(THE Dysfunctional TENANTS  of--- )

THIS OLD HOUSE

The cleaning lady refused to enter the house

-This was the first building on the ranch.  Built along the East property line, it was on the highest ground.  Near by, stands the two-story tank house.  A vacant wellhead and foundations show that the windmill once stood here.  (The highest point should catch the most wind and produce the most water pressure –by gravity—adding to the height of the tank house.)

The old ranch house was small.  Two bedrooms and one bath, a living room and a kitchen where the ‘L’ shape included the small dining room.  (The ‘L’ portion was probably added as more money allowed the luxury of more room.  The family probably expanded along with the house.)  On the south, a screen porch held the laundry sink and hot water heater. French windows swung out in pairs. The access to the bath was through the larger bedroom.  Again, the first built portion, would not have had an indoor toilet. 

The house was covered with clapboard siding.  Inside walls were plywood, panels.  The Interior walls bore reeded, wainscote about hip high.

A concrete pad had been poured as a patio along the east side of the house.  There was no access to it from the house!

A low front porch faced west for viewing the sunset.  Its bigger blessing was its noonday shade.

The garage was close by.  I kept it for my shop building.  Part of the time my tractor parked there.  I wired it with 220V and added a heavy workbench top for the flimsy cabinets from the kitchen of the number 1 house.

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Over 100 tenants lived here.  Not at the same time! All were part of a great dysfunctional family.  For the most part, they never knew each other.  I was the only one who knew them all.  (Knew them more intimately than their neighbors or their own families.)

When we bought the ranch, this house was occupied by the U.S. Mail - carrier.  He lived here with his Oriental, bride, a daughter, a jeep and a black cat. He moved out, taking his two trees, and the ceiling fan.  He left a Jeep, the cat and a partial bag of cat food.  He said that, “ I could get rid of the cat, or I could keep it!”  I kept the cat and called him SAM.  (The real Sam was our mortgage lender.) Note; Black cats last longer, in the country, than white cats!   It is a matter of survival.

The mailman had regularly drained his jeep and poured the used oil along the north, foundation.  I had that oil soaked dirt dug out and spread on the road.  Soon a salvage company man came to haul off the jeep.  I signed for it.  I had never considered it mine.

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The next tenant was a war widow with a boy and a girl.

-----The broken Safety Glass fell, in crystals, across the seat-----

 A photo showed the Negro father as a military officer.  I will mention several things about this partial family.  The mother was a manager at the closest, Store.

The children were half white.  The boy was a problem.  I felt badly when he used his dead father’s golf clubs to drive rocks in all directions.  I felt worse, when he used them to breakout all the glass in my dump truck, even smashing the headlights and the small triangular wind wings.

The broken, safety glass fell, in crystals across the seat.  The mother promised to have the glass replaced ------- Until she found out that, it was an antique truck.  (And the glass cost a lot.)  Then she said, “I am not sure that my son did this after all.”

The boy would steal the unlocked, locks off the open shop door.  He said that he didn’t, while the lock was in his hand!  More memorable, the laundry tray was almost full of cat litter and waste.  I know that the mother used the laundry and passed the clothes over that odorous tray several times a week.  (The tray was connected to the drain.)  The cat should have learned to flush.  He didn’t have to reach for the faucet!

When these people left, the cleaning lady refused to go into the house!  I went in to check it out. 

Two sides of the dinning room, where these tenants ate their meals, were soaked with cat urine, all along the baseboard and the carpet near it. The room reeked.

I had to remove the carpet and take up the tack less strips.  The wood was wet, black and warped.  (The mother left for her management job in clean, fresh clothes.)  (She didn’t use the laundry tray either!

It is difficult to understand this family, sleeping, breathing and eating their food, never smelling anything but ammonia fumes!

                                          --------------------------------------                           

The Abusive Father and the Vulnerable twins

--------“Don’t Call My Parents”----------

This young couple moved in because their family, of three, was now expanded to five!  The new twins were walking now.  This family was white, too white.  They were not yet exposed to the country sun.  There was a lawn positioned inside the oval driveway.  The small house stood to the east and my shop to the north end of the loop.  The large shop door opened to this green spot.  Everything that happened there was staged for my viewing.

