50th Anniversary - Life Sketches

During the late 1960s, Pawnee Stables was a busy place. Not only did I constantly play with my carpet herd and "the girls," I also sketched scenes from their daily lives. As luck would have it, I discovered that I had saved some of those pictures when I opened the box that contained the Pawnee Stables things.

Through the pictures I drew, I told the story of life at the stable. And in so doing, I put my own dreams of horse ownership on paper.

A view of the grounds.

Lana was my favorite doll, and she factors into many of the pictures I drew. Here she is riding Frosty along the banks of Blackbird Pond. Do you recognize the horse she is on?

The real Frosty, Breyer's Semi-Rearing Stallion in charcoal, is still with me and remains my all-time favorite Breyer. And Blackbird Pond is a real place here in West Lafayette. I learned to ice skate on it, and Bobbie Sue and I used to go there on winter weekends and chase each other around on the ice.

Here Skipper is welcoming Lana to the stable. Lana has brought her bird (the covered cage to the right of her feet) and is smiling as she meets the girls. Besides those bell bottom pants, do you see anything odd? (I couldn't draw hands very well, so they're all tucked behind their backs!)

In this picture, Lana is riding Desert Wind, a Traditional sized Japan china model. (Or, "glass horse" as Leslie and I called them.) He broke and was thrown away. I've looked for him many times on eBay, Etsy, and MH$P but had no luck. Gabilon is still with me; he is a cheap plastic FAS knockoff although I drew him here in a walking position.

No hands again! And more bell bottoms.... Bobbie (who also drew a lot) and I were working on realism, and somehow we got it into our heads that that meant adding ribs to all the horses in our drawings. Sheena is another old favorite - bet you can tell who she is. 

Like Frosty and most of my carpet herd, she is still with me.

I drew non-horsey scenes like this one of a pillow fight in the bunkhouse (see the model horse by the lamp?) ...

... and others where Pawnee Stables traveled to shows, such as Madison Square Gardens.

Apache Joe and Skipper were champion barrel racers!

Apache Joe is that buckskin horse next to my Christmas stocking on the couch. He is packed away with Gabilon but he is still dear to my heart.

I saved my very favorite picture to the last. I even remember drawing it. 

Swimming with a horse at Blackbird Pond! And in a way, it was a bit of a foreshadowing of my own real horse experiences.

Me about five years later as a teenager swimming with Cee in Burnett Creek.

Things were winding down for Pawnee Stables by the end of 1969. We were moving to a new home and property on the Wabash where my parents planned to buy me a horse. I was old enough that playing with dolls was a bit embarrassing. Moving out into the country put me into a new school and away from Bobbie Sue and Carol.

But good things were ahead - in 1970, Pawnee Stables would morph into a new place. I'd get my first horse, Amy, and I would discover the formal model horse hobby.

Look for the next giveaway to be posted tomorrow!

Still Barn Shopping

I have longed for a model horse barn since I was in elementary school. Breyer did not make barns at that time, so I took some scrap wood from my dad's workshop and built my own. I have looked for a photo of that barn for years, but it wasn't until this week that I finally found one.

My little homemade barn was a simple wooden box with a piece of pegboard as the partition between the two stalls. It had no roof so that I could access my models. (I remember adding one later since the front was also open.)

My sisters and me playing with the barn under our crab apple tree. There is "hay" under Leslie's feet (looks like we spilled the water trough, haha!) and you can see kernels of corn scattered on the ground that we were using as feed. (No doubt we went into the cornfield behind us and nabbed an ear of corn - you can see the corn husks on the ground behind me!)

I made do with that little homemade barn until it fell apart from use and could not be repaired one more time and was thrown away.

The earliest barn Breyer offered was in 1976. I was in college then and living in a dorm on Purdue's campus. There was absolutely no room for model horses, let alone a barn.

 Photo of 1976 catalog page from Identify Your Breyer.

Around 1990 Breyer offered the barn of my dreams. I was (and still am) especially fond of the ladder for some reason. But with six kids and me being a stay at home mom, our income was already stretched very thin. 

Besides that, there were eight people living in our home - where on earth would I put something that big? (Photo from Identify Your Breyer.)

