The article below is the second one of a 1969 newspaper series on Women of New Hampshire. The first was on the wife of the the governor. Mum has felt shy to publish it. However, this blog is primarily for her children and close family and I know they all will treasure this as I do. – Sam
This memoir is about Mummy’s younger years. From early childhood, and well into her adult life, she was lovely, gracious and very intelligent. Kenneth Robinson was a Dartmouth English professor and family friend of her parents who admired young Alicia (Mummy). Using his literary confidence he expressed his admiration of her through a number of poems, a practice more socially common in the early 20th century.
Marmaduke Bangs was a super-human,
Envied by men and pursued by women.
Handsome, dashing, and twenty-five,
As yet he’d taken no maid to wive.
Princeling, paragon, beau-ideal,
He had fifty millions in U. S. Steel,
With another fifty (so said his doters)
Soundly invested in General Motors.
The rest of the competence that was his
Was in consols, whatever a consol is!
Marmaduke Bangs owned nine Rolls-Royces
With five Hispanos for second choices,
Isottas and Packards by the dozen,
A Renault he loaned to his poor lame cousin,
And several Lincolns for muddy weather –
Though he seldom went out in them all together.
Marmaduke Bangs lived everywhere:
He’d a house in Curzon Street, Mayfair,
A Paris flat in the best location
Where he went in Spring for his Spring vacation.
He owned two yachts and a country house
In Scotland handy for shooting grouse,
And villas in all the well-known plages,
Complete with tennis courts and garages.
Marmaduke had on his personal staff
Twenty-one valets and a half,
A boy for boots and an extra dresser,
A changer of studs and a trousers presser,
With a secretary for each known reason;
Add chauffeurs, butlers, and groom to season!
Marmaduke Bangs was both deep and clever.
He was up on everything, you could never
Ask him a question, however subtle,
Like who invented the first coal scuttle?
Or who was Socrates’ favorite dancer?
That Marmaduke Bangs didn’t know the answer.
He could tell the ablative from the dative,
He spoke twelve languages like a native,
He shone at tennis, at golf, at polo,
Was great at bridge, he could sing a solo,
And even (I give you my word for that)
He could take a rabbit out of a hat.
(If he’s lacking up to the present time
In my own considerable gift for rhyme.
That is his largest mis-connection
With total and absolute perfection.)
Hold! Lest our search for truth be foiled,
He had one fault more. He was slightly spoiled,
Though not incurably, understand!
He needed the touch of a woman’s hand.
Toppled over into the gutters,
Seized with the fainting and the flutters,
While mothers knelt at their bedsides nightly
(After anointing their temples lightly
With costly Parisian toilet waters)
And prayed that he’d notice their maiden daughters.
But non, as yet, for her pains and pangs,
Had won the heart of Marmaduke Bangs.
Marmaduke Bangs on the night in question,
Suffered from mental indigestion.
He stood in the doorway, idly glancing
Here and there at the people dancing,
Dewy maidens with eyes beseeching
Hovered around within easy reaching,
But something, somewhere, had failed of clicking,
Marmaduke Bangs wouldn’t start in picking.
He yawned, he nodded, he all by snored;
‘Twas evident Marmaduke Bangs was bored.
So the whisper ran like the voice of doom
From side to side of that rich ball-room,
Caught, repeated, and underscored:
“Have you heard about Marmaduke Bangs? He’s bored!”
Oh, the dismay and the agitation,
The hopelessness of the situation!
Picture that evening gone to ruin,
Oh, what a state was that hapless crew in!
Women staggered and kicked their trains out,
And men made ready to blow their brains out.
Meanwhile Marmaduke glowered and pondered.
“Why don’t they [lease me to-night?” he wondered.
“I've got no heart for the lights and laughter;
In short, I feel like the third day after.
I'm weary of girls and I'm here confessing
I'm wearier still of the way they're dressing.”
He paused. Then, lighting a fresh Abdullah,
Our hero soliloquized on color.
“Why do they wear the shades they do
Of green and yellow and pink and blue?
Whenever a girl in green goes by,
It gives me a cast in my left eye;
And pink has caused from my earliest youth
A badly impacted wisdom tooth.
Yellow makes both my arches quiver
And brings on cirrhosis of the liver,
While blue is a shade that lays me low
With, all together or in a row,
Forty or fifty dread diseases
Whose symptoms are temperature and sneezes.
I'll get my had and be off,” he said,
“Find a good book and go to bed.”
