Quote:
Quote by: Maryjane  Techno...you never owned a horse did ya? |
No, but in 1953 this fellow named Amos gave me a ride on one, he was the guy who worked for our town and he went about to pick up the trash cans in the alley, he had a horse and wagon for that purpose. It was this old horse what was real slow and gentle and he let me and my sister ride on it's back down the alley when he came by. I think I was in the 6th grade then.
My mom thew a fit when she found out because she feared we might have fallen off the old horse. None the less it is one of my most teasrued memories form the good old days.
Back then our family did not own a car. We all walked every place we went. Even in the snow and rain, off to school I went. (the schools had no bus ether). A lot of farmers still had horses to pull the plows in Litchfield Ill. The speed limit in town was 25 miles per hour. Some people had cars or trucks. My big brother was the first one in the family to get a car, he was in highschool at the time and the neighbor gave him this car called a Star. It looks like a model A Ford. Him and his friend fixed it up and made a hotrod out of it. We only had one police man in that town, and it took him nearly three months to track down my brother to give him a speeding ticket. That incident made headlines in our local newspaper. "Teen gang busted". My parents were really unhappy because his friend just happened to be the son of the local Preacher at our Baptist chruch, who commited suicide because he could not save anyone. Anyway my brother joined the Airforce and left town. And we moved to California. Where we got this Mercury so my dad could get to work, soon I became a teen and got to drive the family car (if I washed it during the week). Gas was then 25 cents per gal.
I like horses. But they had a big polution problem in the those cowboy years because of all the horse shit on the streets and the horse flies. You had to watch out where you stepped in town. And the first cars were nearly banned because the horses got scared and would rear up and toss the rider off, causing injuries. The horse people who were the majority really hated those model t fords with a passion. Also the horse did not get stuck in the mud as much as the cars did.
But another thing I remember is when I moved to Downey California in the mid 1950s is that everyone had cars, with unfiltered tailpipes. After being there all summer I woke up one day and looked out the window and saw a large mountian (Big Bear Mountain) capped with snow. I was surprised to see a mountain suddenly appear on the horizon. I was so excited I woke everyone up to come and look at that mountian. All that time the smog was so dense that we never saw the mountian before that day (after a rainfall).