My Father Taught Responsibility With a Horse Named General

My sister wanted a horse. My dad asked for a business plan.

My oldest sister was “horse crazy” in the early 1950s. That’s the word she used when telling me about it, so it must be true. From my point of view as a seven- year-old, one day there was suddenly a big horse named General in our barn.

She had bought General for $150. That sounds impossibly inexpensive even for the time, but General was an older horse, so his owners may have got the better part of the bargain. Still, my sister had to earn that money from 25 cent per hour babysitting jobs. But before that, she had to convince my father to let her buy a horse.

This was not an entirely crazy idea. We had a barn, old and dilapidated, but it had housed horses before we lived there, and it could again. The town we lived in was a Boston suburb but was still country enough that you could safely ride a horse in the streets, and there were riding trails too.

She and my other sister had learned to ride at a local stable who offered lessons. My sister remembers the horses names: Scout, a large rangy bay, Ginger, a fat Shetland pony, and Twinkle, a palomino. She says that they learned to ride bareback and leap off a horse at a walk, trot, and canter.

If any fourteen year old girl was ready to own a horse, my sister certainly was.