Between Town & Country

The neighborhood I grew up in sat on the southern boundary of a town of 2000 souls.  If you looked out our front picture window you would see rows of houses stretching northward towards the town square several blocks away.  If you stepped out onto our second story back deck you would find yourself looking out over cornfields disappearing into the distance only interrupted by patches of trees and the silvery gleam of the Co-op silos.

Being perched between town and country provided two different kinds of adventure for my younger self and my neighborhood friends.  The town side was accessible by bike, but the country side could only be explored on foot.  Disappearing into the cornfield required a buddy system where one boy would have to climb onto the shoulders of the larger boy in order to peer above the cornstalks to judge direction and distance.

At the corner of our neighborhood sat a horse barn and corral.  In the summer between my second and third grade year another boy and I decided to explore this barn and try and interact with the horse.  We crouched on the outside of the wood-slat fence and coaxed the horse to come over and visit with us by offering it some long grass.  Eventually curiosity helped overcome my fear of such a large animal and I climbed the fence to enter the corral after the horse decided it was through with us and had entered its stall in the barn.

I wanted the horse to be outside and walking around with us and so I came up with a hare-brained scheme to lead it out of the barn.  I found a long piece of baling twine and entered the stall where I tied it around the horse's neck.  When talking to it and tugging the twine did not have the desired effect I did something remarkably stupid.  I tied the other end around my wrist and knotted it so that we were inextricably bound together.  I tugged on the twine a little harder when suddenly it bolted.

I found myself whipped off of my feet and then under the horse where it drug me out the door and around the corral.  I could see its back feet thundering towards me and feel its front feet pounding near my head as I bumped and bounced along the hardened dirt and gravel on my back.  I was terrified, but there was nothing I could do about it until the horse stopped.

When it finally stopped running and stood still I was lying on the ground with my arm up above my head still tied to its massive neck.  I got up, dazed, and frantically tried to get the twine from around my wrist.  I talked as soothingly to the horse as I could with my quivering voice and even patted its neck a little to try and calm it so that it would not bolt again.  Tears burned my eyes as I felt a kind of hopelessness ascending in my throat the longer I stood there unable to free myself.

When I finally got myself free I ran to a short concrete wall that surrounded a raised area in the center of the corral and jumped up onto it.  My friend was there waiting for me, eyes as big as fifty cent pieces.  We were safe from the horse there in the circle, but still inside of the corral.  I don't remember whose idea it was, but we started throwing rocks at the horse as it ran around and when it finally ran back into its stall we hightailed it for the fence and climbed out of the danger zone.

Only then did I calm down enough to take an appraisal of my injuries.  Other than what felt to be a broken or jammed finger I felt relatively unharmed.  My friend went home and I slinked back to my house, ashamed of what I'd done.  I told my Mom I'd hurt my finger, but not how I'd done it, and it turned out to be nothing much.  When I later took off my shirt in my room I found the perfectly symmetrical outline of a horseshoe print in the middle of it where my chest had been, like some kind of sport's team jersey.

It was the first of several such incidents in my life that I look back upon now and wonder why I am still here.


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