Currently Breyer offers eleven different barns in a variety of scales. Our kids are grown and gone, and we rattle around in a house that has plenty of extra space. 

Sometimes I look at the barns that are available and wonder if it is time to finally get one. This one currently in the Breyer catalog isn't nearly as nice as the 1990 barn, but it's still pretty cool! (Photo from the Breyer web site.) 

At the 2019 BreyerFest I walked around the concourse and looked at the barns that were available.

They were lovely and they were expensive, although I am sure that the man who built them spent hours to make each one and deserved to be compensated for that. 

I probably will never get a barn for my model horses, and I am okay with that. I am lucky that I have been able to have access to real barns almost all my life.

Me with Scojeadon in 1971.

Still, the little girl within me sometimes whispers that it might be fun to keep looking. I think she's right.

 

Dad's Slides: Evidence of Horseyness

My sister has been going through our father's photos and slides, scanning them into her computer, and then sending us the files. It has been interesting to see just how much horses have dominated my life, even as a child.

Eight years old and with my sister, Leslie. I have no idea where this was taken; I think we may be at a summer day camp held locally in one of the parks.

Our cat, Figaro, had a litter of kittens when I was eight. This is Tinker Bell and Wednesday (their brother, Thursday, was born a day later.) See that book?

I loved Scholastic Book orders and would buy every horse book they offered. I no longer have Born to Run but I remember that because of reading this book I learned how to spell the word "separate" correctly - it was on the main character's spelling list and she was practicing it!

Speaking of books, I almost missed the book on top of the things I am carrying in this photo. It was Christmas Day and we had driven over to my Grandma and Grandpa  Honeywell's home for dinner.

Sand Dune Pony by Troy Nesbit!

And it is still on my bookshelf in my library upstairs along with other childhood favorites.

Buttons was a wonderful parakeet - very friendly and people oriented. He learned to talk and loved to play with us. I almost missed the horse I had cut out and taped to the wall behind him.

Another almost-missed. I was smiling to myself at my brother's long hair before I noticed Cee down the moraine in the pasture behind him.

Me at eleven on Gambler's Maid, my favorite horse to ride at the stable where I took a couple of riding lessons. 

I also had my first bad fall in the same spot another day. We were cantering and Gambler shied at something along the trail. I fell off, hit my head, and was knocked out. (No surprise, I have a model named after her, too.)

How I wish my Dad was still alive. I'd love to talk to him about all these old photos that he took and tucked away in our basement. But that's not possible, so I will be content with enjoying the legacy that Dad left behind on film.

BreyerFest Week - My First Trip to Kentucky

Kentucky borders Indiana to the south separated by the Ohio River which runs between them. I have been to Kentucky many times -we travel through it to visit Music City Son in Nashville, BreyerFest is held in Kentucky, and I have been there to tour Thoroughbred farms and visit Kentucky Horse Park.

The very first time I went to the bluegrass state, our family was heading to the Smokey Mountains for a vacation. My parents made sure we stopped at a couple of Thoroughbred farms for a tour.

It's been a LONG time, but I think we went to Calumet, Claiborne, and Spendthrift Farms. 

 Me, Leslie, my little sister Jennifer (kneeling), my mother, and my brother, Steve.

This trip was before I had my own horses, and it was also the first time I had ever been up close to a Thoroughbred. I was in fifth or sixth grade and absolutely enthralled to be so close to those beautiful animals.

Even though BreyerFest is being held virtually this year and I won't be heading south this week, I am lucky to live "next door" to Kentucky. It's my favorite state and I love being able to visit it frequently. 

Dad's Slides - Winter Horse Work

It was 93 degrees yesterday and temperatures did not cool off until after 9:00 PM. I was hibernating inside as I looked through some of my Dad's old photos. This one gave me pause and made me smile.

That's my first horse trailer after we received 19 inches of snow! Look behind the telephone pole and you can see the Wabash River. As soon as that heavy snow began to melt, that river would rise and flood the road making it so that we were unable to leave home.

Having our home high up on the moraine protected us from the floodwaters, but getting up the driveway in the winter was a bear. 

