The other day with a tableful of cheese and cracker-munching, wine-sipping friends, we strolled back to being kids and mentally awarded plaques to things that influenced our lives. The consortium agreed to a person that childhood pets were the most often-overlooked contributors to our individual engendering into young people. From the time when I was old enough to toddle without mom worrying about my doing a crash and burn, we always had a dog on the farm.
“Happy” and “Pepper,” at separate times, were two collie mixes that greeted us, seldom were far from our sides and in a way, were semi-official overseers of decorum among the farm animal community. Happy was so named because whenever she opened her mouth just a little, it really was shaped like a smile. Pepper got his tag because of his coat color and markings.
It is a still-horrible day for me when Pepper was hit by a car when trying to cross the highway in front of our house. Dad drug him from the road’s edge and with a .22-caliber revolver put a bullet in his brain to eliminate his misery.
One year at Christmas, my parents gifted me with a pony that I called Koko, a name borrowed from a similar rust/light brown colored mount ridden by cowboy action hero Rex Allen in the movies. Dad paid $135 for him from a pony place near Huntertown. Dad took me along when he spotted the small stallion amidst a large pony contingent; but since we didn’t load him up and take him with us right at that moment, I was so naive I didn’t realize that Koko was to become part of my stable of friends for the next several years.
“You know your horseflesh,” the seller praised dad, and Koko was an equine showpiece--a sorrel with white mane, socks and tail and forehead blaze. Never had I thought about having a pony, but in dad’s mind it was suitable at age 8 that I did. For it was at that same point in life for him, not long after he had learned to drive a team of mules on the family farm, that he got his pony.
And he remembered acquiring a benefit of some kind from it that he also wanted to come to me. Upon arrival, my 2-year-old stallion wasn’t saddle broken; so the partnership of his back and my bottom dissolved on many, many occasions as I was flung to the ground before convincing him to permit me unchallenged ridership. There is no question that re-climbing onto Koko after some bruising tumbles was a “training exercise” that has paid me back dozens of times in the intervening years.
Anytime I rode Koko along the side roads between Ossian and Bluffton, oncoming or passing drivers would slow alongside us and comment or just watch him prance in open-mouth admiration of his stunning beauty. So Koko grew to be my best friend and in exchange for some unbridled hair-in-the-wind rides, I’d feed, water and curry him. Sometimes, I’d sneak a sugar cube or two from the box in mom’s kitchen and slip it into his mouth as a special reward.
In the summers we’d join up with Terry Byerly and his mare Queenie, a paint whose markings resembled the horse of Tonto, the iconic Indian friend of the Lone Ranger. Queenie was another classic stunner in the eyes of the pony passionate. The coupling of Koko and I extended to my doing some very ordinary mounting and dismounting tricks with him; seldom would he not stand motionless when I sprinted from behind and vaulted into the saddle for an immediate takeoff in pursuit of imaginary cold-hearted cattle rustlers and stagecoach robbers.
After Koko once moved prematurely, I found it prudent thereafter to wear my Little League baseball catcher’s protective cup when attempting that mount-from-behind trick. Dad always assessed Koko as the orneriest animal he had ever been around. When I was 9, we built a pole barn which was inside a fenced-in area containing Koko, so he had full access to where we were working.
For years after and on dozens of occasions, dad would relish telling of Koko and one of his antics. “That pony would walk up alongside our tablesaw where we had put a sack of nails, and intently watch me and Gary; he would patiently stand there, sometimes for as long as an hour, and not move a muscle. But the instant we both had our backs turned, he would grab the edge of that sack with his teeth and give it a fling, scattering nails everywhere.
” It was then when I came to awareness that dad, too, had developed a kinship for that little pony, that he called “Kok.” Dad would exact uncompromisingly harsh discipline on all other out of line farm animals and pets, but Kok was exempt and went without penalty for the nail-throwing offense. Sometimes Koko would exhibit what I then surmised was a self-directed streak.
In approaching a ditch, even at a full gallop, he would get close to its edge, pull up, and lie down on his side, instead of trying to jump across, as I gently rolled from his back. Then he’d get back on his feet and we’d travel aways bankside to a dirt-covered culvert--an equipment entrance to the field--where Koko would carry me across the ditch. I’ll never know, but was Koko’s ditch-dodging triggered not by his fear, but to protect me, preventing an injurious fall after we flew across for a hard landing on the other side?
There was no doubt that Koko was almost-solely my ride, and that he would grant that privilege to few others A visiting friend once asked to mount Koko for a trot-cantor-and gallop excursion. “Maybe,” I cautioned, “but don’t approach him by yourself. Just wait and I’ll go up to the garage and get the saddle.
” He reckoned in the meantime there would be no harm in climbing over Koko’s fence enclosure. As I exited the garage and looked out to the field, there was my friend running as fast as his long, long legs would propel him. Just inches behind in a furious chase was Koko, who intermittently made teeth-barred lunges aimed at removing a chunk of flesh from my friend’s backside.
In all the years of my life, it remains the most memorably hilarious episode I’ve ever seen. At one end of the small pasture was a low metal shelter for sheep during inclement weather. My friend scrambled to its topside, a bit afraid, a bit embarassed and later, a whole lot frustrated.
One side of the crude structure was a few feet from the fence, which would provide safety, were my friend to make a bolt and jump over to its non-Koko side. But when he even began to edge off the low roof, Koko would charge and drive him back to his low-level perch of non-peril. My friend made several attempts at the fence, but each time was repulsed and remained cornered for several minutes until pleading with me to restrain Koko.
After leaving a sprawl on the ground from laughing so hard, I gave assistance. Boytime intersections of school, baseball, camping out and being atop Koko sped by. An ingredient of departure from early youth is that your runaway imagination runs away.
And so it came when there were no cattle rustlers and stagecoach robbers and more and more rarely were Koko and I cojoined for adventure and joyous jaunts. “Gary doesn’t ride him anymore,” I overheard dad tell someone on the phone in the summer after my 15th birthday. A few days later, a cigar-chomping, seedy man with a soiled brimmed hat and uncoordinated clothes appeared, his car pulling a small trailer.
He and dad haggled for awhile and finally agreed on $285, including saddle and bridle. As the trailer pulled from the driveway with Koko, I burst into tears and ran into the house. Dad lowered his head and strode to the now-completed barn where in that surge of years-before merriment Koko had scattered the sack of nails to the wind.
Now, I believe dad went to the barn to couch his emotions. For he had not only separated with something that he felt an unusually close attachment to, but that little boy who once chased cattle rustlers and stagecoach robbers with his sorrel steed was forever gone, too.
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