Hair of the horse

Today my life is back to normal, by which I mean, I have to go to the Clinton-Bailey Market and meet up with this woman who is going to give me a bag of horse hair. We are to meet at Bob Tower's apple stand! Then I am to bring this bag of horse hair back to Howard.

It is like something out of Scriptures. When Christ is celebrating the Passover with his disciples and one of them is told, "Go into the city, where you will see a woman carrying a large water jar. Follow her." And things go from there.

Well, I know the gal giving us the horse hair. Her name is Sarah. See, I told you it is like the Bible!

Sarah is the daughter of my friends Bob and Lynn. When she was little I was about 20 and when I slept over at their house in Niagara Falls, Sarah would get up in the morning and crawl into my sleeping bag with me and we would watch "Sesame Street."

Now she is all grown up and giving us horse hair!

Sarah is a horsewoman. That is a term I have always loved, horsewoman. You picture one of those British ladies like Camilla Parker Bowles with her riding boots.

Here is a painting by Renoir called "The Horsewoman." See, he thinks the way I do.


I rode a horse a couple of times in my life and it was not pretty. My old roommate Daryle and I had an unforgettable experience once when a group of us were on vacation somewhere, I think in the Poconos. That was with Bob and Lynn whom I just mentioned. Daryle and I went horseback riding and that was a mistake, I will tell you that right now. My horse was named Happy. Happy the horse was huge and mean and he kept rubbing against trees trying to slough me off. Then both our horses just took off flying, and we were clinging to them ashen-faced. Daryle is Italian so it takes a lot to make him ashen-faced but believe you me, he was.

Never again! That was a "never again" kind of experience. Daryle and I still laugh about it. If you mention Happy the horse to him he knows what you mean.

I did not have to ask Leonard Pennario if he ever rode a horse because I know that he did not. But he did play with a lion cub once! I have pictures of that. Perhaps "Leonard" means lion man. If someone who likes horses is a horsewoman it would follow that someone who likes lions is a lion man.

Howard needs horse hair because it figures in his restoration of Big Blue, which, that is Big Blue visible at the center of this picture.


He has to mix horse hair in with some compound to use it in the bricks or something. I know not. I understand it not.

All I know is that I am to pick up this horse hair and then I will shop the Clinton-Bailey Market and buy all this food I do not need! I am also to check at James Desiderio's to see if they have figs. Figs! That is another thing out of the Bible.

After that I will go over to my mother's. She said yesterday she checked the garage sale listings and there was not much that looked interesting. But that is often the case and things have a way of changing. We find something!

It is good to have life back to normal.