A Pit Pony Named Bobbit: Two American Teens Coping With Desperate Odds

Well

CHAPTER 1

Off To Camp

Carrie couldn’t wait for morning to come. As excited as she was about tomorrow, she hadn’t slept well during the night. She had lain awake listening to the cicadas and crickets humming and chirping outside her window. A light breeze had kept the curtains in a slow dance to the rhythm of the early June night.

Carrie could see the bulk of her trunk packed and ready to go by the door of her bed room. She and Sissy had had to sit on it to get the top fully closed. Inside were enough clothes and other belongings to easily get her through the next two months at camp Cold Springs. It was located deep in a pristine mountainous woodland retreat near Woodstock, Virginia. This would be Carrie’s sixth year at camp, her sister, Sissy’s fourth. With a yearly gift from Grandma Cole, the girls had been able to attend camp regularly. Cold Springs had been Grandma’s camp for many of her young years, as well as Mama’s. On Christmas day the four of them would always remember to toast Camp Cold Springs, that they, at some point, had affectionately dubbed Freezing Waters, because the river that ran through camp, carrying mountain stream run off, kept its waters below 72 degrees all summer long.

This year Carrie, fifteen, would become a Junior Counselor. That meant new responsibilities as well as privileges. The camp’s seven JCs would have their own cabin this summer. Carrie knew four of the returning campers who would be moving up to JC with her. There would be her good camp friend, Ginger, from Luray, Virginia, the twins, Audrey and Ann, from Lebanon, Pennsylvania, and Sylvia from Darien, Connecticut. Everyone, of course, was curious about who the new JCs would be. Head Counselor Connie Stone, a young woman of thirty two, who was warm, approachable and had a great sense of humor, had chosen the three remaining JCs. Because the rest of the JCs respected and admired Connie, they expected to like the girls who would join them.

Promptly at ten the next morning, Dad pulled the old 45 Buick up as close to the house as he could, backing it up almost to the front door.

Jim, look out for my roses, Mama called out in panic! She ran out on the porch waving her arms wildly in the air. Dad slammed on the brakes, stuck his head out of the window and glared at Mama with an exasperated look on his round face. Sunlight glinted in his deep blue eyes.

Relax Martha, I know what I’m doing.

Just like you did last week when you drove up on the curb and did away with my nasturtiums, Mama quipped sarcastically, pushing a stray blond curl away from her upturned nose. Dad rolled his eyes, while Carrie and Sissy giggled to each other. Finally, everything and everyone loaded, the silver Buick headed west from Shenandoah, Virginia toward Woodstock. It would be a long drive and the Buick had no air conditioning. A registered nurse, Mama had taken the day off. She had packed a lunch of pimento cheese sandwiches, fruit and home made peanut butter cookies, the girls’ favorites. Dad had brought the gallon thermos filled with sweet cold iced tea.

The girls and Mama played Dead Horse to pass the time. In the game, everyone counted a chosen color of horse. As groups of mostly work horses were passed, you counted all those of your color. The object of the game, was to see who could count the largest number of horses in their color during a set limit of time. Seeing a graveyard, would wipe out everyone’s score and the game would have to be restarted. The winner was the person with the most horses of their color at the end of the time limit. The simple game could consume a lot of time on a long trip.

As midday turned to afternoon, shadows played hide and seek among mountain passes, sliding in and out of rugged crevasses. Sparkling sunlight refracted from rocky winding creeks beside roads that lead Carrie’s family ever closer to camp.

Carrie’s favorite activity at camp had always been horseback riding. Learning to ride the camp’s gentle horses and ponies at an early age, was something that had become a big part of her life. Likewise with Sissy. The girls had both become such avid horse lovers that they rarely, these days, talked about anything else together. Their rooms were decorated with pictures of equines performing in all disciplines. They both had model horse collections that never needed dusting because they were played with so often. Horse books jammed their bookshelves. Most of their casual clothes had horses imprinted on them.

Mama and Daddy had encouraged the girls’ passion because they felt it was a healthy one. Daddy had put a wooden barrel on a Radio Flyer wagon in the backyard when Sissy had turned eight. It was equipped with an old McClellan army saddle he’d dredged up from somewhere, and reins that were attached to the tongue of the wagon. The girls took turns mounting their play horse and pulling one another along imaginary trails on Willow, as they had named their shared steed.

On Carrie’s ninth birthday, Grandma Cole had given her a year of private riding lessons. While Sissy had complained bitterly at first about it being unfair that she couldn’t take lessons too, Grandma held firm.

You’ll get more out of them when you’re nine, Grandma had said simply, giving her youngest granddaughter a hug. Sissy had gotten over what she thought to be a slight, but it had taken a while. While Sissy loved Carrie, she was very competitive with her older sister. But this summer, Sissy would be riding again, and nearly as much as Carrie.