We'd get as far as we could, then stop and hike the rest of the way up to the house. 

There was no running water down to the pastures. That wasn't a problem in the spring, summer and fall - I'd just run a hose down to the troughs to fill them up. But in the winter, I filled buckets from the spigot in the garage and carried that water down the moraine. More than once I slipped on the icy path and spilled the buckets. Which, of course, made the hike down to the pastures even more hazardous because that water froze on the path.

See that line across the snow in our front pasture? Those are my tracks. Not only did I have our horses to care for, I looked after the neighbor's horses and donkey who were down the road a ways. I remember slogging through that heavy, wet snow in the pasture as I hiked down to their barn and back.

I look back now and remember how hard some of those winter days were. I remember the bruises from falling while carrying water buckets, the complete changes of clothes that I had to do before catching the school bus, and shivering in the cold while tossing hay to the horses. It was hard work.

But, it was also horse work. And that was what I loved. 

Tomorrow I'll share about the horses and donkey down the road.

Dad's Slides: The Farm Set and Apache Joe

Santa has been very good me over the years, especially when it comes to model horses.

This farm set is still one of my favorite Christmas gifts that I have ever received.  I was five and I played with it for hours and hours, day after day. You can see the grey horse in the last paddock, but there are also cows, hogs, sheep, chickens, and ducks. 

Santa was even known to put horses "in" our stockings! 

Apache Joe, the buckskin plastic horse by my stocking, arrived in 1965. Leslie and Jenny got horses, too, and Jenny also got a large rocking horse.

Apache Joe was a barrel racer and used to compete at Madison Square Gardens, racing around Dixie cup barrels and winning many races. He even won a show cooler for his efforts!

I still have that show cooler and the one I made for Sham, my carpet herd Five Gaiter.

Sadly, I have nothing left from the farm set anymore, but Apache Joe is still with me. After all, he was my first successful show horse. Even better, he is a part of my childhood.

Dad's Slides: Birthday Party Pony Rides

As Leslie continues to scan in Dad's slides, I am seeing events that I do not remember happening. These pictures from my sister's birthday party are case in point. I have no memory of giving pony rides to Jenny and her friends at her birthday party.

It was April, 1972. I'd been a horse owner for a whopping two years and was fourteen. Jenny was turning seven and had invited her friends to our home for a party.

Me with Jenny on Pokey in our front pasture. You can see the Wabash River across the highway behind us.

The birthday girl gets the first ride. 

As you can see, the Wabash is in flood mode and has covered much of our river pasture. More than once, we had to move horses quickly to dryer pastures!

If you look behind the girl on the far right you can see a bush and a culvert that goes under the road. The highway is raised about three to four feet to keep it from being flooded. Unfortunately, that culvert allowed floodwaters to pass under the road and flood this pasture, too. Then there were times when the water rose too high and swamped the road as well as both of our pastures. Luckily, we had a third pasture that was on higher ground and never flooded.

Unlike Leslie and me, Jenny has never been horse crazy, but she did like to ride occasionally.  I haven't asked her what she remembers about this party, but my guess is that having pony rides at her birthday party made her and a lot of her friends very happy. I think I enjoyed it, too!

Dad's Slides: Two Early Breyers and an Earthquake

Just as I'd hoped, a slide of me with some of my earliest Breyers has been found. The box of slides this one came from is labeled 1968, so that would make make this my eleventh birthday. 

Hercules, the Clydesdale with gold bobs is on the left, and Torpedo, the Western Horse is on the right.

Both pieces are still with me and proudly displayed on my shelves.

Torpedo has an interesting story behind him. One day I was playing with my carpet herd, sitting on the floor next to their shelf. Torpedo was still on the shelf, and his reins were hanging down (like they are in the photo above.) 

Suddenly, those reins began swinging back and forth. I remember being very surprised - I had not been touching the shelf and no one else was in the room with me. What was going on? 

It was an earthquake! Centered in southeastern Illinois, it struck on Saturday, November 9, 1968 at 11:02 AM and measured 5.4 on the Richter scale. The red dot with the arrow is West Lafayette, where I lived then and where I live now.

