BLEACHED BUMBLEBEE

I spent the weekend at mom’s. We spent time scrap booking, visiting and riding. It was such a fun, bonding time for mom and me. The highlight of the weekend, for me was when we took mom’s horse over to the stable to ride in the indoor arena. There was a time, long ago when mom would truck mine, Aim’s and Nic’s horses to the indoor arena so that we could ride. She would stand in the middle of the arena and coach us through our rides. She’d pick up our manure, run back and forth to the trailer, getting our boots, different bits, and anything else our little hearts desired. Yesterday, though, it was I, who stood in the middle of the arena playing coach and gopher. It was a neat role reversal. This time, it was I, running back and forth from the arena to the truck and trailer gathering the different riding aids and tools mom decided she needed. Before I would leave the arena, she would tell me check for the various items in the trailer tack room, the trailer change room or the back seat of the truck. It was crazy to have so many choices of where stuff could be. Way back in the day, there was one place to look for stuff, the back of the truck! Where was this fancy trailer with a tack room and change room, when I was showing horses? And a truck with a backseat? Wow, we certainly did not have these luxuries when there were three of us girls showing! We hauled our horses to shows in a stock trailer pulled by a yellow ’71 Blazer. The back seats were taken out to make room for all of the saddles, bridles, blankets and brushes. At the time, I had no idea such fancy trailers existed. We loved it our “bleached bumble bee” (trucking unit amiably named by a good friend.) Dad had rigged up the truck so that it had poles nailed across the back for our saddles to sit on. The saddle blankets layed on top and the brush boxes sat under each saddle. Everything was very organized. Two of us shared the large front passenger seat, mom drove and Nic, usually sat on the spare tire between the two front seats. We’d listen to am radio, and sing at the top of our lungs all the way to every show. Mom had sewn curtains and stuck Velcro to the trailer above all of the windows so that once the horses were unloaded and the poop was scooped out, we could stick the fabric to the windows, creating a private changeroom. We’d hang our show clothes from hangers on the window ledges and sit our “caboodles” make up kits in the manger of the trailer so that we could use the mirrors to see, while we pulled our hair back and secured our hair nets. The trailer had one storage compartment, just big enough for us to stash our hay nets, water buckets and bags of crunchies. We’d rattle into the show grounds and rattle back out oblivious to the fact that we looked like hillbillies! Life was good! As I searched mom’s back seat for the dressage whip that had fallen into the crack of the seat, I tried to imagine what life would have been like for us, had we had all of this when we showed…..know what? It was impossible to imagine doing it any other way, than we did it!