And then there burst on his dazzled sight
Alicia, glimmering, all in white.
Her presence there was a just rebuke
To the callous heart of Marmaduke.
He gasped, he tottered, he dropped his hat,
He grabbed somebody and cried, “Who is that?
Who's that? No, I don't mean him, you blight,
Not the orchestra leader. That girl in white!”
Gone in a flash was the sullen frown
As Marmaduke shouted, “That girl! That gown!”
Oh, the sweet relief, like a cool breeze ending
A day of heat, to those poor souls bending
Under the weight of his disapproval
That a moment since had seemed past removal.
What a cry went up from the dancing floor:
“Marmaduke Bangs is himself once more!”
And Marmaduke Bangs was a re-born creature.
Joy glowed bright in his every feature.
His face transformed by the rapt look on it,
He promptly moved to the girl who'd done it,
And said, with a frank and manly glance,
“My name is Bangs. Would you care to dance?”
As they moved away to the music's beat
All Marmaduke's millions were at her feet,
His yachts, his motors, his whole possession,
He listed the items in full succession.
And last he offered his personal staff,
His twenty-one valets and a half,
His boy for boots and his extra dresser,
His changer of studs and his trousers presser.
“These shall be yours when we wed,” quoth he,
“But I ask one favor – that you'll agree
Out of all our millions, our dozen dozen
To lay one aside for my poor lame cousin.”
She said, with a laugh like bubbling water,
“Let's make it a million and a quarter.”
Alicia, five years old, 1915
In 1961, when Trip was six, he was in a large Trail Pony class at the Deerfield Fair. It was, and still is, the largest outdoor horse show in New England.
Fifteen ponies were in the class. Trip was the youngest rider, and Aloysius the smallest pony. After all the competitors did their rail work (walked, trotted and cantered both ways of the ring), the judge asked the riders to line their ponies at the far end of the ring to wait until it was their turn to do the obstacles.
Trip was the last one in the line-up. I was at the entrance gate at the other end of the ring. One by one, the ponies were supposed to go through the obstacles; backing through poles that were on the ground, opening and closing a mailbox and going over a small jump.
I watched the first eight riders struggling to make their ponies go through their difficult, individual workouts. I noticed that Trip had turned Aloysius around so they both faced the other direction. I said to myself, “What is he doing with his back to what is happening in the ring?”
I hurried down to the far end of the ring. He and Aloysius were near the rail, still turned in the opposite direction. Leaning over the rail, I quietly asked him, “Why are you facing the wrong way?” He said,” Mum, I turned Aloysius around so he wouldn’t see all the mistakes the other ponies are making.”
Trip was right. Every pony had a problem with one obstacle or another. He continued to keep Aloysius facing away from his competitors until he was called for his turn. He and Aloysius then performed a perfect, mistake-free workout and won the class!
I was still leaning on the rail, watching Trip as he happily made his victory pass. As he went by me smiling, I heard two women next to me talking. One said to the other, “Oh my, look! That’s the little boy that just won this class. He is so young that he still has his baby teeth!”
Our oldest son, Trip (Jonathan Snow Lewis,III), now 55, was diagnosed last February with serious throat cancer. He bravely suffered through months of very painful radiation.
Trip called me this evening with the very best news a mother, family and friends could hope for….that he is ”cancer free”. We LOVE YOU Trip ! ! !
Little and me in the winter of 1947
One winter day in 1947, when I was fifteen, I decided to ride Little to the ski jump which was about two miles away. I hadn’t jumped for a few weeks and wanted to see my skiing friends. It was very cold, so I dressed warmly. I also decided to ride bareback. The heat from Little’s body would help keep me warm.
Because the roads had been especially icy that year, I had asked the blacksmith to shoe Little, using winter horseshoes with calks. The calks were sharp, tapered pieces of borium about a half inch long, protruding from his horseshoes. These cleats gripped the ice to prevent him from slipping. On this day, all the roads were covered with ice and snow. I was happy he had them.
I cantered up the first hill on Liberty Hill Road. We had gone a mile when we arrived at Route 101. This was a busy state road. In this stormy winter the snowplows had piled snow, maybe five feet high, on the shoulders so the two-lane highway was not as wide as usual. But, Little and I would have to travel on this busy road only a few minutes before turning off onto Old Bedford Road toward the ski jump. Several cars passed, slowing down when they saw a horse and rider. All was fine.
