A barn fit for a horse
My friend Sharon Hainer was the object of my big envy in the fifth grade. An only child, she got to take horseback riding lessons.
I recall thinking she must be rich when she showed me the riding breeches, pressed white shirt with a pin through the collar, shiny black boots and velvet covered helmet that her mother had laid out across her yellow ruffled bed. This thought in my fifth-grade-brain was underlined by the fact that the Hainer’s basement was decorated with faux leather Spanish furniture, red shag carpet, and a statue of a matador and a bull on the wetbar counter complete with harvest gold glass. A print of a white Lusitano horse hung above the insert fireplace in the basement corner. It was a far cry from the washing machines and discarded furniture that comprised the décor of most of the basements in our Cleveland-area subdivision.
One early autumn afternoon, I was invited by Sharon’s mother to tag along on Sharon’s riding lesson. Maybe she felt sorry for me. Perhaps she was just being nice. Or she might have thought she’d broaden my horizons. Anyway, I wasn’t going to miss this one for the world, and I was there at least fifteen minutes before the departure time she’d given to my mother over the telephone.
I’ll never forget driving up the long drive to that equestrian facility in Chagrin Falls, Ohio. I’d never seen anything like it. It was all white rail fences and green pastures even more lush than Mrs. Hainer’s shag carpet. I didn’t watch Sharon’s riding lesson, although I was sure she was beautiful and perfect up there on the lesson horse that the groom brought into the arena for her.
Instead, I walked up and down the aisles of the barn, admiring the glistening wood and brass door fittings, the gleaming manes and tales and shiny coats of its lucky inhabitants. I stroked the neck of each horse that thrust his head toward me in greeting. Soft dark eyes following me as I tentatively fingered the trappings of what were certainly my wildest dreams―Stueben saddles, gleaming bridles, butter soft lead ropes, halters with polished nameplates like “Xanadu”, “Darla’s Ruby.” And marveled.
That was some barn.
Flickr photo credits: nailbender; code_poet
