Being from Texas, it is always assumed that I not only have a horse, but a Stetson hat and a six-gun. Well, I do have a nice, pretty, dainty little hand gun -- and I used to be a pot shot 22 rifle shooter -- but I've never had a Stetson (although I have had a few straw cowboy hats), and although I'm bowlegged (or pleasure-bent if you ask my husband), I've only straddled one horse in my life.

However, Poppa owned a big ranch where he herded his cattle with a beautiful Roan which was his "soul mate". The two of them looked like one being when he rode her and she was as smart as any horse can be. She was the granddaughter of some famous horse (whose name I've forgotten but I'll try to find the picture and post it here one of these days). Poppa had a saddle custom made for him by a famous saddle maker and no other man or woman ever sat in that saddle nor rode his horse. Many years ago, someone stole Roan (Poppa never named her so that became her name) and he was so enraged, he threw the saddle in a back bedroom and never rode again. In fact, as time went by, he sold off most of the cattle and the ranch went downhill from there. Which tells you how much a man's horse means to him, even in this modern day.

Poppa was actually my step-father, not my real father, but he was a remarkable man and I had learned to love him more than my own father who was a very absentee parent all during my life. He was the grandfather to my children that they wouldn't have had without him. And even though I loved him as much as I did, I never really participated in his "other" life out on the ranch. After he died about four years ago, I realized just how much I not only loved him, but didn't know about him.

The dissolution of the remaining cows and equipment at the ranch fell on my husband's shoulders and he had never even been within 20 feet of a cow before. But he pitched right in, learning how to mend fences, weed out mesquite, and herd cattle into a pen to be taken to auction. We sold off the equipment, including the now-rusting horse trailer -- but I kept the saddle.

Poppa was one of the last of a breed of men who communed with the earth and the sky, partnering with another animal in a way I'll never fully understand, being the kind of "cowboy" John Wayne tried to portray in movies. But I get a small inkling of how he must have felt every time I look at his saddle. And every year at Thanksgiving, our prayer always ends with "And tell Poppa we miss him".

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