The young wife’s parents had helped to secure this place for the growing family.  The new swing set was a gift.  The father of three was resentfully assembling the structure and setting it up in this small grassed, play area.  He wasn’t swearing aloud, but showed Anger with each bolt tightened. His face showed anger.  Even his thin frame seemed taunt, angular and his joints seemed as if they needed lubrication of some kind.

He didn’t like her parents or their ‘helps’.  He saw the unaffordable gifts as proofs of his inability to provide for the three mouths he had fathered.  He, especially, felt the burden of the unexpected twins.  Yes, a baby was expected, but not two.  (Later the little mother explained this to me herself.)

Perhaps this young family brought their anger with them.  I never saw them with out it.

The older boy, by several years, didn’t like either of the twins.  He felt that the overwhelmed parents had forgotten him all-to-gather. 

The day was sunny and I had the shop door up.  Its frame showed the swing set in motion.  The older brother was pushing a twin in the canvas seat.  At first glance, it looked like pleasant family fun.  It wasn’t! 

Big brother was abusing the smaller child!  Too small to know better, the twin was still smiling while being rudely handled, twisted and shoved sideways.  By the time I had decided to interfere, the mother came out to make the rescue.  I pretended to take no notice one way or another.

There were other signs of dysfunction.  The father must have felt that their problems were obvious.  He told me that they were going to church and that things were better and were going to be, fine.

(When at last, they left, not together; I found a child’s black board on a small easel left behind.  Chalked here was a quote from Corinthians. (Bible New Testament)  “For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, ---------- and the two shall become one flesh.”

It was Mother’s Day.  I was up and dressed, sitting in my ranch office.  I turned to a commotion at the front door.  I opened it to the mother of three.  Barefoot, in her nightdress, in disarray, her face distorted, her eyes and nose dripping, she was clutching one twin and the gown, to her breast and shaking streaming, hair out of her vision.  Before I could ask one word, she said, “Don’t call my parents!” (I am thinking, if the husband finds her here, like this, I’ll be shot!)

I have seen abuse before, and recognized it now.  “I have been locked out!  He has the other twin!”  After a moment, I asked, “How can I help you?”  Would you like to have me go back with you?

It was a short way, slightly uphill, past some orange trees, to her house.  We walked together, the distraught woman, one twin and the little old man.  Two steps up onto the front porch, and looking through the glass top of the front door, we could see that the father was on his knees with the other twin, on the floor!  But he wasn’t a monster after all!  He was changing her diaper!  He heard our shoes on the wooden floor. He swung his head around, got up with the child and said,  “Now you have done it, you have the landlord involved! Call the sheriff!  I’m no good.  Call the Sheriff!”

I remember her, soft voice, quietly admitting,  “I only wanted one baby.”

(Perhaps the worst part of having an abusive partner is the birthing of abusive children.          It never ends. )

ANN MARRIED HER THERAPIST!

AND THEY MOVED IN WITH US

-------He ripped out the switch so that she couldn’t call--------

The old ranch house was clean and empty again.  A reluctant father helped move the tall man and his short wife into #2.  It was the father’s consent, not his approval; that moved him to assist the move-in. 

We had air conditioning in place but he added a unit for the larger bedroom.  While he was fixing the outside part, he cryptically, said to me.  “ Here is my card, if you see anything ‘funny’ around here, call me.”  I said, “What do I look for?”  He shook his head and didn’t have an answer.  (I would have one soon enough.)

We don’t need to talk about the accident.  It happened years ago.  It left the young, blond woman helpless, in its worst meaning.  Her head worked inside and out.  She had a nice smile and used it.  Her eyes were expressive and her face comely.  She never seemed to be sorry for herself or for what mistakes she may have made so long ago. 

Ann, as I knew her, was very much like a Raggedy Ann doll.  Her arms and legs would stay as you posed her.  If you put her to bed, she stayed there until you took her up again.  She ate when you fed her.  She wore what ever clothes you put on her.  She sat in her chair until you took her out.  If you carelessly, pricked her with a pin she didn’t feel it. She never went to the toilet.

