the Horse Trader
The horse trader is my mom. She claimed to be 5′ 2″, but I’m pretty sure she only made that with heels and and her hair done up. She had a heart of gold, but in spite of her diminutive stature, woe be to anyone who crossed her.
Her name was Carol, or sometimes Carol Anne to her friends. She was quite the black sheep of the family – a teenager in the late ’50s when rock and roll was the rage and the bane of parents everywhere. The youngest daughter in a family of Irish Catholics, where “prim and proper” were the watchwords, my mom was a rogue and a bit of a hippie.
Her second husband Pepper got her her first horse, but up to that point we were suburbanites. Her third husband Buck moved us to the farm, and was the first real cowboy influence in my life.
