A Book From Your Childhood that Stands Out?

On the wall to the right, when you enter my sister and my bedroom is a bookcase.   I remember sitting on the floor there.  The door is a little in the way.   There was my favorite book on the bottom shelf.   I can see it.  I can feel its cover.  I had removed the paper cover for it long ago.   The pictures are black and white.   The title eludes me.  Ponies?  No.  Horses?  No.  A young girl, jodhpurs, she is standing in a field.  The halter and rope shank are held behind her back with her right hand.   Her left hand is outstretched in front of her, palm up.   There is a pony in the distance.   He has half raised his head up from the tall grass, looking at her.   The girl has two french braid pigtails braided on both sides, towards the back.  The pigtails hang down to the middle of her back.   She is probably 11 years old.   I soaked up this book.   I wrote and scribbled in this book.   I wanted more books just like this.   There weren't a lot of books on those shelves.   They held other stuff.   A small row of Compton’s Encyclopedia’s.   My Mom was able to get one at a time with her yellow value stickers at the A&P grocery store.   

I loved the Encyclopedia Brittanica’s down at the Winders house.   They also had rows and rows of Nancy Drew, and the Hardy Boys.   My sister was the real reader of non-fiction.   They gave her stacks of Nancy Drew that Jamie would consume.   On the river, all the way up to 18 mile island, Jamie would be in the front berth reading, and I would be sitting on the bow of the boat with the wind in my hair.

I think that is what I saw in my little pony book.   The wind in my hair.   I wanted that on a horse.  To be cantering along with the wind in my hair.  Driving in the car, I would pick out the meadows or hills that would be so fun to ride across.   I still do that to this day.   

I liked everything about that book.   The little girl with her various brushes, the soft brush, and the curry comb.   The hoof pick, holding her little pony’s hoof up and picking out the dirt and checking for any rocks.  

That book was my touchstone.   It fed my mind.   It created the visualization for me to savor.   

Mom planted a willow tree in our yard.   This will be shade for your horse someday she said.   

I drew up the blueprints of the stable, the stalls.  I wrote down the three different horses, and their colors that I would keep in that barn.