It’s Easter here today in the Northern Hemisphere, so Happy Easter to all who celebrate, in whichever ways you choose to celebrate it, either as a Christian holiday, an Easter Bunny event, or in some other pagan/indigenous manner. (Easter was yesterday Down Under, so I wish a belated Happy to my friends there.)
I’m feeling a little down today, but not for any reason I can put my finger on, other than the fact that Stormy’s filly, Sandstorm, died on Easter some 51 years ago. I do think about that every time Easter comes around, because Sandstorm was my buddy. She was born on Mother’s Day in Spanaway and died on Easter (in Cle Elum) just a couple years later. I took a picture of hers and Stormy’s final resting place when I was in Cle Elum a few weeks ago:
Rest in peace, ladies. I will always remember you with love and residual heartache!
You made my growing up years a lot happier than they would otherwise have been.
Laurel on Stormy (center) and me on Sugar Babe
Spanaway WA about 1959
Somewhere I have an old Super 8 video of me laying in a pasture with Sandstorm when she was just a few months old. If I ever run across it, I will have it digitized and put it here for your enjoyment.
TIME OUT WHILE I SEE IF I CAN FIND A PHOTO OF SANDSTORM
SUCCESS!!! Here she is!
After a three-plus-hour stroll down memory lane as I looked through six decades’ worth of images, I finally found an image of Sandstorm. Unfortunately, it’s in black and white. She was the same color as her mom, Stormy (in the image a little higher above). The horse she’s nosing in this image was one of the “Charleys” we had (but the other one was spelled “Charlie”). They came to us already named, so we didn’t change them.
The Charley above was a real card. He would get a branch from a tree or the ground and run around swatting the other horses to get them to run and play with him, and one time when I leaned a shovel against the fence, he grabbed the top of it and looked for all the world like he was doing his best to dig a hole, as I had been doing. And if you gave him water in a soda bottle, he would tip his head up into the air and drink it down, the way he saw us do. Quite the mimic AND comic, that one!
During my search I came across a hundred or more images that are publication worthy, so you’ll probably be seeing many of them as the days and weeks pass. I have scads of images of pets I’ve shared my life with, and every one reminds me of a story about them, so maybe I can make a book out of the anecdotes, if I have enough.(Thanks for the idea, Helen Schofield!) Now that I know I have images to go with the stories, it makes such a project seem a lot more feasible and fun.
I guess that’s it for this time. Going through four boxes of negatives, slides, pictures and such has worn me out. I’m ready for a nana nap!