Suddenly I heard a truck coming very fast up behind me. I looked back over my shoulder. I saw a huge oil truck with a deafeningly loud engine. Whirling chains were noisily clanging around its wheels which helped the large tires grip the icy road. Right away, I became very concerned. So did Little. Becoming uneasy, he skittishly started to prance.
The truck thundered closer and closer and didn’t slow down. Just as the truck was about to pass, the driver blasted his horn, causing Little to panic and jump wildly all over the place. I was having a hard time staying on his back because I had no saddle. Scared, I held the reins tightly. The frightened horse reared straight up. Holding the reins even tighter trying to hang on, is exactly what a rider as not supposed to do. Unfortunately, instead of holding his mane as I should have done, I pulled his reins so hard that finally he fell over backward. I was very fortunate that this eight hundred pound horse didn’t land on me.
Now we were both lying flat in the road! In a split second, the tires of the huge truck, with clanking chains, were flying by, just inches from both of our heads. We came so close to being crushed! The truck driver never slowed down and he just blew his horn again as he passed and stepped on the gas and the engine roared even louder.
In our hurry to get up, Little, still scared, scrambled frantically. One of his flying hind feet hit me in the left shin. It really, really hurt! I could see that one of the calks on his shoe had sliced through my jeans. Thank goodness, Little had only minor scrapes on his hind legs.
I had to get home. I couldn’t walk because of the severe pain my leg was so awful. Somehow, holding Little’s reins, I crawled on the high snowbank and then I inched onto his back. I don’t know how I did this with my injured leg and not having the help of stirrups or a saddle. With the pain in my leg getting worse and worse, I rode Little slowly home.
My leg was hurting even more and more as I approached our house. At our door, still on Little, I called and called to Mummy. She finally heard me and came to the door. I told her what had happened and that I probably should go to the hospital. She, who had always been afraid of this spirited horse, said, “You have to put Little in his stall before I take you anywhere!” I did so, very painfully hopping on one leg.
At the hospital, when the doctors saw the seriousness of the wound, I was immediately injected with morphine.What a relief! The calk had ground cloth from my red, long underwear and my jeans deep into my shin bone. It seemed to take a long time for them to pick out of the wound all the red and blue material. The doctors and the nurses were amazed that my leg hadn’t been broken when they looked at the substantial hole in my shin bone! Surprisingly, the injury healed quickly. I still have the scar on my shin, sixty-four years later.
Almost the same accident appeared fifty years later in the 1998 movie, THE HORSE WHISPERER. It was very real and naturally frightening to me. In the beginning of the movie, a snowy, winter disaster occurred involving a truck and two girls on their horses. One girl and her horse were killed and the other horse and rider were seriously injured.
That movie scene was a chilling reminder of how lucky Little and I had been…not that I needed any reminder because this scary memory appeared in my mind often over the many years.
This book-cover picture, was photographed, in 2004, by my friend, Marie Chase. She and her husband, Howard, made maple syrup for over twenty years. They built a sap house in a separate shed behind their barn.
For over one hundred years, four huge sugar maple trees had stood near Old Bedford Road in our backyard of our animal hospital. For a long time, I had wanted to tap them for sap to make maple syrup. When Sam and Pen were nine and ten, in 1978, I decided that it would be a good year to do this project with them.
In New Hampshire, maple sap runs from the middle of February into March depending on the weather; freezing at night and the temperature rising to 40 degrees in the daytime. This freezing and thawing causes this miracle. The sap in the sugar maple trees slowly rises along with the mercury in the thermometer, then drops to the bottom of the trees when the temperature drops. It is this rising and falling of the sap that allows us to collect it from the trees.
By the end of March, the sap will have an unpleasant flavor.
Standing in a foot of snow, the girls helped me use a carpenter’s brace drill to make holes angling slightly upward, and three inches deep three feet high up the tree. Then, we hammered a metal spout (‘spile’), tightly into each of the tap holes. A spile is a tap; a simplified spigot which channels the maple sap from the tree to waiting containers. The girls and I were amazed that the sap started to drip immediately.
Pen, Sam and I worked hard, and as fast as we could scrambling to attach clean, plastic milk jugs tightly to the hook on the spile and around the tree, securing them with hay-baling twine. We had to put in lots of effort because of our inexperience.
Our trees were large enough to tap in four places so we were able to collect forty gallons in three days, the minimum amount of sap required to make a gallon of syrup.