BUT, Ann was a real live girl!  She was smart and bright.  She decided what blouse she would wear, where she would go and when; how her hair was combed.  Ann could think and remember; she felt but little contact from the world outside. But, inside she was an emotional person with feelings.

Note:  Ann had spent half of her life, up to now, in hospitals, institutions and care places. This isolation, she would makeup for now, at Rancho Arbole Grande.

Ann owned an expensive wheel chair and a very inexpensive van.  The chair was electrically self-powered.  A special control allowed her to go where she wanted, by tilting a sensitive, four ways, lever.  Ann let the weight of her hand contact the lever and moved it by ‘hunching’ her shoulder. 

Ann traveled all the roads through the ranch.  Whispering along on hard rubber tires, through the ancient stands of trees moving to the wind, filled with birds and squirrels and visited all the dogs and horses she saw along the way.  She didn’t go alone.  She had three dogs for companions.  The small curly haired dog rode in her unfeeling lap.  I say that because her bare knee was showing little drops of blood along a dog scratch.  Neither the dog nor Ann was aware of the injury.

On days that I didn’t see her, I could still find the tracks of her wheels in the dusty road. Everywhere means down to the mailboxes on Keller Road and on to the corrals on Gloria.

(I was told that she also rode east on Keller.  Parked where she could watch the traffic on the 215.  Told too, that the truckers would use the air horn when she waved.  Not a real wave of course.  Just a small lifting of the forearm.) 

Perhaps once a week Ann would ride up to the open shop door for free service- paid in full with her smile! -  (The caster wheels, that fronted her chair, would vibrate out of adjustment.  I would kneel at her feet and tighten the lock nuts for each side.

Ann wanted a garden!  Could it be on the rocky hill by the tank house?  Would you say, NO?   Nor did I! The small space was as short as the turning radius of the 8N Ford.  I made tight circles as I tilled the unfriendly soil.  (So sterile that it wasn’t even dirty.) Surprise! Tall corn grew here.  By October, the tall Therapist \ Husband carried his doll up and down the rows of eared stalks.  Ann is smiling like a celeb.

These are the pleasant days, the ones easiest to remember.  I must include the dark days and nights that still haunted this old house.

I wasn’t ready to learn what Ann’s father knew!  Flat out, I will say, “The Controller had no control of himself!” There is blame enough to share with the father, the daughter, the therapist and the system.

I delayed till now this introduction of Max.  He was a tall brown giant.  He had big feet and a stride half again longer than mine!

(We must realize that none of these people planned their actions.  They are no better or worse than the rest of us.  When wrong choices are made, it seems that more wrong choices are apt to follow.)  If Ann hadn’t, if Max hadn’t, if Ann’s father hadn’t acted and reacted with each other, they could all have lived happily ever after!

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Raggedy Ann, flat in her hospital bed, saw but didn’t feel the therapist bend her body’s joints day after day.  She had to have this therapy or lose function of a body that had no longer proper connection to her brain.  [The patient  / therapist relationship is close, frequent and intimate.  The trained professional must be the responsible party.]  We never will know how this destructive change, in their relationship, came about.  We know that together, they became husband and wife!  Ann’s very own therapist!

For now and forever, Max would never have a moment alone.  Ann would be dependant on Max alone, for her every move, and for life itself!

Their ‘honeymoon’ was over before they came to the old ranch house.  Ann was as captive as the fair young maiden in a fairytale, tower.  Max was chained to this helpless doll.  Max became two persons.  One was still caring, loving and kind.  The other cared only for him self.  This was the fearsome, destructive giant.  (Destructive too, to his better self!)

The Giant, bigger than Max, was alcohol! It drove him to town in the battered van.  It drove him out of his mind.  Past all caring for anything else, including his Raggedy Ann.

The local police knew all about this and how badly he was needed at Ann’s bedside.  They recognized the old white van when they saw it.  They remembered the interval until they would see it again!

The abuse cycle started when he could not stand one more day of constant requests to do this and that. “ No not that, that!” * -The cycle ended when he became contrite, remorseful and sober again.-

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A smiling, Max, came to my door with an attachment for Ann’s speakerphone.  Would I help him with the several connections to put it into service?

