A Horse of Course!
My daughter has loved horses since she was a child. She recently began using her talent for photography to take portraits of friends with their horses. She posted some photos on Instagram recently, and texted me how much she loved doing horse and rider photoshoots. Her text sent me to searching for a photograph I took in 1980 in Connecticut.
My experience growing up in Darien, CT was one of contrasts. It’s a community of wealth and privilege, but we were not raised as such. Don’t get me wrong, we were very lucky regarding the basics of life but, if I needed a piece of paper, I had to pay a penny for each sheet. And pencils cost 5 cents! I wore all my brothers’ hand-me-down clothes and Mom sewed many of our day-to-day clothing. (You should see the outfits I wore in my elementary class pictures. I may have to hunt the pictures down as evidence…) I learned to sew when I was eight-years-old and made gifts for friends as well as clothing. If I wanted anything beyond the basics, I did house projects to earn money to purchase them. This included sealing the long asphalt driveway as a 12-year-old!
In my neighborhood, I had a friend who had horses in her backyard. She and I would ride her pony bareback across various neighbor’s yards. These were early American (c.1700) properties, so god bless them for not caring that the pony was trotting through their lawns. I loved riding this pony but, as much as I begged, I was not going to be taking riding lessons any day soon. Instead, I collected Breyer horses and played with them endlessly. My horse-loving daughter is still salty that my mom threw away all those 1970s Breyers.
My parents’ parsimony was motivated, in part, by their decision to send many of their children to private boarding school instead of the local schools. I read all the Enid Blyton books about British children in boarding schools, so this seemed normal to me. My parents wanted me to attend an all girls’ Catholic boarding school for high school as had my sisters. I was not interested in this idea, but I had undiagnosed dyslexia, and did not do well on standardized tests needed to qualify for co-ed boarding schools. Instead, I spent my first two years in the local high school.
Needless to say, being in high school in a very privileged community in the late 1970s involved some not-so-great exposures. I recall being at a hockey game in town when the elder brother of one of the girls offered us all free cocaine. I didn’t join the girls and it turns out I made a good choice as the boy was a dealer and liked to tempt younger students (we were 14) to buy drugs from him.
Eventually, I made friends with a group that went to a local private school and they wanted me to go to their school. One morning, I called the office and the woman answering the phone asked what subjects I taught. When I explained that I was interested in attending as a student, she made an appointment for me to speak with the Headmaster. Years later, I learned that the Headmaster called my parents after the appointment (they knew nothing about me applying to the school) and said it was the first time he’d ever been interviewed by a prospective student! I did end up at the school, St. Luke’s in New Canaan, CT for two years, and I thrived there.
I took up photography at the school, working in a dark room on a manual camera with black and white film. I don’t recall the assignment, but I was at the Ox Ridge Riding Club in Darien. Mind you, I was trespassing, as I had done many times when the club would host posh horse shows. At the time of this picture, Fall of 1980, the club was quiet and this horse was simply out grazing in a pasture.
Recently, I felt the need to clean out old emotional cobwebs, so I emptied a box of mementos. Going through this box was a journey through a million memories. Though I threw away many items, I saved my old journals, some endearing letters, and this photograph of a horse… of course!