The girls often checked the jugs, and as soon as they were filled, we emptied them in two new, clean, thirty-gallon, galvanized barrels with covers, which were kept cool in an unheated room in the front of our house. Lugging the jugs was a chore but the girls loved collecting the sap. It had started to snow again. They had to carry their load up a short hill through a foot of snow. Soon a well-worn path led to our kitchen door. A wet track of melting snow went through our kitchen to the front of the house where the barrels of sap were stored to keep cool.
When we had gathered a little more than the necessary forty gallons, it was time to start the evaporation process. Heating the liquid in two large pans on our electric stove, with two burners under each, the sap started to boil.
To make a gallon of syrup, this procedure should not have been done not in our kitchen, but on an outside fire or in a sugar house, for two reasons; the humidity of 39 gallons of water evaporating for a single gallon of syrup is enough moisture to make wallpaper peel and the other reason is that every surface in the kitchen seemed be sticky.
Pen and Sam, when necessary, as the liquid boiled down, emptied fresh more sap into the pan. They had to be very careful to avoid being burned. Often stirring the syrup-to-be and then skimming the foam off the bubbling surface with a large metal strainer kept us busy. When the syrup was boiling at the required 218 degrees, which took about six hours, the liquid had thickened become pure maple syrup. We then strained it through cheesecloth. All the while the three of us were laboring over the hot stove a lovely snow was falling heavily outside.
After six hours of boiling down the thin, clear sap, the girls and I had successfully produced a gallon of perfect, beautifully clear, light amber, maple syrup.
Now we had the best treat of all. We poured the hot syrup on the freshly fallen snow. It turned to chewy ‘maple taffy’… Delicious…YUM!
A 1938 photograph of me and Margaret Wiggin in our new Sunday outfits, standing on the steps of the parish house.
In the thirty’s and forty’s, Mummy went to Boston for our school clothes. She bought everything at Best & Co., an up-scale clothing store…enough clothes to last until Christmas. When she came home it was so exciting for me to open the boxes. I loved everything. Most of the outfits were pleated, plaid skirts with matching sweaters. Girls did not wear slacks or tights to school; we wore knee-socks.
I just couldn’t wait for school to start. I wanted to wear these new woolen winter clothes, no matter how hot it was… and I did, even though September and October had some very hot days. As the weather became colder, snowsuits and overshoes were bought in Manchester. The calf high, three buckle, rubber overshoes were very practical.
Dodge’s Shoe Store, on Elm Street, in Manchester, was where Mummy took us to get school shoes. The style was always brown leather, wing-tip, tie shoes. When Mr. Dodge opened a shoebox the wonderful smell of new leather is still clear in my memory.
I wanted to wear my new shoes immediately… and so I did. Having been made very stiff leather, ALWAYS caused blisters on my heels. Often, before we got home Mummy reminded us that new shoes did that. After weeks of band aids, medical cream and pain, my heels got calluses and my shoes didn’t ever bother me again. They lasted the whole school year, even walking to school in all kinds of weather. Our daily walk to school was more than a mile long. To protect my shoes, I had to wear rubbers when it was raining and the overshoes when it was snowing.
I can remember an older boy coasting on his bicycle down Clement’s Hill, dragging his feet, over and over again, to wear out his uncomfortable shoes so he could get a new, more comfortable pair. I would have never had dared to do that.
One spring, I had the adventure of riding on the train to Boston, with Mummy, to shop for Easter and spring clothes, again, at Best and Co.
I loved being allowed to select my new spring outfits. My next favorite part of the trip was going for a ride in the beautiful swan boats cruised in Boston Public Garden Lake. My memory is very clear of the magical, gleaming-white, large carvings of the swans floating past the spectacular public gardens ablaze with tulips and daffodils. Mummy bought me ice cream. It was a wonderful day.
The swan boat operation began in 1877. The boats are carefully maintained antiques; the oldest one, still in use, is over one hundred years old.
A very old, hand-dug well, quite similar to the one in which we used to play.
In the 30’s and 40’s, only the children who lived more than three miles away from school rode the ’school bus’, an old Ford sedan with a SCHOOL BUS sign on it. Tony and I usually walked the mile and half to school with two friends, Lloyd and Bobby. The walk was wonderful walk in all kinds of weather. Meeting House Road, at that time, was narrow and unpaved, with very little traffic. About half way to school the road was tarred and became Route 101 through Bedford Center, but still used by very few cars and trucks, a fraction of what it carries today. About fifty years ago, a by-pass had to be built in order to preserve the center of town as a quiet village.