Together, we looked down at Ann on her back in bed.  Max said, “See this pad, we put it on her little chest and she can drop her little arm on it and turn on her phone and automatically speak and listen. Without hands!

He was sober.  Out side, I spoke this counsel to him:  (I’m sure that he had heard it all before.” Wouldn’t it be better for the both of you, if you would hire a care person for Ann?  You could go back to work as a therapist with a paid job and days off.  You two would enjoy seeing each other if not in this perpetual tie.”  “ No!  Not even for a day off”.  The sober MAX was a dedicated Max.  He couldn’t think of anyone else being so intimate with Ann.  He must be the one, the only one.  He was living her life!  He couldn’t take a day off!  (Someone would die.  It would be him.)  I don’t say that I know that he thought these thoughts.  I say that he had these fears.

Not many days after we connected Ann’s special phone switch, Ann was moving back to her father’s guesthouse.  Max was out of it, drinking again.  He ripped off the switch so that she couldn’t call out, took off in the van and went to town! with the money.

---------------------

Max comes to see me in the office.  He is asking for advice, sweating, weeping, wringing his hands and saying how much he loves Ann and how sorry he is.  Later, he is washed up and back with a small check (He always signs Ann’s name) for me to cash.  He says, “for bandages and food.”

Three days later, they both are back to ‘clean up’, take the rest of their stuff and hopefully collect the rest of their rent deposit.  Max says” I’m not drunk, (but he was) I’ve only had a few beers.  We’ll leave everything nice, we’re not Pigs.”  Max said that he had emptied out all drawers and cupboards and cleaned the carpets.

I pulled out a kitchen drawer.  It was dotted with mouse droppings.  In the center was a round plastic dish with a folded, cloth bed for a mouse.  The mouse vanished in a flash when the drawer was opened.  Max grabbed the dish saying that it was ‘Baby’.  (They had kept it there as their personal mouse pet.) 

Max says that they will leave most of the roses and the trellis, and that some of their stuff was soaked by rain through the leaking, tank house roof.  Ann said, “My underpants were ruined too.”  (They were the throw away ones for invalids.)

·        Raggedy Ann couldn’t do any one of the many things we do all day.  She had to vocalize each wish and wait for it be granted by someone else.  Little things, like wiping her mouth or sitting upright in her chair, became a steady flow of instructions.  (Reminding me of the TV director’s voice in the TV camera Control room.)  ----Next closer lens on 2, ready 2, take 2, ready 3, fade---- A constant flow to the TV engineers.

It isn’t fun to be a Raggedy Ann but for all of those around her, she was: Queen Ann.

We were her subjects, bending the knee at her wheel chair throne.

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The little, captive Queen controlled the tall, brown Giant.

He was captive too.

THE MIDNIGHT BARBER

--------“-I SAW HIM LEANING OVER SARAH’S BED.  He had the shears in his hand-----“

I watched them trouping into the Ranch House for their first time, four children and their mother.  It looked like she had two boys and two girls.  The children all laughed at my mistake.  One of the ‘girls’ looked like a boy.  They all wore overalls, only two had long blond hair. Sarah was the only girl with a ‘boy’ cut.  They ran through the rooms, the yard, the chicken house and the tank house. Eight hands to touch things and four mouths to scream!  Sarah’s smile missed an upper tooth.

I supposed that the mother was a single mom four times over.  She may have been.  The man that came with them brought his own trailer.  He parked it under the olive tree, between the house and the garage.  Mostly, he lived in it.  He connected it to the house power box.  He had no sewer connection.  He had an open, wash water, surface, drain that found its own way down the hill. Trailer security was kept by two, tough, loud mouthed, dogs.

He told me of being caught in a windstorm while crossing the desert.  It blew his trailer wide open!  It was now boarded up on both sides with 4 X 8 foot sheets of plywood.  A truckload of plywood was blown over in the same storm, its load blown over the landscape.  These unpainted sheets were part of it.

Daytimes, the children and their mother were in and out of the trailer and he was in and out of the house.  I think that one of the children was his.  His explanation was that the mother couldn’t cope with all the children or the bills.  He was the good guy helping out. (He was partly right.)  The mother proved to be an alcholic.  Sleeping in or on a high.  She spent her money for silly stuff and ran short of rent and power bills.  The combination of his added electrical load, to that of the house netted some $400 just to keep cool!

