Animal Tales - Ponies

I asked the daughters for imput on this blog.  I am using the comments of three of them.  Lora, Alissa and Maureen,  otherwise referred to as L,A and M.  An occasional N is me adding my two cents.   All of these memories of theirs started when Lora was 12, Alissa 11, and Maureen, 4. 
N:      We took possession of the house on Cruger road in November, 1969 and moved in in August, 1970.  During that time  we cleaned and painted bedrooms and tried to make the house livable
A:      Dad didn't want the ponies but Grandpa insisted.
N:      My father worked with someone who had ponies and wanted to sell them and so he thought it would be wonderful if we had ponies.  He called one day to say he had bought them.  So in the middle of  trying to get the house and grounds ready, Vern had to stop and put up a fence, clean out a barn, and prepare it.  He was not happy and I heard often about the impetuousness of my parent.
L:      I remember how proud Grandpa Russ was that he bought his granddaughters 2 1/2 ponies - I'm sure that a lot of Knights heard about his generosity.
A:     I remember helping put up the fence and then expanding the pasture later on.
L:      I remember that the previous owners had named Pepper, Glory and Glory, Pepper but somehow the names were switched on the ride over to Washington
A:     When we went out to the farm the day after the ponies were delivered we found Truman (named by Mom after her favorite president).  They didn't even know Glory was pregnant.  Glory wouldn't let Dad near Truman to see what sex he was.  One day when the Lees were over, Truman got stuck in the barbed wire fance. Dad ran out to get him loose.  He had him in his arms but in all the excitement, didn't check to see if he was male or not.
A:     I remember putting my fingers under Glory near where he was nursing and he would suck our fingers.
M:     I remember that they escaped a lot and we had to go down to that weird lady's trailer on the corner to bring them home.
N:      Remember that we were still living in Peoria and we would go over to Washington most evenings after Vern got home from work to work on the house.  I would get a phone call that the ponies were out and I would gather up kids and we would  go flying over to Cruger Road and gather them up, repair the fence, get them back in the barnyard and go back home, only to come back in the evening to work.
M:     I remember picketing them out in the lawn and letting them eat big circles of grass and then moving them to a different spot and having to pick up poop.
N:     Anything to avoid mowing.
M:     I remember brushing and grooming and watching Dad trim their feet and teaching me about the anatomy of a  horse's hoof'
M:     I remember one of them got into the corn once and someone had to stay up all night and walk her around so she wouldn't flounder.
M:     Didn't Mary lead one of them into the house?
N:      Unbeknownst to me, until years later.
M.     I remember getting up on cold, dark, snowy winter mornings and trudging out to the barn wearing a hand-me-down coat, boots that were too big, and no hat or gloves to break the ice on the water trough, and throw them some corn and hay.
A:      We used to tie them to the apple trees so they could 'clean up' all the fallen apples.
M:      I remember feeding them apples over the fence, or any leftovers from canning (especially corn husks) and Grandpa would give them beer from a can.
A:       Pepper used to like to drink iced tea out of a glass.
A:       She also used to run to the fence to see what we were going to throw over to her.
M:       I remember getting yelled at because someone left the light on in the barn, and then I'd have to trudge back out in the cold, dark, snowy night wearing a hand-me-down coat, boots that were too big, and no hat or gloves to go turn off the light.
L:        Yeah, I remembered all that stuff too - except the part where you had to pick up the poop, feed them on frosty mornings, turn out the barn light and collect the stray ponies (usually from the Harris' subdivision).  I'm pretty sure it was the big girls who handled those chores most often along with the anti-foundering walks, repairing the fence, mucking out the barn, stacking hay, and lifting one of the little girls up onto a pony.
N:      The coat Maureen talks about was Vern's and his boots that were always just inside the cellar door.  Lora's talk of 'big girls' were the first three, Leah, Lora and Alissa.  The 'little girls', were Mary, Angela and Maureen.
M:      I remember spending autumn afternoons walking through the fields after Hess' picked the corn to gather food for them for the winter.
L:       When picking up corn in Hess' field, I remember Dad calling that "gleaning the field" and explaing the new vocabulary word to us.
M:      I remember eating the corn....the grain...and licking the salt block
M:      I remember inviting my first grade class out for pony rides and a picnic....and starting a trend.
N:      That first spring we invited the first grade class from St. Patricks/St Marys in Peoria over for pony rides and the next year when Maureen was in first grade, she invited her class.  The Peoria St. Pat's kids came until they closed the school but first graders from St. Pat's in Washington came for several years until we gave the ponies away.
M:     I remember playing cowboys and indians with Angela, and she always got to be the cowboy and ride the pony and I had to be the swarthy indian that got persecuted and sent to the reservation.
M:     I remember Angela teaching Pepper to jump over a 2x4 laid across concrete blocks about 2 feet off the ground.  She fell off once and Pepper landed on her chest.
L:      Before Ang put the 2x4 on cement blocks, she started out with it flat on the ground then progressively rose it up a few inches at a time before Pepper staged her rebellion at the cinder blocks.
M:     I remember hearing Mom yell: "someone get that animal out of the garden/my flower bed".
M:     I remember laying on Pepper's back in the sunshine watching the clouds float by while she munched on grass.
M:     But my favorite memory is during the Washington Sesquicentennial celebration and a promotion for Deadwood Dick where John Bearce rode his pretty full-size horse (that they trailered there) and Dad rode little Pepper into the town square and they acted out a scene from the play or a shootout.  I remember walking Pepper all the way home.
N:      Deadwood Dick was a play put on by St. Patricks.  John played the villain, Vern the sheriff.
A:      When we sold the ponies, Dad gave the money to Grandpa and he bouht us a croquet set and a tether ball and pole.
L:       And much later, a piece of that tether ball pole became a replacement muffler pipe on my 1971 Toyota Corolla.  The mechanic?  Dad, of course.