On the way to school was an old, open well about six feet from the right side of the road. It had been dug and lined with stones many, many years earlier by homesteaders trying to eke out a living farming the rocky New Hampshire soil. The top of the well, finished with a circle constructed from six to eight-inch granite rocks, hand dug out of the pasture, stood three feet above the ground. The well, was a long, dark, rough hole, about three feet in diameter, with water about twenty-five feet down. The same type of field stones lined the well.
When we were little, we threw rocks in to hear them plop in the water, way down in the darkness, but by the time I was ten years old, we began to find it much more fun to climb down inside by bracing our feet and hands against the opposite sides. Sometimes, three of us would be down in there together. I think we were the only children who played in the well. In the summer it was delightfully cool and damp.
It was a great place to sing and shout; even better, it was a good hiding place … until our legs got tired. We never knew how deep the water was. The further down we climbed, the darker it got and the slipperier were the rocks. There really wasn’t much to hang on to, but nobody ever fell all way down into the water, far below at bottom of the well.
Just think how worried Mummy and Daddy would have felt had they known about this dreadfully risky ‘playground’ so close to our house!
From Alice: I, too, walked by the old well but I have no fond memories of it. Although I called it the Wishing Well, I was terrified of it. I had been told (probably by Janet) that there were dead animals in it that had fallen in and couldn’t get out and that it had snakes and lots of spiders. (Now, after having read this story, I understand how she knew this.)
One misty autumn day, when I was in the third grade, I was walking back from school, kicking the damp leaves. Just as I approached the well, there was a loud CRACK, something zinged by my ear and granite chips exploded from the side of the well. It was hunting season. Although, as a child, I had no sense of my own mortality, I remember very clearly thinking how much pain there would be if a bullet had smashed into my head.
It’s a wonder any of us survived our Bedford childhood.
Mandy is recovering from her very first pet pony class
In the early spring of 1965, five-year-old Mandy was going to ride pony Aloysius in the first horse show of the season. She was entered in the pet pony class for the very first time. Mandy had been practicing at home. She now was ready and seemed to be confidant to ride without being led. She had performed very well showing in lead line classes for the past two years. Nifty had been showing Aloysius during those two years under saddle and in harness. Now it was Mandy’s turn to ride Aloysius in a show ring by herself.
This year Nifty was going up a step. She would be riding her new fancy saddle pony, Yankee Doodle Storm ‘Stormy’. For seven years, Aloysius had been shown very successfully by Mandy’s older brothers and sisters; Stevie, Trip, Peter and Nifty. He was known throughout New England as the perfect pony for a very young child to ride. It was said that Aloysius could be sent into the show ring all alone (without a rider) and go through his paces and still win the class against all his rider-guided competitors. What a great little pony!
Before the class, Mandy was concerned about the many larger ponies, all with older children, waiting with her to enter the ring. I told her, “Don’t worry. Just stay right on the rail. Aloysius will be going much slower because he is lots smaller than the other ponies. When you and Aloysius stay on the rail, the faster ones can pass you on the inside easily. You will be fine. Aloysius knows what to do and he will take care of you.”
Mandy was a trooper and went in the class of twenty-five ponies that were ridden by children who all were older than she. Both Aloysius and she performed perfectly despite the distraction of faster and sometimes out-of -control ponies. As she had been trained, Mandy kept her pony tight to the rail. He especially excelled at his very slow gracefully elegant canter. What a sight! Mandy won the blue ribbon, riding, for the first time, alone in a horse show. As she left the ring the crowd clapped and cheered for the tiny child on the tiny pony. Perfection! This was the occasion that an admiring woman approached us and said, “Your little pony, with his rocking-horse canter, looked just like a magical, wind-up toy!”
A few moments later, I noticed that Mandy’s big blue eyes were filled with tears. I said, “Mandy, what is the matter? You and Aloysius did a great job! You won the class!” Mandy replied in a quavering, little voice, “BUT MUM, THEY WERE ALL CHASING ME!” She soon recovered. Later in the day, Mandy happily won the Pet Pony Championship.
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In my Bedford elementary school, the Stevens Buswell, there were only two classrooms, four grades to a room. I entered the first grade in 1938. For my grades one through seven, I usually had only two classmates.