The mother was a child too, about buying things.  They were all excited the day they came home with two small, calves.  The boy had difficulty pursing his lips, saying, COOOW, but he said it often.  (It was proper to have animals at Rancho Arbole Grande.)  She had made no provision for a pen.  She shut them in the tank house.  The walls were thin redwood clapboard.  The excited animals broke out easily.  In no time at all, one animal died.  I called animal control.

The young, uniformed, woman officer said she could take the animal if it weighed no more than 40 pounds.  She didn’t want my help carrying it away.  The officer wanted to know who had sold the animals.  They were diseased and about to die when illegally sold!  She was right.  Soon, the second, ‘Cooow’, was dead too.  When I was told about this, I asked where the body was, then I told where and how to bury it.

When I next visited the ranch, I found that it hadn’t been buried!  

 I found the spot where it had fallen. North and just down the hill from the tank house.  There were only tufts of hair to be found.  The morning dew was caught in each strand. (The hair would have been invisible if dry.)

The tank house wall was waiting for repair.  Through the splintered, hole I could see the container of calf food, unopened.  (The four children had been robbed too.)

                                               ------------------------------

The Husband, [father or friend], offered me his trailer for the back rent.  When I looked inside, I saw that he had stripped out everything, including the bathroom and the kitchen sink!  He was making it into an office trailer!  He never finished it.  I didn’t want to finish it either!

                                               ----------------------------

When asked at school, Sarah told the teacher, “I fell down and knocked out my tooth.  An, my Daddy cut my hair.”  Some one else said that she had cut it herself.  Separately the mother told me-------“I awakened in the night and saw him bending over Sarah’s bed with the shears.----------He was cutting her hair in the dark.   The mother was sober and sounded like she was telling the truth.  I believe her, but I think Sarah was covering for her Daddy.  (She didn’t really fall down and lose her tooth.)

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One pleasant day the mother and her troupe came up the driveway and into my shop.  All were very pleased with themselves.  They had been fun, shopping and were here with a present for me!  (I had wished that they could pay the rent instead.)  The children had found a cast statue of an Indian on horseback. 

He was wearing a full head/dress of feathers.  It was of fake silver metal, nearly two feet tall.  They thought that he looked like ‘Wisey’ (their name for me.)  She said that they insisted that I have it. --------------I have it still, and smile at the memory of their smiling presentation.

I remember that the little circle of faces was near the shop doorway.  The western sun backlighted their blond heads with golden haloes.  Haloed, heads that took an active pleasure in giving!  Angels in my shop!  Angels living in the old ranch house! 

The trailer was only gone for two days when a man came for it.  He said that It was offered for sale at $25.00.

The ‘father’ man was gone.  The Edison power was shut off and the family was leaving with no money to pay the rent either.  Sarah’s chopped hair was growing out.  The mother handed me some cash to buy her a certain Apricot Brandy and some breakfast food.  I found what she wanted, in Sun City.  It cost a lot!  (I had never before shopped for booze.)  Now I could understand the poverty and abuse.  But, I will never understand the other parts of my story.

THE BARROWING BAR MAID

----------She used my bolt cutters!-----------

My mistake was to share my shop space.  It seemed to be a reasonable request.  She only asked for half of the garage.  It was to safely park her boy friend’s boat.  I moved things around and began to park my tractor in the barn.  When the trailered, boat was wheeled into place, the tongue stuck out too far to close the big door.

Other things, a motorbike and parts, boxes and stuff took the space instead.  I didn’t request return of the keys.

Before she moved in, I removed and refinished all the kitchen hardware.  (It had so many coats of paint that the hinges didn’t want to move.)  She asked me for a small brush.  I didn’t think that she would paint each piece black!  She did! And the floor tiles too.  She didn’t return the brush.  (That proved to be a bad sign.)

I was surprised at the hours the bar maid kept.  Remember Sun City!  The old people go to bed before the bars close!  It follows that the bars open in mid afternoon and close by dark!  That was why I saw so much of the barmaid.

