Velvet and I spent an uncomfortable Firday night in the reedy lower pasture. I was in my tent with punctured air mattress and she had to paw her patch of ground to make it comfy.
Finally 6:00am Saturday morning came and we are up. At 7:00 am, I am to meet people who are interested in getting some information. They want names and addresses of people with nice trail riding fox trotters for sale I’m going to give them Larry and Mona Dollarhide of Larry’s stable. They want to find another Velvet at her breeder…Robert Lewis of Butler. They were intrigued about Natural Horsemanship training methods.
Velvet and I take care of our morning body and skin and hair care functions, adorn ourselves with makeup, and approve of ourselves in the mirror. Of course, Velvet had her breakfast immediately upon my crawling out of the tent. I look for my purse. I look for my purse again. I look again, for my purse. All of a sudden the glow of understanding lights up. It wasn’t one of my Internet boyfriends (Jeff, John, Craig…too many too list) trying to find me on the page last night!. It was someone who had found my purse, paging me! I expect my purse to be returned…I’ll just check in at the office and my purse will be there. I truly am Ms Lucky!
I ask Velvet, “Please crawl into the trailer. We’ll go up and find some nice grass.” We make our wide turn in the pasture and start up the steep hill. Hmmm, the flintstone rocky road appears to be wet. Funny, it’s in the middle of a drought, and the only wet stuff in sight is running down the road.
We charge up the steep, very steep hill and the water is coming down the road in a torrent. The truck starts slipping and the great adverse-condition driver quickly slips into 4X drive and forward progress resumes. The road goes straight up. The water comes straight down. We slow and stall. Not being a stranger to being stuck in snow and ice, I rock, I turn the wheels, I rock. We rock great, with zero movement. There is a semi-truck water storage unit, which is used for the water during the Celebration. Water is pouring out in a torrent at 6:45 am…right down our road. My tires are half buried and I’ve made some dandy deep ruts. I am a woman alone, stuck with horse-in-trailer. It’s 6:45 and I have to be at the lunch stand in 15 minutes. I do what any red-blooded 50-year-old woman would do: I look desperately around for a male savior. Unfortunately, it’s too early. All the male heroes are still asleep in their trailers. The thought occurred to me that Velvet weighs near 1000 lbs. I open the trailer door and tell the heavyweight to exit the trailer and go tie herself up. With a much lighter load, I pray that the truck will free itself. It does! It pops right out of the ditch and slowly tops the hill. Velvet whinnies in major relief. I cross myself.
I quickly find a nice grassy place to park and Velvet is brought to the trailer and tied where she can eat nice juicy grass. I quickly hike to the cook shack…penniless. The women are there and I lie and tell them that I don’t eat breakfast. I “allow” them to buy me coffee. One of them brings her own flavored toast and offers me a piece. I don’t let on that this piece of toast is all that is between me and death by breakfast-starvation.
After we get done talking I hurriedly visit the office to ask about my purse. “NO PURSE has been turned it”, the officewoman sez. I tell her that someone tried to page me last night from the cook shack. She sez that it’s probably still there. Grrrr, I think…”I could have had my purse and eaten breakfast.” I turn around to leave and in walks a man holding my purse. It was left in the cook shack overnight and they decided that it was time to turn it into the office. See what I mean about my purse return luck?
Unfortunately, the purse finder took their finder’s fee… my cash. However, my credit cards and checkbook are intact. I am grateful to get the purse back with the important things. However, I still am penniless!
I walk hurridly back and explained this money thing to Velvet. I promise her a nice surprise if she goes along with me. She agreed, knowing that her “momma gotta have money”. She leaps into the trailer and off we go, registering zero on the speedometer.
Guess what happens to the grounds on Saturday—the big night! Everyone starts coming into the grounds and parks with little car parts hanging out into the small road. The golf cart guy had to find the woman who stuck her who bumper into the road, before I could get out. I had my own traffic jam! Finally we made it to the highway and went into Ava. Thank goodness a bank with ATM exists on the big corner where there was plenty of turn around room. I don’t mind backing when I’m all alone at my own property, but other people get mean when I take ½ hour to back 5 feet. We zipped across the road to McDonalds and finally got my breakfast. Whew.
With a lovely breakfast in hand, we zoomed out on the open road. Velvet wondered if I had lost my mind when we passed the Celebration grounds. Velvet’s surprise breakfast was at the beautiful roadside park. She got to eat grass in the park and drank out of the babbling brook. I relaxed, knowing I had money and was again a citizen of the world.
We returned to the grounds and managed to squeeze the rig into a place where Velvet had room to stand and eat some grass. All this time, I hadn’t got to do my very favorite thing and that is to go on a ride on the roads behind the Celebration ground. I saddled up “Ms Ava Winner” and off we went. We were having a fine time when we heard footsteps behind us. Shortly the footsteps caught up with us and behold a woman riding another beautiful black horse asked if she could ride with us! I found out that the black horse’s breeding was the same as Velvet’s…Toddy’s Perfection. We chatted up a storm and she took me further on the road than I’ve ever been before. We came out on the side of the highway north of the Celebration grounds. The horse track is a long way from the pavement, and sometimes the pavement disappears as you ride along. What a great ride it was, too. I’ve forgotten her name now…I hope she reads this. She invited Velvet and I to participate in the flag ceremony. I found out that she carries the Missouri flag!
As promised, we participated in the flag ceremony. Velvet has never carried a flag in her life, and it was windy. I was worried. BUT…no problem. We got our flag. We got used to it. I let it go and it flapped over her head and we both disappeared inside the flag. She didn’t move. The flag role call was called and away we went into the ring. What a thrill that was. I couldn’t have wiped the grin off my face. We tried to go as wide as we could around the arena to make the time last longer. Another surprise was the announcing of both our names. We revel in the spotlight! The National Anthem was played and we all let the flags wave in the wind. Velvet and I choked up with the glory of it all.
For a lowly nobody…our names were announced over the load speaker many times in our two days at AVA!
After the flag ceremony, we stood around and let people admire the beautiful Princess of the Pasture..but like any member of Royalty, she could only take so much. She wanted to go back to the trailer and eat hay and grass. I enjoyed the rest of the Saturday night stake show! Of course I had to check on her about every hour. It’s an amazing amount of walking.
That was the end of Ava adventure. When we awoke Sunday morning it was raining and taking down the tent in the rain was “just a thrill”. We drove all the way home. I slept for 14 hours in a row.
I’ll be back next year. I’ve decided having a stall would be worth a lot!