Our Missouri Experience

Saturday, March 29, 2013
     At 2:00 P.M., Craig Dansie, Steve, and I packed our things and three horses into Craig’s truck and horse trailer and started for Boliver, Missouri. Craig informed us that there would be frequent stops during the 20 hour ride. Riding in a horse trailer is very hard on the horses because they are constantly shifting the weight on their legs to accommodate the road. This makes frequent stops necessary.
     I sat in the backseat of the truck while the guys sat in the front seat and talked about guns, ball games, and other guy stuff. Because I figured that I would not be too interested in their talk, I brought along some embroidery, two books, crossword puzzles, a manicure set, the May issue of The Ensign, a pillow and blanket, and a book of strange but true facts.

     Our first stop was just outside of Shoshoni, Wyoming, at a rest stop. The old adage that “You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink” is true. Horses don’t like to drink when they are trailered. But horses always love to eat, so Craig learned to put hay in feed bags and then add water so the horses don’t dehydrate.
     When Steve stepped out of the cab, he noticed that the trim on the horse trailer was falling off. So Steve and I peeled the 40 foot piece off, rolled it up, and put it away until it could be fixed. At our second stop, we found that the trailer door was left open from stop number one. No further incidents of a similar nature occurred during the entire trip.
     Our course took us through Wyoming, Nebraska, Iowa, Kansas, and Missouri. During the trip, Craig warned us not to mention that we were LDS. He said that there are still people that are proud that their ancestors drove the Mormons out of Missouri. We took his advice seriously.

No scripture study today.

I waited too long and it was too dark when I thought of it.

Sunday, March 30, 2013
     It’s Easter Day. After a fairly miserable sleep, I read President Eyring’s message from the April

Ensign to Steve and Craig. Besides me reading the Ensign to myself and Steve, that was all the religion we got on the trip.
     We finally arrived in Bolivar, the heart of the Ozarks. A range of mountains thousands of years ago, the Ozarks are only rolling hills today. But so green and beautiful! The area had just gotten three inches of rain, which is common, but it was only drizzling on the day we arrived. However, the heavy precipitation in that area has repercussions, those being high humidity, chiggers, brown recluse spiders, and ticks among other creepy crawlers.

The Ozarks in Early Spring

     I suppose that if Cody got that much rain, we would have too many bugs too. But it makes me wonder about Carmel California, with the most perfect weather in California. It gets about the same amount of rain, but doesn’t have the bugs. Why? Craig said that the rich people bought the insects off. Notwithstanding, I wish Missouri could share just some of its wet with Cody.
     We arrived in Boliver (rhymes with Oliver) around noon their time and went straight to Vance’s stable. Vance is Craig’s trainer. Craig has known Vance about as long as he has owned fox-trotters. He not only knows Vance, but he is friends with most of his family as well.

Our Inferior 8

     Vance’s facility was expectedly soggy. There were puddles everywhere. We let Craig’s horses graze on Vance’s front “lawn” and then stabled them. As soon as the horses were cared for, we drove to our second-rate hotel, a Super 8, because there is no first rate hotel in town.

     Missouri is the land of the toothless smokers, where no one knows how to conjugate a verb and hotel maids think putting fresh towels out is cleaning a room. We found our tobacco-smelling “no smoking” rooms, took naps, and then went to a new restaurant in town.
     The restaurateur, one of Vance’s friends, was on site and eager to tell us all about his establishment. It was originally his father’s law office and the owner displayed some of his father’s old law books and a partial wall from his office as part of the decor. Vance thought it was ironic that the place was in the heart of cattle country, but was the only steak house in town.
     After dinner we returned to our hotel. Steve crashed while I embroidered on the last panel of my crazy quilt and watched The Robe. Steve had stayed up all night to keep Craig company during the drive, while I caught a few cat naps.

Ensign, April 2013

Monday, April 1, 2013
     We dressed, breakfasted, and went to Vance’s barn. His barn consisted of an enormous rusted out, broken down arena that smelled of a multiplicity of disgusting things I do not care to report on, and some stalls.