At length, as the Buick crawled down a long gravel road, dust rose in thick clouds behind it, almost obliterating a rose colored sunset. The girls were both tired from a long day on the road, but still too excited to notice. At the last bend in the drive before the treeline fell away, the main lodge came into view. The large log and stone structure was fully lit and they could see people carrying suitcases and parcels into the lodge for check in.

Park over there Daddy, Carrie voiced with authority. That’s closer to the JCs cabin.

As usual, Daddy parked where he wanted to. Everybody piled out of the car. Daddy picked up the girls’ trunks leaving each to carry her own duffle bag. Once within the lodge’s light, girls began to recognize each other.

Suddenly Carrie squealed and dropped her duffle bag. Audrey, Ann!

The twins ran toward Carrie, arms open, grinning. Then Sissy saw a good friend and they seemed inseparable for a while.

Buddy and Carol Stern, who owned and ran Cold Springs, moved through groups greeting campers and counselors old and new, signing them in while head counselor Connie Stone, and another senior counselor busily showed each girl to her cabin. By nine that night, all parents and guardians had left, and everyone was assembled on the lodge’s big airy screen porch that also served as its dining room. Carrie and Sissy were separated by age group now. Carrie threw a glance at her sister and smiled. Sissy returned the acknowledgement by sticking out her tongue. The girl to Carrie’s right laughed.

That’s my crazy little sister, Carrie confided in the girl.

I’ve got one too, but I was lucky, I got to leave her at home.

Carrie laughed. I’m followed by mine everywhere I go.

I’m Libby the slender blond girl next to Carrie offered. I’m a new JC are you?

Nope, well I mean yeah. I’m not new to camp but I’m a new JC this year.

I’m from Washington, D.C. How about you? Libby smiled showing large white teeth covered in braces of shining metal.

Shenandoah. It’s in the mountains not too far south of camp.

Oh, a country girl huh, bet you love it here.

I do, I like the activities we have and I’ve made a lot of good friends over the years.

That’s nice for you. I don’t know if I’m going to like it here or not. I don’t know much about the country. I’m a city girl.

Yeah? You’ve always lived in Washington? Our class went there when I was in fifth grade. It seemed like a pretty exciting place.

It is big – exciting, not for me, but there is a lot to do. My Dad and Mom work in the city. Doing what? Carrie asked, noticing what a deep green Libby’s eyes were.

He plays trumpet in an orchestra. My Mom plays too, she’s a harpist.

Carrie’s face lit up as she watched her new acquaintance with increasing interest. Neat, but what do you do when they play at night?

My sister and I stay by ourselves mostly. Sometimes mom’s sister Aunt Jean comes over. My parents are divorced anyway.

Oh, I’m sorry. Carrie touched Libby’s arm briefly.

Me too, Libby shrugged. We live with Mom in an apartment not far from a park called Rock Creek. We can bike and take walks there when the weather’s good.

Um, do you see your Dad often?

Not often enough. Maybe once a month. He’s a law professor during the day so he stays very busy. My sister Penny misses him a lot. She still cries every night before she goes to bed, so I let her sleep with me sometimes.

Then you really do love her like I love Sissy, Carrie smiled gently.

Yeah I love her, the little pest, and I feel sorry for her. I just don’t want her hanging around me too much.

Know how it is Carrie nodded in agreement. So where is she now?

Attention girls! came Connie’s strong voice over the buzzing chatter of many excited female voices. A big welcome to all of you from Camp Cold Springs. We’re going to have a wonderful summer together. Now, it’s getting late so I’ll be brief. Breakfast is promptly at seven. Your beds will be made, clothes put away and you will be ready for cabin inspection at six thirty. So if you are slow to get going in the morning, you’d better get up at first bell. That’s six o’clock, Connie smiled benignly. Groans erupted from several areas of the porch. Now, if there are no questions, go to your cabins girls and get a good night’s sleep. Tomorrow will be an exciting day for everyone.

CHAPTER 2

A Star is Born

Bobbit wakened to the sound of footsteps echoing against the mine’s walls. They were getting louder as they approached the stalls where she and the other pit ponies went to eat and rest after their shifts of pulling carts laden with coal, to the mine’s surface. Bob, the boy who always came to feed Bobbit and the others, whistled as he put a scoop of feed into each pony’s bucket. Then, he filled the other buckets with fresh water and threw each of the animals a pad of hay. Bob called each pony by name and gave him or her a scratch behind the ears, or at the dock of its tail. Bob was chief horse-keeper for the coal mine and the ponies all liked him. He was kind to them and never pushed them to work beyond their limit. He checked their hooves and legs for bruises or cuts every morning before they went to work. He rubbed them down at night with clean straw, and went over them for any unusual lumps, especially on their legs.