I want to explain the confusion about tools.  I keep tools at home, where I have a work -bench.  I keep some in my truck and a few with the tractor.  At the ranch, a few are left at the barn and the ranch shop is stocked with all the rest.

The nature of maintenance requires that I use tools for most all the trades; electrician tools, Mason’s tools, the same for tinner, glazier, painter, plumber and carpenter.  There are additional tools at the ranch for working on wells, corrals, roads and sewers.  There are power tools for cutting, boring and felling trees.  These all have a place where they are supposed to be.

Tools tend to migrate.  They get mixed with each other on the job.  Smaller tools can be lost in the dirt or lost off the tractor.  I forget that I have loaned them or bought new ones.

As a result, if I miss a tool, I go on without it and usually it turns up later.  (Like waiting for a store, mail in, rebate.)  Some times, they never turn up!  Sometimes I know when they are stolen.  Then I am careful around certain people. 

I was slow to suspect my tenant.  It seemed so unlikely that the woman in #2 would use or take my tools.  Even when I learned how much she worked on cars and trucks.

When I began a different job, a tool or two would be missing.  Of course, they were not missed until they were needed!.  All this is to explain that it was after the barmaid moved out that I blamed her for my accumulating loss.

Confirmation came to me when I read, in a local paper, that this same woman was arrested for stealing tools!

She was caught when she used bolt cutters to break into a contractor’s tool shed. MY BOLT CUTTERS!  She had stolen to steal!  When I use certain tools, she still comes to mind.  She was smiling at me when I saw her last!  The gullible victim was still returning her smile!

THE BULL RIDER WITH METAL ON HIS MIND

------------------It goes away when I tap my fingers-------------------

At this time the old Ranch House was home to a couple that brought their trouble with them.  He was a tapper.  Many of us will tap our fingers when impatient.  We can stop if we want or we do it for attention.  Slim couldn’t stop.

       He tapped when he was nervous, His wife was nervous when he tapped!

Other people’s trouble seems small.  This tapping was no small thing.  The wedge it made drove his wife out of the house.  Slim was slim and slight even for a cowboy.  He kept returning to the bullring.  He was only paid when he finished the threshold time of the bull ride.  He told me about the plate on his punctured skull.  The plate was screwed in place.  He would wear it forever.  Other bones had been broken, several bones.

His judgment was impaired.  My evaluation was that he had decided to ride when he was injured.  Now with the metal so close to his brain, he couldn’t change his mind.  He seemed to be destined to ride or die riding the bulls.

Slim’s mind worked, but in an innocent, childish way.  He would do better in a more perfect world.  He functioned well enough for living, if there were no deceit or guile or falsehood or advantage takers in our communities.  Slim made me more aware how cynical we are or think we must be to survive.  Slim was not stupid, Slim was vulnerable.  He showed me some black and white prints of him on the backs of various bulls.  He had paid a lot of his prize money for these photos.  He wanted to be more competitive, to stay on a few more seconds, to be a star!  Southern California is full of would-be Stars.  Most of them don’t have real holes in their heads.

Slim studied old Indian signs.  He believed in them.  One, benevolent, sign was somewhat like a Christian cross.  The horizontal piece had a bulb on the left facing side.  It looked like a small faceless human head with a pencil thin neck.

Slim got a job cutting and splitting wood.  I loaned him my sledgehammer.  He lost it and brought me back two wedges!  He knew the difference. (I could use the wedges and I had another hammer!)

His wife left him and was with some black man.  At least he thought so.  He stayed on alone.  Slim attempted to ease his busted brain.  He used a red light as he sat, Indian fashion, on the ground.  I found a red silk sleeve, used as a tube, with a flashlight inside. 

These with some other objects were on the floor of the tank house.  (He had been sitting out there alone in the dark, the red filtered light in his face.)  I still have his flashlight.

On the hilltop, between the tank house and #2 house, I saw small sticks of eucalyptus arranged in patterns on the bare ground.  They weren’t campfires but one end of each stick was charred.  Sometimes he wrote with the black end as a stylus.

