This horse story depicts the memories, love and emotions that come back when an old saddle is found in a garage sale. The story about a saddle that came with a special horse has the power to touch our heart.

That Old Saddle| A Horse Story

By: Sharon Gibson

It’s funny how things come back to you, marching down the corridor of time as full and as alive as when they were new.  I might have forgotten if not for a garage sale my brother and I went to years ago.  We’d only recently gotten back into horses after almost 20 years without.  I was still getting used to my new Thoroughbred gelding although my brother had already made instant friends with his Quarter built Appaloosa.

We were driving home from the stable where we boarded when we passed a “garage and tack sale” sign in front of a small ranch.  Since he’s a fool for garage sales and I like old tack, we decided to stop by.  The people were moving north and were hoping to simplify their move.  We got to talking to them and realized the woman had bought a horse from my father years before when he liquidated his stock.

The mare had died of old age long before but we were happy to hear about her show career and what a good little horse she’d turned out to be.  Then the woman remarked that she still had the saddle she’d bought from us.  We had no recollection of selling any of our old tack, so of course, we asked to see it.  It wasn’t out for sale but back in a corner of the garage, under a tarp.  As we lifted back the cover, my brother’s eyes met mine.  We stared at each other and then back at the saddle.

I don’t think I’ll ever forget the fall my father hauled an empty horse trailer from our home in Southern California to the King Ranch in Texas.  It was more than 35 years ago but it’s hard to forget the horse that stepped out of the trailer when my father returned that windy morning so long ago.  He was a liver chestnut without a white hair on him.  He was 9 years old, fit as any athlete and as sound as they come.

His name was Woodson King, a son of Royal King, grandson of King, P234.  I was just a kid but I knew I was in the presence of something awesome.  I already knew something of this family — my own horse, Dandy Jan Moore was Woodson’s nephew.

My father grew up in the mountains of Kentucky where saddle horses were used for transportation and mule teams were regular issue farm equipment.  I think he missed the smell of horse sweat when he migrated to California for the aerospace industry in the early 50’s.  Whatever his reasons, I couldn’t have been happier when he bought a San Fernando Valley mini-ranch to become a gentleman rancher.

Our neighbor, Fred Carlton, kept some very fine Quarter Horses on his little spread, good King and Poco Bueno stock.  My father admired their looks and mellow dispositions and never discouraged me from crawling under the fence to visit Fred’s mares and their foals.  My excursions eventually lead me to Dandy.

I’ll never know exactly how it happened or what my Dad paid for Woodson, but suddenly, we were in the horse breeding business.  Woodson was the linchpin of that business but that’s certainly not all he was.  My job was feeding.  Each horse had an individualized ration, weighed and measured to an exact formula.  My goal was to keep Woodson as round and as sound with as many dapples as he could muster. And he was dappled.

My mother rode him.  As a girl, she had ridden Tennessee Walkers, her in a dress with Magnolias in her hair.  My little sister rode him, too.  On trail rides with 30 or 40 other horses.  In retrospect, I now realize how foolish it was for a 9 or 10 year old girl to be riding a stallion in mixed company but that’s how much my father trusted Woodson King.  Woodson never betrayed that trust in any way.

It seems strange to me now that I never really had the desire to ride Woodson although I did so many times.  I much preferred to ride my little Dandy and admire Woodson as he moved along carrying some other rider, usually my father, in his regal, elegant way.  He was just the most perfect being I’d ever seen.  He was never nicked, cut, scraped, sick or ruffled in any way.  He just seemed to know how to take care of himself and his rider.  He was solid and honest.  He’d been a working horse in Texas, used to cut cattle and for ranch work.  He knew his job and he took it seriously.

So, it was funny to see his saddle again, after so many years, dusty and cracked with age.  While my father owned Woodson, no other saddle had sat on his back.  It was simple and unadorned, not a single bit of tooling or silver.  It had been dyed a darker color but it was unmistakably the same Roper.  But it wasn’t for sale.

Even though I was sure, I looked for evidence in old photographs.  It was clearly identifiable in one particular picture of my Grandfather on Woodson.  They are in profile, moving away from the camera and my Grandfather is waving “good-bye” to someone in the distance.  He was a rambling man all his life and he was always saying good-bye to someone.

I thought about the saddle all day.  Things I had forgotten came back and it seemed to me that the saddle said it all.  Handsome, simple, hardworking, and designed for the purpose to which it was put.  Like my father, like his horse.

I pondered how I might talk its current owners in to selling me the saddle, practiced convincing speeches, planned where I would get the money to make an offer they couldn’t refuse.  A week or two later, when my brother came up to ride, the saddle was in the trunk of his car.  He’d been practicing the same speeches, planning his offer and thinking his own private thoughts.  Exactly what they were, I’ll never know.  I still have that old saddle, and all the memories it recalls.

Sharon Gibson