Horses

I like horses even if I don't know exactly why. When we were young, living on a farm near Ithaca, I think that there was a work horse on the farm that was blind, and we were occasionally allowed to ride the horse bareback, and someone would lead the horse around for the brief ride. My next adventure occurred when we were living in Waterville in the tenant house of the Barrett Farm and located next to the house was a corral. Mr. Barrett let Dad plow with horses so that we could have a garden, and sometimes I would get to ride some of the work horses, bareback as usual. I caused my mother a fright when I rode one of the horses into the corral and the horse stopped, but I sailed on and landed on my bottom. All that was hurt was my pride. After that my riding days were over.


A few years ago I found a glass horse made by Carder of Steuben glass fame and couldn't resist buying it. This started a collecting frenzy for horse figurines. I decided to try to get a horse made by each of the various glass companies, and this proved quite a challenge. Then I got into glass horse bookends and then branched out into china horses, and so it went. Ultimately, the collection grew to good size, and we tried selling them at antique shows. Other horse collectors gradually began to look for our booth to see what horses we might have for sale.. When we sold the antique business, many of the collected horses had to go, but I did keep the Steuben horse that started the whole thing. Now, why do I like horses? I really do not know for sure and could easily start collecting them all over again. I guess it is my compulsive nature or something else. Perhaps the best thing is the grace of the horse caught by the artist and portrayed in the figurine.