A Man and His Horse

Recently I read to Pager a story about Morgan horses from this book. I mentioned to Pager that he must have had some horses on the farm that had Morgan blood in them, and he said yes. I asked if he remembered any of their names, and he said no. But after a few minutes he said that he remembered a horse named Beauty that he'd had as a young man. I said that was a nice name. He said she was a nice horse.

And then he said something that surprised me: "There's something between a man and a horse that you can't put into words."

I was surprised because I'd never heard Pager be this sentimental about a horse before. And I was also surprised because one doesn't hear this much any more. Maybe about a woman and a horse, but not so much about a man and a horse. (At least not in the east.) In my previous post I wrote about changes during Pager's lifetime. But here's one I missed—the use of horses has changed from almost exclusively by men to almost exclusively by women. I don't know why that should be, but it just is.

It turns out that Pager has a photo album about Beauty. Here's the first page (click on photos to enlarge):

The writing says: "Boots, born September 1936, purchased April 2, 1937, from C.J. Munn, Johnson, Vermont, priced at $65, named Beauty, nicknamed Boots while being used with Black Beauty." Black Beauty was another horse on the farm; the album has a photo of the two horses working together "haying at Gomo's."

Here is a photo of Pager holding Boots in front of the farmhouse in 1937 soon after she was purchased:

On the porch are Pager's parents, Mabell (normally spelled Mabelle?) and Kinsley, Pager's sister Elizabeth (mostly hidden), and a boarder named Edson Cook. Pager was 22 or 23 at the time.

The album has many pictures of Boots being trained or ridden, and of Boots pulling something such as a sleigh or a gathering tub of sap. But most of the photos are of Boots with young women. Boots was a chick magnet! There are six different single young women in the pictures, not counting Pager's sister Elizabeth. Here is a photo of Mother's sister, Evelyn Gould, in 1942:

And here are several photos of Mother (Lois Gould), probably about the same time:

Pager called her Pat (and she called him Put). The caption says: "Boots and Pat, let it go at that." Put and Pat were married on June 16, 1946.