Mummy and Daddy decided I that should skip the eighth year and go directly to ninth grade at Central High School in Manchester. I was supposed to be tutored in eighth grade knowledge during that summer of 1946. However, due to the escalating fear of the horrible disease, polio, my parents kept me home. That summer I didn’t do any school work at all. I just went to Central High that September.
Now, let me go back to the early years at the Stevens Buswell School. On the first day of school, the teacher handed out to each student a box of eight crayons and two yellow pencils with erasers. Paper was provided for our lessons.
Starting in the fourth grade, the teacher additionally gave us two pens with quills and would fill our glass ink wells, inserted in the right hand corner of our desks. That was it. We had to be careful of these limited supplies. How upsetting it was to have a crayon break and then have to continue to use it! During the year we were sometimes reluctantly given replacements. I was in the sixth grade when my parents gave me my first fountain pen that I had to fill myself from my inkwell. I was at Saint Mary’s prep school before I used a ball point pen.
A few parents bought additional school supplies. This was optional. I was one of the privileged few. Mummy and Daddy gave me a pencil box. It was made of flimsy, blue cardboard. When I opened it, I would see two small drawers and a divided tray on the top. Inside were two pencils, an eraser, crayons (not Crayola), a pen and several different sized pen-tips separately stored. For some strange reason, always a protractor and a compass were included, even though they would not be used in this rural grade school. Yet, it was fun to make designs with them. I was so proud to have a new pencil box even though it fell apart soon thereafter.
Some children brought their lunches in paper bags. A quirky memory I have is that my closest friend, Bobby Ramig, every single day, all those years, always brought a ketchup sandwich in a paper bag. I was lucky that I had a metal lunch box that could hold different types of sandwiches, an apple and a fragile vacuum thermos that had a very breakable inside. No child had a back pack because we had no need for them. No homework was ever assigned from the first through the eighth grades, nor were gym clothes needed because physical education was nonexistent.
My limited school supplies are in stark contrast to the large number of items expected of students today. Here in Florida, most office and school supply stores have the list of the officially required items…just look at what had to be bought for my granddaughter, Ali, who is now in the first grade!
First Grade Supply List
Mandy at one day old
During the 50′s and 60′s, it seemed that I was always expecting a new baby. In September 1961, I was just about full term with another one. Even though I was in this condition, on the day of a horse show, one hundred miles north in Lisbon, New Hampshire, the children and I got up at 4:00 AM. We ate a quick breakfast. Stevie, Trip, and I cleaned the cages of the dogs and cats in the animal hospital and fed them. Nifty and Peter, who were three and four, helped as much as they could. All four kids did these chores happily because they loved going to horse shows so much.
We loaded Stevie’s Saddlebred, Minnie, and our pony, Aloysius. By this time, our car was the vehicle that pulled the trailer which made much more room to carry the children than the unreliable dump truck we had used in the past. The children settled comfortably in the car and we were all ready to head for the horse show at 6:30 AM. We were on time.
As I was getting in behind the steering wheel, I doubled over with excruciating pain. It never let up! Having a baby was always was like this for me. I would have one huge constant pain until I my baby was born! None of this ‘pains three minutes apart’ stuff. I already had had four children and I knew that every minute counted. All my babies had been very fast and easy deliveries. No longer than an hour from beginning to end, even with our first baby, Stevie.
Clutching my stomach, I ran, or, went as fast as I could go, into the house and asked Jonnie to take the children to the horse show for me. He had never been to a show with the children. I said, “Just drop me off at the hospital and I will have the baby. Hurry! I don’t have much time.” He said, “OK”. In a few minutes we were on our way..
Twenty minutes later, he dropped me off at the door of the Elliot Hospital. Just in time! By then I could hardly stand. The nurses took me directly to the delivery room. After he had been driving for an hour, Jonnie called the hospital from a pay phone. I was already back in my room. I told him that we had a beautiful, little girl, Amanda.
The next day, Jonnie visited me in the hospital, carrying the newspaper to show me an article about the horse show and a picture of Stevie on her horse, Minnie, winning the equitation championship. The children had done, by themselves, everything that needed to be done-dressing in riding habits, shirts and ties, hats and boots; grooming, saddling and bridling the horses, registering and getting numbers, the pressure of preparing for classes, eating lunch, loading and unloading the horses, feeding and watering them. Stevie and Trip had entered five classes including two championships, and won all five!
I was so proud, and I still am, that these kids performed so well.
Mandy and Aloysius five years later.
