  Many years ago my friend in Colorado was experiencing a draught and his horses were starving.  He called me for help and said he would give me a couple of ‘em if I would come get ‘em.  I’ve always liked riding horses and wanted my daughter, Samantha, and my son, Hunter, to have the experience of owning and caring for a horse.  So I said yes, hooked up the trailer and took off for Colorado with Hunter. 

Do you ever look back at moments in your life and say, “If only….”?  Mine would be, “If only I had asked him the names of those horses.”  But I didn’t and so began an exhausting journey.  We drove non-stop to Colorado on a crusade to save the horses.  We arrived 16 hours later, tired but excited to see the horses.  What my friend brought out was not exactly what we had envisioned.  The first one was a really old mare that had the worst sway back I had ever seen.  To this day, I haven’t seen one worse. And what was her name you ask?  Granny.  My first thought when I saw her was, “It’s going to cost me $300 to rent a back hoe to bury her.” The other horse, however, was a thoroughbred.  Yay me, right?  Wrong!  That horse only knew one speed.  Faster! 

Well, I couldn’t let ‘em starve so we loaded ‘em up and headed back home.  It took 16 hours to get there but it took 24 hours to get home because we had to stop every so often to let ‘em walk around.  At one stop, we tied ‘em up and went in to get a bite to eat.   When we came out the “Faster!” horse was gone.  We ended up driving around that town ‘til we finally found him.  That trip turned out to be the longest trip I have every taken in my life.

In the end, I wound up with two horses I couldn’t ride and couldn’t keep.  Hunter was a little boy at the time and when I put him on the “Faster!” horse, he took off.  All I could see was my little boy holding on for dear life with that horse getting further and further away.  I finally caught up with him but I couldn’t let the kids ride him after that.  The kids loved Granny.  She was a sweet and docile horse, but we didn’t have the heart to ride her because of her back.  Eventually I was able to find good homes for them.

So the moral of the story is, don’t look a gift horse in the mouth without asking for its name first. 

The Stump and the Mule

I’ve been scouting out places to hunt this season and the other day I came across this old Cypress stump.

 

I already have so many ideas of how I can repurpose it but I have no ideas on how to get it to my truck.  It’s down in the bottoms so I can’t take my 4-wheeler down there to it.  If I still had my hunting mule this wouldn’t be a problem. 

 

 

I must’ve been around 20 when I bought that mule.  He’d been retired from The Great Passion Play in Eureka Springs but mules can live up to 40 years so he still had a lot of life left in him.  His name was Mickey and he would load up in the back of my truck like a dog.  I wish you could’ve seen the looks we used to get when I’d drive down the road or stop for gas with that mule standing in the bed of my truck.  It’s not really something you see around here everyday. 

 

I’d take Mickey to deer camp, pack my deer stand and supplies on him and ride him to my hunting spot.  As long as there weren’t any mosquitoes he was fine.  One time I took him hunting, tied him up and positioned myself in a tree.  Well, it was a humid day and the mosquitoes were really bad. I could hear a ruckus in the distance but I ignored it and stayed in my stand.  At the end of the day when I came down to go back to camp, that mule was gone!  I figured out that the mosquitoes covered him up and the ruckus I heard was him trying to get away from ‘em.  But I’m several miles into the woods, it’s getting dark quick and I had to get all my stuff back to camp.  It took forever to walk back and with every step I took the stuff got heavier and I got madder.  Well, I finally made it back to camp and do you know that mule was standing there watching me with what I’d swear was a grin on his face.  I wanted to kill him!  But I was too tired, too sore and too weak to lift my gun. Now I’ve never claimed to be a smart man and the fact that I took that mule out again the next morning is proof because (and I’m sure you’ve already guessed this) that mule left me again!  I sold him not too long after that trip.

 

 

Now about the Cypress stump, I’ve used them before as table bases. They’re texturally interesting and it adds a natural element to the décor. Use a wood burner to personalize it or carve your initials in it. Make it a one of a kind conversation piece.

 

 

You can also put polyurethane on them to keep them preserved and use them outside.

Or leave them in their natural state to add interest to your landscaping. Hammer a nail in it and use it to hang an outside lamp or a welcome sign on.


 

 

Do you have more ideas? Leave a comment and share them with me.

 

"A Picker"

Blogging is new to me.  I’m used to talking but not writing.  However, my wife enjoys typing and listening to my stories so she thought we should start a blog as a way to spend time together.  How do wives think these things up?

 

I guess you could say that I’ve been a “picker” all my life.  When I was young I would pick on my three younger sisters.  As a teenager, I picked up girls.  And I’ve been known to pick through discarded items on the side of the road.  During one of my recent walks through the pasture, I found an old cow bone. 

Being the picker that I am, I picked it up and took it home.  I polished it until it was smooth, shiny and resembled ivory.  I knew it was meant to be a knife handle.

 



I have a saw blade that I picked from an old saw mill about 15 years ago.  I cut some of it off to make my knife blade.
 

 

I draw the knife design on the blade and cut it out.  I then heat the metal with a torch and put it on the anvil and work the metal until I get the edge I need.  I use a finish grinder to finish the edge and polish it. 

Now where did I put the leather strips?  My knife needs a sheath.