Buzz

When I was around 11 or 12, a fellow-horse crazy friend named Cherrie told me about this old guy who had horses and ponies, and who would let you ride them if you cleaned the horse and it's stall. It happened that he was renting the barn that belonged to another friend, Karen's, grandmother.

This was tantamount to heaven on earth for a horse-poor daughter of clinging-to-lower-middle class parents.

And so I came to meet Buzz.

Buzz had prepubescent and pubescent girls fluttering around him like bees around apple blossoms. Before you jump to any conclusions: he wasn't a pedophile - unless pedophiles endear themselves to children by saying things like "Hey, chicken legs - where the hell do you think you're going with that horse, did you brush his tail?" or "Get back on that goddamned horse, you goddamned farmer!" He loved his horses; young girls on the other hand - with their high-pitched voices and daily dramas - he sometimes barely tolerated.

I think of him as a New England cowboy - and a real oldstyle horseman. He didn't ride any more by the time I met him, but was keeping around all his old horses because he owed it to them, I think. Occasionally too, he would add to the herd after trips to the Shrewsbury auction on tack or supply runs. He didn't have a trailer, he'd just toss the horse into the bed of his pickup and bring it home.

Days he worked as a meat packer at the Finast Supermarkets, unloading sides of frozen beef from trucks. He'd start work at 5AM, and then he'd come to the barn around 3-3:30 in the afternoon to open up - the door was padlocked shut.

He liked his beer, and after a six-pack or two he sometimes would tell us stories of his riding days. One that I still remember was about his beloved Harry the Horse, a big paint he'd ride to the Oaks, a bar in Billerica. He said he and Harry would both get shitfaced drunk - apparently they served horses there. Then he would laugh, and say that one time, when riding home along the Shawsheen River after an evening at the Oaks, he and Harry tipped over and fell in. He'd laugh, take a sip of his Schlitz, and say "Harry was a hell of a horse..."

In hindsight, I have to say that he had a pretty sick sense of humor: "Harry the Horse"? "Little Richard" (a stud hackney pony he usually referred to as "Little Dick")? But it all went way over my head back then - I was pretty naive.

Every afternoon when Buzz arrived, speeding up the dirt drive in his Chevy pickup, we'd be waiting. The horses would be too: we could hear them nickering their greetings from inside. He'd unpadlock the bolt and slide the two doors wide, letting in the fresh air and sunlight.

Then they'd be set free: he'd go to each stall, open the stall door, take them by their halters to the opened door and let them go, standing back to watch each one of them gallop out into the unfenced field, tails up, manes streaming, nostrils flaring.

There was about 15 acres of land, and those horses and ponies never wandered off it. The newly-added horses would stay with the herd, and he never had to chase down a horse who'd gone walkabout.

It never occurred to me at the time that any of this was odd - the fenceless turnout, the horses locked up tight until 3 or 3:30 in the afternoon - I was a kid, it was what it was.

The horses didn't seem to care, either - or not that I remember. Maybe I'm just romanticizing it: knowing what I know about horses now, I can't imagine there NOT being a lot of neighing and kicking and carrying on to be let out FIRST.

Instead what I remember is feeling an incredible thrill standing next to Buzz to watch them running, kicking, bucking, and cavorting with each other. We were blessed to witness it, and we knew it: young and old, they drank in the glorious smells of grass and trees and flowers; they channelled their inner wild horse - and we got to watch.

It was and continues to be a sight that takes my breath away.

As for letting us ride: Buzz had a rule. Well actually, he had a lot of rules and some of them we actually followed - at least when we were within his eyesight. I'm pretty sure he knew about our transgressions too, but he never let on. We really were brats.

But this one rule was one we couldn't bend: no saddles - he didn't want us falling and getting our feet caught in the stirrup and dragged.

The "falling" part was a given; the dragged part was what he was interested in avoiding. So we all rode bareback.

That wasn't to say he just said "Here, clean this horse - clean his stall - you're good to go, have fun!" Nope. You had to *earn* the right to ride one of his animals.

Buzz had a system to cull out the dilletantes in his gaggle of horse-crazy sycophants: It was named Zero.

Zero was a paint pony of about 13hh, with the attitude of Godzilla with a hangover.

Zero hated little girls. While grooming him, he'd try to bite you, kick you, and stomp on your feet. Once you'd finished, and after Buzz had inspected him for cleanliness and an untangled tail, the real fun began.

This was the routine:

Lead Zero out to the driveway, keeping his teeth an arms distance away from your body. Gather up the reins, grab a hunk of mane, and face his back.

Block his attempt to bite your butt. Watch his hind leg for a muscle twitch heralding an attempt to kick you in the leg.

Chase Zero around as he does spins on the forehand, all the while trying to cow-kick your knee.

After about 10 rotations, launch yourself at his back.

If you're lucky you get on and don't flip over his back to the other side, because he stops spinning the moment you're airborn, and he'll stomp you if you're on the ground.

Wrap your legs as tightly around his fat belly as you can and hold on to that hunk of mane, because the next thing that happens is you're on a pony who's galloping across the field bee-lining for some trees to knock you off on, meanwhile tossing in a few bucks and crow-hops just to let you know he can.

Zero was the great equalizer.

I'm proud to say I survived him - many fell by the wayside - literally and figuratively - and were so disheartened they were never seen at the barn again.

Those of us who managed to survive Zero and kept coming back - and that's not to say we didn't fall by the wayside literally ourselves, we just were too stubborn to give in - were offered another mount after a couple of weeks.

For Karen, Cherrie, and myself, it was Oscar.


I'll continue about Buzz in another post.