Barn Sour
A Maysville, North Carolina story
My youngest son has been really into horses lately, and has been identifying all four legged hoofed or otherwise similar animals - horse.
Zebra? Horse.
Reindeer? Horse.
Cow? Horse.
Giraffe? Definitely a horse.
I always think of my mom as the horse girl of the family. But rereading some of the stories my dad has recorded from his childhood, I realized he had some horse stories of his own.
After my dad’s father, my grandfather, passed away in a plane crash when my dad was not even three months old - and his mom’s marriage to his father’s best friend broke up, my grandma Maggie moved my dad and his siblings down to Eastern North Carolina.
Back to her homeland.
A part of the world that’s been a hideout or a homecoming for both sides of my family for as long as we’ve been on this side of the wide deep Atlantic.
I’ve written a lot about my maternal grandma, Margaret and her farm outside New Bern, North Carolina.
But my paternal grandma was also named Margaret, and she had a farm Down East too.
She changed her name to Margarette, maybe to sound more French. She went by Maggie anyways. She grew up in Washington, DC and Northern Virginia, a city girl but with farm girl roots down in Eastern North Carolina.
Well after it all fell apart, Grandma Maggie took the kids back Down East to her mama Ada’s land outside Maysville, NC.
This is a story my dad tells about Grandma Maggie moving the family to Eastern North Carolina to her family farm, and trying to help get them settled by buying all the older kids ponies.
Here my dad tells the story of Danny, his pony.
Another story is when we moved to the farm.
And one of the things that Mom did when we moved to the farm is she bought all of us a pony.
Mine was Danny,
Bobby’s was Tony,
and then Charmagne had Tinkerbell.
But everybody had a pony, but mine was a male pony, and then Tony, who is Bobby’s pony, and, and that was a male pony too. And it was, we didn’t realize that you have to keep those, the stud horses have to be sort of separated.
And what ended up happening to Danny, Danny was a small little Shetland pony, and he was trying to be the mate of Tinkerbell. But what ended up happening is Danny got his leg busted by Tony. Danny in the middle of the night. And so, so yeah, he got in a fight, and then he, and now he had a limp.
Now Danny had had a pretty significant limp, but I’d still ride. But it was a, but it was just that, one of the pony stories is about all of us.
I think, I think just about all of us, the children, we were on our ponies, and we are going back into the fields. And it was, you know, just a country road back there. And, and then Danny, the pony that I had, he was, he was hardheaded as could be. He was barn sour, that means he all wanted to do is eat, feed, and then stay in the barn.
He didn’t want to be running around and trying to do what I’m asking me to do. And then, well, when we got out there, Danny decided that he was tired of dragging me around, and he was gonna go back to the barn, and I didn’t even have a say so about it.
Well, well, he started. I put up a bit of a fight for it, but we started, he started taking off and going, going toward the barn, and then my saddle started sliding, you know, because, you know, it was before, I was just gonna, just ride the pony.
And then, but when Danny really took off, he was, he was hauling and boogieing with me on him, and, and he was doing everything he could to get me off of him.
And, and, and what ended up happening to me was Danny was going in and then I would be bouncing, and then next, oh, my saddle started sliding, and the next thing you know, I was underneath, I was right, I was on his belly and he was riding me, you know.
So it was, Danny was going back no matter what.
And then, and my saddle flipped upside down, and I just held onto the saddle horn, and then Danny ran all the way back to the, to the barn.
Well, well, there was a tree there, and he was trying to rake me off yet, just to get me off of him. And, you know, it impacted me.
And, and I think Danny realized that I’m pretty hardheaded, and I’m gonna stick with it.
And, and that, that’s the story.
We went to a horse rescue in the countryside of Andalusia earlier in the summer - and my youngest son got to meet some horses.
He was too timid when we offered to let him ride the pony, but the smile he had when he reached his little hand out and touched the pony’s grey mane was quite possibly the biggest, most joyful smile I’ve seen from him yet.
Pony? A horse, for sure.
Is there a place you’re barn sour for? Do you have stories of mishaps and mean ponies too? Share your stories in the comments.
Sigh. The irony of ponies. Too small for adults. Too diabolical for children.
We had a Shetland at the lesson barn where I ride and volunteer. He used to escape and wander the suburban streets, grazing in people’s flower beds.
His owner got to know all her neighbors. Finally she “sat him down” and told him: no more escaping or he’d be rehomed. He never did it again! (He still raided the grain bins and threw the odd child, because, well, he was after all a pony, but no escaping).
Had he understood her threat? Of course he did. Ponies are smarter than most people. I am convinced they understand our language (and in fact eavesdrop).
Aww! I love that he's so into horses. Too bad we're not neighbors, I could hook him up. Lol.
I'm on the road back from WI but once I get back I'll polish up the essay I wrote while I was there and it might qualify as barn sour adjacent 🤔