Manuel Trigo

     Vance was eager to show us the new training techniques he had learned from Manuel Trigo. Mr. Trigo is a horse trainer of the French classical dressage style. He studied manuscripts from the 15th century and discovered the secrets of those training the war horses. During that era, war horses were more than transportation, they were weapons and defenses in and of themselves. They were trained to kill by striking and kicking, and to hold people with their teeth. Several equestrian aerial maneuvers were used to put the rider out of reach of the enemy or to protect the rider while breaking through enemy’s lines. However, the trainers tightly guarded their secrets, not even keeping an apprentice. Thus their training methods were lost.
     Mr. Trigo does not permit videos of his work, but he does train others people at $150 an hour. By the second day of instruction by Mr. Trigo, Vance said he was suffering from acute information overload. We spent from 10:00 A.M. to noon and from 1:00 P.M. to 6:00 P.M. in Vance’s barn, during which Vance squeezed a three day training session into a seven hour day.
     Craig ate it up. He watched Vance in the icy arena for three days. I stuck it out the first day by alternating between standing with my hands in the pockets and my coat zipped up to my chin and sitting on a very cold, dirty chair with my hands in the pockets and my coat zipped up to my chin.
     The day finally came to an end and we returned to our hotel. While we walked down the hall, Steve and I noticed that the stairs were strewn with hay and a toothpick and dental floss from the morning still lay in the hall. I figured they’d be gone by tomorrow.

Ensign, April 2013

Tuesday, April 2, 2013
     I gave the day my best by standing/sitting in the frozen barn most of the morning. Then I retreated to the truck and wrapped myself in the only things I could find to keep me warm; a towel and a plastic bag.  In my frozen state, I embroidered to take my mind off my undoubtedly frost bitten digits.
     Steve stood his ground because of two of his super powers; the ability to tolerate the cold and to stand as long as he has to.  Steve was in his own element.  Craig and he both took turns in the assistant’s position while Vance drove the horses, teaching horses to be lighter than air on their cues.
     In the afternoon, we went for a ride into the country to see some horses for sale. The rolling hills hid the palatial estates of two different owners. When I say palatial, I mean palatial. One lady was spending all of her inherited millions on her home and arena before she dies of COPD.
     After some disappointing horse shopping, we stopped in Dadeville for lunch. The hole-in-the-wall diner at which we lunched had obviously been in operation since before the Great Depression and maybe the Civil War. We expected the worst, but were surprised at the interior. Since so many contractors had been working on the above mentioned ranch, the café had done considerably better and could afford a facelift.
     Besides all that, the food was good. I ordered a taco salad. Missouri taco salads are considerably different from the ones made in California. In Missouri bar-b-cue sauce is substituted for taco sauce. Nevertheless, it was fit to eat.
     In the evening, we had dinner at a fast food place with Rex, Vance’s 89-year-oldgrandfather, and were then invited to his birthday party. The party was held at Vance’s mother’s home, which Rex had built! There were 11 adults, two children, and four dogs at the party.
     It was a weird celebration. It had been advertised as having homemade cake and ice cream, which it did. However, the living room was still set up for a bridge party held that afternoon and the cake was leftover from the same. They didn’t sing the Birthday Song, they didn’t have candles, there were no gifts, and they didn’t even start making the ice cream until we had been there over an hour. Moreover, hardly anyone paid any attention to Rex. Maybe he doesn’t like a lot of attention. At least there was entertainment. Besides the dogs, the six-year-old did some gymnastics for us.