There were quiet times when we were alone, then, I would reason with Slim.  He seemed to like that.  I never changed his mind about bull riding: perhaps about nothing else either.  He remembered some of what I had said.  It was that we all thought of things that we didn’t tell other people.  It was all right, if he wanted to tell me but many people wouldn’t understand.  (I meant that they would misunderstand!)  (Who is there without demons of some kind!)  Even, if we have to make them up on purpose.

Slim was gone and his wife too.  He was going further out into the desert where there were less people.  He left me a metal toolbox with hand tools.  He felt like he owed me something.  He owed me $100 but he had worked for it. (Part of the roof tiles story)

Months later my helper walked by the east side of the shop building.  “Look here, your friend has left you a sign!”  It was in charcoal on the cement block wall.  To protect me from evil, he had marked the four foot,  ndian cross.

“We had met as close friends from places far apart.”

nw

THEY OWNED A MINIATURE HORSE

The troubled old house now sheltered another couple.  Perhaps the most ‘normal’ of any tenants so far.  If being a control freak and a perfectionist, is normal.  The small wife didn’t seem to mind being controlled.  Her disposition provided a ready smile.  I didn‘t see much for her to smile about.

Elaine was ordered about like a servant.  “Elaine, bring me a beer.”  We heard no please or thank you.  (Of course, he may have been nicer when they were alone.)  We don’t think so.

They were more hospitable than most.  (When the ranch hand was temporarily homeless, they offered to let him live with them!

Ralph was the kind of a man who couldn’t bear to be ‘helped’.  He shut his mind to any outside idea.  (If you were sharp enough, you could make him think that he thot of it himself.)  I couldn’t.  

Someone gave them a white miniature horse.  He appeared to me to have been a standard horse that never grew up!  He wasn’t a Shetland pony.  I am not sure, but that he may have been an Icelandic horse.  Many times animals bred to extreme measurements, have terrible temperaments.  As though they were the evidence of a dirty trick.  That is they bite, kick and throw themselves.  The little Shetland ponies look like toys but they can be mean to children.

Little horses aren’t strong enough for an adult rider.  At least the public resents the picture of a big man on a little horse.  The pony is just right for a pony cart!

I knew that Elaine and Ralph didn’t have money to spend on a free horse.  They seemed to think that they could have new tack and a cart and all the extras that a horse, even a small one, would need.

We had fixed a small metal shed for them before the horse arrived.  Now it became an appropriately sized barn!   Ralph was in a rush to try out the new harness and cart.  He placed the brand new leather harness over the little horse.  He set the buckles in the smallest sized holes.  The bellyband was several inches below the belly.  The harness was too large in all the other directions too.  I offered Ralph the use of my leather punch.  (It is a special hand tool that uses a range of hollow punches to remove plug of leather just where you need to set the buckles.)  I realized that he was ‘ticked’ just for me to notice that the harness didn’t fit!  I turned away and he led the horse away to stand between the double tongues (shafts or shaves) of the two-wheeled cart.

I didn’t see them again until I saw Elaine in the cart, stalled near the #4 house.  The little horse didn’t like the tack and reared up on his hind feet.  The harness moved out of place.  The loose band slapping the belly caused the rearing to continue!

The seat was rocking back and forth and Elaine was in dangerous trouble.  Silently, she was hanging on, her face a mask of fright.  I added to Ralph’s bad mood by driving up to the #2 house and ‘telling him what to do’.  To get down there, fast and help Elaine!  I felt that it was best if I didn’t watch.

I never saw the cart again or the harness either.  They or just Elaine cared for the horse and kept his hay in the little shed.  It smelled like a real barn.  On a happier day, Ralph handed me two pictures of them with the tiny (waist high) horse.

A week later, I returned to Rancho Arbole Grande to hear that the miniature horse had died!  A neighbor had used his backhoe tractor to bury the animal.  (They should have had my permission.)  He was buried close to the other horses.  Just outside the south corral, between the rows of olive trees.

Maybe the ‘friend’ was really not a friend at all, just an acquaintance, unloading a seriously sick animal that only had a short time left to live. 

I am still waiting for a ‘Dick and Jane’ family to move into This Old House and to live here-happily-ever-after.

nw