We've had three more earthquakes that I have felt and can remember since then - 1987, 2008, and 2010. I was nowhere near Torpedo during those to check his reins and see if they were swinging, but I would imagine they were.

As I remember this story from my past with Torpedo, I look around at the other vintage models I own, models that I have found in antique shops, on eBay, and in other places. I wonder what stories they could tell?

Dad's Slides: the Cowgirl Outfits

Yesterday afternoon a loud, cowgirl YEEHA!! could be heard coming from the Isenbarger home. Leslie had sent me a photo of us in the cowgirl outfits that our mother had made.

Jennifer, our youngest sister with her stick horse, Bluey, Leslie, and me.

 In a recent blog post I had written that I had found a pattern during an online search that looked like the one our mom had used. I was right; it was the same pattern.

Finding that was a bright spot for me, especially as I shelter in place during the COVID-19 pandemic. It is a reminder of some very happy times along with the love that my parents had for me. Best of all, it was more hugs coming from heaven.

Dad's Slides: I Found a Horse!

As family lore has it, I began pestering my parents for a horse when I was a toddler. So, it is no wonder that they did not believe me early one morning when I told them that I had found a horse.

I was three and we lived on the edge of town in a small neighborhood. Directly beyond us were farm fields and woods. I had woken up before anyone else and wandered into the kitchen. The kitchen had sliding glass doors into the back yard and to my surprise, I could see a horse grazing on our lawn just outside those doors.

Running into my parents' bedroom, I gleefully told them that there was a horse in our back yard. My father responded (as the family story goes), "Nice way to try to get us up, Lynn." But as they soon discovered for themselves, it was true, and so my father caught the horse and put it on the dog tie out under our crabapple tree while he tried to find its owners.

 Leslie and me, feeding the horse carrots, ecstatic that we finally had our own horse.

We were pseudo horse owners for a week before we finally located its real owners. And that was a week of heaven as far as I was concerned. Dad would put us up on the horse's back and lead us around the yard, neighborhood kids stopped in frequently to pet it, and, if they were lucky, go for a ride, too.

Sadly (for me), the owners were located and they arrived in a station wagon to retrieve their horse. They did not have a trailer, and I remember a teenage boy with his arm out the back window holding the horse's lead rope, the horse walking beside the car as his father drove slowly down the road. 

I wish I had more information about the horse. Was it a mare or a gelding? Looks to me like a large pony, not a horse. (Although I remember thinking that it was huge.) Why did it take the owners so long to reclaim it? What was its name? Why is its halter in front of the ears? (My father had had Oh Boy and knew how to care for horses, so why is it not on properly?) What's with the odd tail?  And many more.

I'll never know the answers, but that's okay. It is enough to have these wonderful memories of my very "first" horse.

Dad's Slides: An Early Fighting Stallion

My sister recently discovered several large boxes that are stuffed full of our dad's slides. Dad was an amateur photographer with his own dark room, and my brother and sisters and I are very familiar with his films as we watched those frequently as a family. But, we never saw the thousands of slides that he took and then tucked away. Until now.

My sister bought a slide scanner and has been going through the first box, digitalizing the slides and then sending them on to the rest of us. I've been in tears more than once at seeing people, pets, and events that I did not remember until the photos brought them back.

As you might imagine, many of the slides of my sister and me have a horse in them. I'll be posting some of those in future blog posts. Here's one to start with.

This is Leslie opening her birthday gifts in April, 1969. That's a glossy grey Appaloosa Fighting Stallion, one of the prettiest colors Breyer has done on that mold. And he has a blue ribbon sticker!

That piece is still around and displayed on my shelves with my other Fighting Stallions. (Leslie gave him to me when she stopped collecting.)

And he's in great condition, especially considering that he was a carpet herd piece! (That yellow on his hip is from the light.)

I've seen people post photos on social media of themselves as kids opening now-vintage Breyers under the Christmas tree or for their birthdays. I never dreamed that there might be photos of me in that same situation. That would be a treasure to me.

But the biggest treasure has been that, as we look at all these old slides, it is very clear that Dad loved his family. It feels to us as though he is sending us hugs from heaven. And that is the best thing coming out of those big brown boxes.