As I stood at the gate talking with my neighbor Tucker the other afternoon, we heard the clip-clop of horse hooves coming up the street. Our conversation stopped and we both turned, watching and waiting. I’m sure we were both smiling. Such a familiar, though infrequent, sound in Oysterville can’t help but gladden the heart.
Just as it’s been a long, long time since there were enough kids in town to keep the schoolhouse open, it’s been fifty years or so since almost every family had a horse or two. In those days, the horses were for the kids of the family. Fifty years prior to that, of course, families had horses mainly for transportation purposes — but for kids, too, as one of our hundred-year-old photos of the Espy children shows.
As the horse approached, we greeted the riders – two girls who, it turned out, were riding through Oysterville ‘on their own’ for the first time. The horse, “a purebred thoroughbred” had been a present to the girl handling the reins – for her thirteenth birthday, she told us. She had ridden through town several times before with her mom but now she had permission to be on her own.
The horse, it turned out, would be thirteen, too, in May. “She was a brood mare,” we were told, “and now she is retired. Some of her foals have become champions.” The birthday girl didn’t think she would continue breeding the horse but… “maybe.”
She said she lives nearby and we said we hoped we’d see her riding through Oysterville often throughout the summer. “Oh, you will,” she assured us. Nyel came out of the house about then and joined us. He greeted the horse owner by name – one the perks of working as a substitute teacher is knowing the kids of the area – and joined the conversation.
Soon, girls and horse continued on their way. By then, we were all smiling – probably even the horse! Another neighborly interlude in Oysterville!
Frank Wolfe and Kathleen Sayce came through our door Friday evening looking like the proverbial cats who had swallowed those unfortunate mice. “We have a presentation to make to Sydney,” Frank announced. And from behind his back he pulled a large kid’s painting that I hadn’t seen for almost twenty years.
The spacesuits involved moon boots (made with many, many newspapers and rolls of masking tape), an EMU – Extravehicular Mobility Unit – backpack (cereal boxes and scads of aluminum foil) and, of course, a protective space helmet (large paper bag) generously adorned with “official” space stickers and I.D. badges. For homework, each student engineered a “safe” container into which they placed a raw egg.
Even though I look back on the Halloweens of my childhood with a sort of nostalgic glow, I can’t really think of much I enjoyed about the holiday. Those were the days of dressing up and going around the neighborhood trick-or-treating with a group of also-costumed friends. And, since I lived in Alameda, California (where there were real neighborhoods with blocks and sidewalks), we did actually go door-to-door to the homes of people who we more-or-less knew. In fact, as far as I can remember, we were unaccompanied by an adult.
These days, one of the topics of conversation among us of the older generation concerns the village children and grandchildren. Most of them, of course, live elsewhere, but in the summertime, especially, they come to Oysterville. They come to play, to visit grandparents and, sometimes to get married. It is gratifying to all of us, even those without grandchildren, that family connections with Oysterville endure.
Last week my new friend Linda came calling. She arrived at my door wearing a bright pink hat and new pink shoes to match. She brought with her a copy of Dear Medora and her Grandma Stephanie. Shyly she asked for my autograph.