Soon all the men and boys who worked ponies in the mines would arrive to harness their specific ponies to the coal carts. Each pony would make five or six trips down into the pits and then haul a six to twelve hundred pound load of coal from the bottom of the mine up to where it could be emptied, and put on conveyor belts to be loaded into train cars and hauled away. The carts were on tracks but the ponies had to pull uphill for sometimes more than a mile to complete their route. Then, back down they would go to start all over again.

Once a pit pony was lowered by ropes, or in a metal cage, down a mine shaft, it never saw the light of day for the rest of its working life. The ponies wore leather shields over their eyes to cover them, so that nothing would get in to cause infections or ulcers that could lead to permanent blindness. Not only were the mines dark, they could be very hot or cold, depending on one’s location inside them. And rancid coal dust hung constantly in the air, making breathing harder for both man and beast.

Bobbit wasn’t hungry for her breakfast this morning, because she had begun to feel strange painful movements in her belly. Bob was concerned. Bobbit had only been in the mine about a year and she seemed strong and healthy. She had never refused to eat before. Bob had heard of something called colic. When that happened, basically, horses were stopped up and couldn’t pass manure. Some got over it without a veterinarian’s help, but many did not. If untreated colic could be fatal.

Bob tried to get Bobbit up. She stood but then circled a few times and went down again. There was sweat on Bobbit’s grey flanks and she kept swishing her short shaved tail. Bob was worried, because he knew the mine owner wouldn’t pay to have Bobbit seen to. Most of the mine owners were interested in only one thing, making money. The men and boys they hired to work in the pits of West Virginia were very poor. Most were uneducated and had no way of getting a better job. Some families were so poor that they had to take their teen-age sons out of school and put them in the mines just to put food on the table. At least, women and young boys weren’t allowed to work in the mines any longer, but that had only changed a few years ago, thanks to the union.

With a heavy heart, Bob left Bobbit to lie in her stall. He had to help harness and supervise the remaining ponies. All day he was afraid of what he would find when he got back to her stall at quitting time.

At last it grew quiet in the stall area. All Bobbit could hear now were rumbling sounds coming from deeper in the pits where the men and ponies were at work. Bobbit felt another deep pushing pain and groaned. She got up, walked a few steps and went down again. She did this for about twenty minutes until suddenly water gushed out of her and ran down the inside of her back legs. Not long after that, something began to protrude from under her tail. She had a great urge to push, and push she did until her foal emerged into its new world, devoid now of the safety of its mother’s womb. The foal was covered in a wet membrane. Instinctively Bobbit began to lick it away. In seconds, the new filly began to breathe, and felt reassurance from her mother’s gentle nuzzling and pushing against her tiny body.

Bobbit nickered softly to her baby, who by now was sitting up. With the large eyes in her bobbly little head she was trying to take in her new world in spite of the total darkness all around her. Bobbit felt proud. And for the first time in her life, she felt important. Her everyday life of drudgery and the always ensuing fatigue it brought, was broken by a sudden miracle. All at once her maternal instincts were kicking in, and she felt an exhilarating sense of purpose that she hadn’t known before ever, in her five years of life. She nuzzled her baby happily, then rose, knowing that her filly needed to eat. There was much nudging encouragement from Bobbit as her little foal struggled over and over to rise. At length the spindly legs steadied, and moved her slowly towards Bobbit’s milk bag.

As the coal carts came to their final rest for the day, and the workers unhitched their ponies and led them back to their stalls, Bob’s heart beat faster in fear of what he would find when he saw Bobbit again. His lantern cast eerie shadows on the mine walls. The murky atmosphere did nothing to improve his spirits. But when Bob looked into Bobbit’s stall he could hardly believe his eyes.

Heck Bobbit he said softly, Look what you done girl. He could only continue to stand looking at the scene before him in total wonder.

One by one, as the other workers arrived back at the stalls, they were as awed by Bobbit’s miracle as Bob had been. When one of them held his lantern closer to Bobbit and her foal, the filly appeared to have a coal black coat from the tip of her short curly tail to the end of her nose. She had a tiny white star in the middle of her forehead. At length, Bob put his hand out and touched Bobbit and then her foal. The foal jumped at the strange smell and touch of a human, and sidled into the darkness behind her mother.

CHAPTER 3

Life At Cold Springs

The insistent metallic clang of first bell brought Carrie to full consciousness. Sunlight was beginning to filter into the cabin’s windows, giving shape to six other girls in cots lining the perimeter of the one room log structure. She smiled, appreciating the familiarity she knew in this place. She could begin to make out shapes of big pine, locust and oak trees scattered throughout the camp’s two hundred or so acres. She could smell bacon cooking, its delicious