Ensign, April 2013

Wednesday, April 3, 2013
     Although the sun was shining, it was still cold. Unable to tolerate another cold day in the car, I spent the morning in the hotel room. I did some embroidery and washed my hair. Around noon Steve came to take me to lunch. It was then that Steve noticed a bottle cap in the hall besides the dental floss. I figured they would vacuum the hall sometime before we left.
     We then journeyed to Wheatland with the horse trailer to see another horse. Gail, Vance’s cousin,


Scout looks kind of like this.

 had her mother’s little black horse named Black Jack (icky name) for Craig to see. Craig had seen him before and offered to buy him three years ago. Gail’s mother wanted to sell him now, being “too old” to ride. Unfortunately, he was too hot for me to ride at that time. Gail gave several reasons for his being skitterish; he hadn’t been ridden in six months, the wind was blowing (which always makes horses nervous), and he had always been ridden with another rider before. So he performed several uncalled-for side passes and jiggered all over the place.
     We left the horse trailer with Gail’s husband. He was going to fix the trim on the trailer. He worked diligently for the rest of the evening and then again the next day.

Ensign, April 2013

Thursday, April 4, 2013
     We looked at two more horses for sale in the Boliver area and then returned to Gail’s farm. I resolved to ride Black Jack. Gail brought him and another horse into the barn and I groomed Black Jack while Gail prepared her horse for the ride. That was when I fell in love with the little black fox-trotter.
     After the horses were saddled, Gail and I went for a ride. We were out for over an hour. Gail made sure that we rode past some scary things (bird houses) and over a bridge. We talked and enjoyed ourselves. Steve said that he knew the little black horse was for me when I returned and was smiling. Then I stopped a few feet from Steve and said, “Give this horse a kiss.”
     The horse trailer was fixed so we hooked it up and returned to Boliver just in time to experience

Boliver Court House in Town Square

one of their traffic jams. Every town in Missouri has a town square around which all traffic must pass. It was a good idea in 1920, when there were only 17 cars, but now that everyone had a car, it was a mess.
     We returned to the steak house for dinner. Craig treated Gail’s family as partial payment for fixing the horse trailer. Gail’s husband thought that Craig’s payment of $100 was too much. When Craig paid for their dinners, Gail’s husband was sincerely mortified.

Ensign, April 2013

Friday, April 5, 2013
     Steve lay awake all night trying to think of ways to make buying the little black horse—now called Scout—work. Scout’s Coggins test was out of date. Finally Steve thought of leaving him until Craig went back in June to a show. By then Scout could get a Coggins and a health certificate, some solo riding time, and I would have a Western saddle.
     We were up by 6:30, hurriedly showered, packed, ate breakfast, pastured the horses, and were on the road by 8:22. Note: The floor still hadn’t been vacuumed, but the hay on the stairs had been rearranged.
     We drove to Lebanon, and checked into a hotel near where the horse auction was to be held. We met some of the people instrumental in organizing the auction as we watched a parade of horses doing laps in a very large barn which was even more rickety than Vance’s, filled with kamikaze chickens. The parade of horses was like watching a team of models strutting down a catwalk.
     We had received a program a few weeks prior to our trip and marked the horses that were of


Previewing the Horses

 interest to us. We looked for the horses we had preselected and crossed off the ones that were spooky. We also marked off the ones that had bad gates, the ones that were not sufficiently “broke,” and the ones that were too young. We were there for seven hours watching horses arrive, being groomed, fed, and sent through their paces. We ate hamburgers on site that night.

Ensign, April 2013

Saturday, April 6, 2013
     I stopped drinking water. The head of the auction had moved in some porta-potties and I refused to

use one. The last of the horses arrived. Craig said that some of the horse owners brought their horses late so that no one could evaluate them before the auction.
     It was no use seeing any of the horses. Every horse we saw was compared to “my horse” and nothing came close.
     Someone put cedar chips on the barn floor where the patrons were to sit. It was very refreshing. When the auction finally started, the bids were very poor—so poor that the auction ended an hour and a half earlier than expected. A boy rode his horse in, unsaddled it, stood on its rear, slid off its back down its tail, and crawled under it. Craig bought that one and another one.
     We left at 2:30 P.M. and I spent another 23 miserable hours in the car as we traveled home. The trip was nothing to Steve because of his third super power: staying awake all night. To me, it was something.