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My Fourth blog on WDC |
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Welcome to Almosta Blog, the stories that happen every day here on Almosta Ranch. Come on in and be welcome, draw up a chair and set a spell on the front porch with me and my sweet wife, Melinda, better known as Mel. What you will find here are stories about our many animals, and our daily life on a working ranch. Not the most riviting of subjects but I will try to hold your interest. |
| I have decided that with this new blog I want to use Sundays as a day to remember my blog past and visit the vault to find something to share again with you who may not have been around the first time the story appeared. Today's entry is from 2010 and first appeared in my blog on Open Salon. Many things have changed since then. My wife has died and I no longer live on the farm but this memory of our early time endures and is one of my favorites. JUNE 27, 2010.....A YOUNG GIRL ON A CHESTNUT STALLION.... The Red Truck carried me toward Poplar Bluff, inexorably toward work, on the now familiar ribbon of blacktop. Inside the truck I hold one hand on the wheel and let my mind run free....this is my time and I have grown to cherish the half-hour commute. The radio is playing softly and the strands of Dan Seal's country hit, Everything that Glitters is not Gold fills the cab of the truck. I love this song but not because it is about a woman who leaves her husband and child behind to pursue fame on the rodeo circuit, but because of one verse in the song: "But, oh sometimes I think about you and the way you use to ride out in your rhinestones and your sequins With the sunlight in your hair." That one verse always reminds me of my wife, Melinda. Now all of you who have followed my blog for any length of time know that Mel and I have only known each other for ten years and have been married for nine and we met on the Internet. She was born and raised in Michigan and I in Texas. In those early days of "Getting to know you" time, we use to talk endlessly on the computer and the phone. We stayed up all night exchanging life stories and telling tales of our childhood and generally sharing everything of importance in our lives with each other. It was during one of these phone calls that I told her the story of my Summer of Discovery. My buddy and I were supposed to be traveling to Michigan to work on a pipeline for the Summer....no nonsense...just work. We were teenagers for God's sake...like that was gong to happen! Now the trip itself was a once in a lifetime experience, filled with high drama and low comedy that I may one day share with you in its entirety but for now the important part of the story is that my friend and I ended up in Flat Rock, Michigan working on a pipeline. On the way to Flat Rock, we were traveling a little used, rural black-top road when we happened upon a vision of beauty that stayed with me for the intervening forty some odd years. As we blasted down the road at seventy miles per hour, we topped a hill and entered a flat stretch of road that ran through a large farm area, the land on both sides of the road was plowed and planted as far as the eye could see. There, on the side of the road and headed the same direction as we were headed was a sight that took my breath away. A young girl, maybe fifteen or sixteen, was riding this big Chestnut stallion bareback and at a full canter. As we passed her I turned and looked closer and saw at once that she was beautiful. Her long blond hair blew in the wind as she rode that horse not like a rider, but rather like she was a part of the horse; knees tucked in and back straight. Her hands held the reins loosely and her head was slightly turned in our direction as we passed. Her bright, blue eyes pierced me and held me captive and there was a slight smile on her full lips. She blew me away. My buddy was driving and in spite of my repeated blows to his shoulders and my yelling: "Stop the freaking car! I gotta meet this girl!" He kept going....we had miles to go and work to do.....damn his soul! When I related this story to Mel there was a sudden silence on the phone line. "What's wrong?" I asked her. "Well," she said. "That particular stretch of road is very familiar to me. Back then it was sparsely populated and I rode my horse along there almost every day during the summer." Now it was my turn to be quiet. I was wondering.....could it be that she was that girl? Fast forward a few months: I am standing at the airport gate waiting for Melinda to step off the plane for her first visit to Texas. She was the last person off the plane and when I first spotted her striding confidently across the space that separated us, her blond hair tossing on her shoulder, a lump formed in my throat. When she got to me and didn't even slow down.....just walked into my arms and kissed me.....I knew....she WAS that girl. She brought further proof of my first "almost" meeting with her in the form of old pictures of her on that big Chestnut Stallion! So Saturday, as I rushed toward work and I listened to that song again and that one verse, my mind was filled with the beautiful sight of that young girl on that horse....so wild and free and so very beautiful. But that's not so very peculiar. You see, every time I look at my sweet wife I see her as she was that long ago Summer day; riding that big horse bareback with the wind in her hair and that smile on her face. She will always look that way to me. |
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