Goodbye, Bess

There’ll be no more horsin’ around wearing our homemade bridles with bits and reins. No winter “horseshoes” with blocks of wood and straps to secure to our feet. We used to stand tied to fences or corrals with our “bridles” and run around in winter pawing with our “horseshoes.”

Folks would ask (and some do ask personal questions) if we ever had a BM out on the gumbo when we rode after cattle.

“Of course,” one of us politely answered.

“What do you wipe with way out there?” Sagebrush was the answer.

“You’ll both get ‘piles’ [hemorrhoids],” they would state! (Note: So far as I can recall neither of us ever did!)

I remember you, Bess, when my family’s house was burning down. You rode 4 miles to it on “Beano”, your horse, to see if I’d saved my “horse pin” identical to yours. I had not!

When I broke my leg at your corral after my horse bolted through the half-closed gate, I ended up with a fractured femur. I remember that my Uncle Joe came to prepare a splint for me in order to make it to the nearest doctor in Miles City. When Joe remarked, “I’ll have to cut her boot off that broken leg, you, Bess, protested loudly, “Don’t do that!”

When you were asked why not, you, Bess, replied, “Because she wants to die with her boots on…”

These events happened over 70 years ago and are still vivid in my memory. I’ll miss you, Podner.