In reality, it is my tack trunk, that my father made when I was thirteen. I had just started showing horses, and he'd seen a lot of other people at shows with tack trunks that they could pack all their gear into so it was easily accessible at the show, as well as portable. He thought it would be a great thing for me to have, so he found plans, and built me my own wooden box. It is not only stained to show off the grain of the plywood he used, it is sealed in marine varnish to make it weatherproof. And after 28 years, it's still in great shape. Still has the silhouette of a horse painted on the front, under the latch, and still has my maiden name painted on it.
The first year I took it to the county fair, we discovered that while my tack trunk is great for holding all the gear I could possibly need for three straight days of showing, it is not so portable. Not fully loaded, not unless you are a personal friend of the Hulk and he happens to travel with you. It is heavier than. . . well, I'm sure you have heard any number of nouns that would fit the sentence. No way can one person carry it, even with handles on the sides. Even two people, when one is a young teenage girl and the other a thirty-something mom, couldn't tote it very well.
So that fall, Dad added an axle and wheels to one of the ends. Now, with muscles, one person could tote it around fully loaded. Did I mention it can hold two saddles: one western and one hunt seat? Heavy, heavy.
And tote it I did. Shows. Fairs. To the Upper Peninsula when I moved away from my parents' home and struck out on my own. Back to lower Michigan when DH graduated from college and we woefully left the U.P. in search of an engineering career. To five other houses before landing at this little place here. Where it has sat, mostly unopened, for almost a decade.
You see, through the years and the moves, and the fact that I haven't been in a show ring since DS2 was six weeks old (yeah, I was that obsessed and on a borrowed horse of some old 4-H friends) in 1993, the tack trunk hasn't held my daily horsey necessities like it used to. It has held the things that I owned and planned to use "someday", but didn't really need at the present time. Present time went by faster than I imagined possible.
When I was getting ready for our garage sale a few weeks ago I decided I should go through my tack trunk and see if there was anything in there (like pony equipment from the kids' pony we'd had put to sleep in December 2004. . . ) that I probably didn't need to keep hanging on to.
I uncovered my tack trunk from the pile of stuff that had accumulated on top of it, unhooked the latch, lifted the lid and. . .
. . . found myself back in time. First the pony equipment, and memories of how excited the three older kids were the day he was delivered--a week before DD2 was born!
Pony 1997
Deeper in the trunk, under the pony stuff, was the show sheets and winter blankets from my main show horse. I'd sold him in 1992, shortly before getting engaged (and subsequently getting pregnant with DS2, really it happened that way!) but always planned to have another horse some day, so kept all gear except the western saddle (I had moved on to dressage), including his size 72 apparel. I'd forgotten I had those, but now that I know, they might come in handy. You see, I had kept tabs on where that horse went after it left my ownership, and in 2005 when I heard that the therapeutic riding center that currently owned him was selling off some of it's herd to alleviate financial problems, I offered to buy him back. That is how Old Man ended up back under my wing. He'd spent ten years carrying children and adults with various disabilities, and that made him an excellent mount for my kids after their beloved pony had to be put to sleep at age 32. Now that he's 29 and its getting a bit harder to keep weight on him, having that winter blanket in just his size is a useful thing. Good thing I kept it 21 years, lol.
Old Man spring 2013
Digging deeper still, I found gymkhana equipment from when I borrowed a barrel racing horse to use on my high school equestrian team. I competed two horses that year, my own show horse (Old Man) in hunt seat, and the borrowed horse in gymkhana events. Gymkhana equipment that hadn't been used since 1989, when I last rode a barrel pattern. Oh my! I don't think they use leather skid boots on the horses anymore.
Ah, the polo wraps and cotton quilts from my days of working as an assistant trainer at a barn in the U.P. where all the horses did a little gymnastic jumping as part of their education. The neoprene splint boots and doughnut-style side reins from that same era. . . The horses I have known, have ridden, pictures of them flooded my mind; I can still remember the feel of most of those horses beneath my seat and the feel of their mouth against my reins. Dozens and dozens of horses, numerous breeds, variety of sizes and personalities.
I probably spent an hour in the barn, finding one memory after another in that tack trunk time machine. I'm not sure where all the years went, but I am glad that after all this time, nearly 29 years since I purchased my first horse, I still am able to have equine companions. And running a few barrels, or taking a few jumps does sound kind of fun. (I had promised DH when we got engaged I would give up jumping; he was afraid I'd kill myself via jumping green horses. So that's been a few decades too. . .) I don't think I'm too old yet. ;0)
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