The Kitten’S Cooler: And Other Stories

By Judy Richter

Back in the day, my sisters name, Carol Hofmann Thompson, was a household word in the horse show world here and abroad. I have been blessed with many good memories of her and others who have brightened my life. To call this collection a memoir feels a bit too formal and pretentious, so I prefer to say these are a gathering of good old memories of people and events in my life from the fifties to the present day.

There was no better decade than the 1950s to grow up in. The war was over, we won, and Eisenhower was our president. No more noble and able a man existed, except possibly Churchill, but he was British and, even then, old. It was a safe world; we never went to bed wondering if wed wake up to World War III. Our parents never worried about where we were, if they even wondered. They knew wed be home at dark for dinner. How different from today! What is most heartening about recollecting these stories, old and new, is that life does indeed go on, and for us horse people, it is the horses who carry us forward.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Apr 13, 2018
• ISBN: 9781984522214

Judy Richter

Judy Richter has written several how-to equestrian books, as well as two memoirs, Some Favorite Days and It Begins, It Ends. She was also a columnist for The Chronicle of the Horse. Raised on a farm, shes been in the horse business in Bedford, New York, for more than fifty years.

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THE KITTEN’S COOLER

AND OTHER STORIES

JUDY RICHTER

Copyright © 2018 by Judy Richter.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Rev. date: 07/13/2018

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Contents

Introduction

Prologue: The Kitten’s Cooler

I

FAMILY AND FRIENDS

A Letter in 2012 to My Granddaughter, Maxine

My Early Years: Safe Under Nana’s Wing

Mothers

Cullen

Out to Lunch

Suspenders Suspense

The Beaufort Bad Boys, LLC

A Leg Up

Floyd Van Alstyne: Movie Star in the Making

George H. Morris: Our Living Legend and Master Teacher

Bootstrap Jerry

Burkie

Emerson Burr: No Pablum at Fairfield

II

HORSES AND DOGS

Freedom: My Mentor

Gaelic

Brownsablaze

Zephyr

In Search of a Euro-Hero: Beowulf

Monarch

Blackie and the Swans

Blackie Helps Me Out

Miracle and Family

Sam, The Smiling Reprobate

Watching the Eclipse with Jonesie

Mr. Prospector and Coker Farm

III

ADVENTURES ON AND OFF THE FARM

On Fixing Up Old Farms …

Good Fences

West Coast Riders En Route to the World Cup in Sweden

Election Day 2006

A Quiet Summer Morning at Quiet Winter Farm

The Forlorn House

Ghosts at Peri Wahn

Safe Skiing at Suicide Six

Fifty Years of Pony Club: 2004

Lucky Again … Or How Many Broads Does it Take to Change a Lightbulb?

Showing in Florida on a Shoestring in 2007

Slow … Children

Angel and the Porsche

A Lucky Tie and Jacket

My Happy Visit to the Hospital

Not Really Alone

IV

OBSERVATIONS AND REFLECTIONS

Defenestration

Life Dangerous

Reflections on Teaching Riding for the PHA Symposium in the late 20th Century

Aspiring Riders

Where Are Our Owners?

Presence and Absence

Disheartened and Heartened

Our Grassroots Were and Are Healthy and Strong

The American Dream

Epilogue

Epigraph

No hour of life is wasted that is spent in the saddle.

There is something about the outside of a horse

that is good for the inside of a man

Winston Churchill

(1874-1965)

A Typical Day in the Life Carol Loved

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For My Sister

Carol Hofmann Thompson

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Introduction

Back in the day my sister’s name, Carol Hofmann Thompson, was a household word in the horse show world, here and abroad. I have been blessed with many good memories of her and others who have brightened my life. To call this collection a memoir feels a bit too formal and pretentious, so I prefer to say these are a gathering of good old memories of people and events in my life from the fifties to the present day.

There was no better decade than the 1950s to grow up in. The war was over, we won, and Eisenhower was our President. No more noble and able a man existed, except possibly Churchill, but he was British and, even then, old. It was a safe world; we never went to bed wondering if we’d wake up to World War III, our parents never worried about where we were, if they even wondered. They knew we’d be home at dark for dinner. How different from today! What is most heartening about recollecting these stories, old and new, is that life does indeed go on and for us horse people, it is the horses who carry us forward.

This introduction would not be complete without my thanking everyone who has encouraged and helped me write and publish these personal and family anecdotes. You know who you are. To name just a few, I want to thank Steve Schnur and Hank Webb: Steve, teacher, and Hank, fellow student at Sarah Lawrence College as well as Ann Caron of the Greenwich Pen Women, a group of published writers, my friend Anne Sullivan, for her helpful critiques, Nancy Jaffer, for her professional journalist’s expertise, Mike Aloi, for digitalizing the photographs, and last but not least, Kathy Farina, for deciphering and collating this jumble of words. I hope you enjoy reading these anecdotes as much as I did: remembering, writing, and sharing them. If you haven’t already, I urge you to put pen to paper, or fingers to the computer and write your own. It’s fun.

Judy Richter

Bedford, New York

Spring 2018

Prologue: The Kitten’s Cooler

It’s surprising how a once-cherished and long-forgotten object can spark a host of memories.

Hanging over the foot of the brass bed where I always slept when visiting my younger sister was The Kitten’s dark green wool cooler. Even if Carol weren’t gone, but she is, it would have been heart stopping. A relic of the mid-1950s, it unleashed a torrent of memories from that era and many years since.

A cooler is a special, usually all wool blanket, we put on our horses when they come in from work on a cold day. Often they are a bit warm, almost sweaty, and the pure wool cooler helps them cool off without breaking into a clammy sweat which they might do if you first threw on their regular night blankets which are heavy and thick, often covered with waterproof canvas.

The Kitten was Carol’s first good horse she got when she was about eight. A perfect team, they won everything in sight for the next ten years: races, point to points, Pony Club Rallies, horse shows up and down the East Coast. Some of the many highlights were annual championships they won in Madison Square Garden.

As all the memories flooded back, I carefully picked the dark green cooler up off the brass bed rail, noting it smelled strongly of mothballs.

Well, that explains why there are no moth holes, I thought.

I noticed, however, it had been carefully mended several times, clearly a professional job, not Carol on our mother’s ancient Singer sewing machine. The patches were exact rectangles, the sewn lines straight and even, not all zig zaggy the way we would have done it.

I bet all these patches cost more than the original cooler, I mused, understanding how very important this cooler was to Carol. Surely she remembered throwing it across Kitten’s back, after tin-canning around the countryside on cold winter afternoons. She would have also used it at the horse shows, proudly leading Kitten to and from the ring. Not many people had coolers in those days, let alone in the farm colors with their horse’s name embroidered on it. Because it would keep her warm without sweating, Kitten probably wore it often trailering back and forth to hunt meets, Pony Club rallies, race meets, horse shows, even Madison Square Garden.

What I remember most about Kitten’s cooler is how it came into our lives when we were kids. Our parents gave each of us such a cooler which arrived in two big boxes from the local saddler about a week before Christmas. Partners in crime always, Carol and I grinned mischievously at each other. We knew we would figure out a way to find out what was in those boxes long before Christmas morning. We were expert package un-wrappers and re-wrappers. Finally, a few days later the parents were out, so the opportunity to unwrap presented itself. Carefully we picked apart the knotted string and slid a sharp knife under the tape around the box. Conspirators and experts, we slowly unfolded the tissue paper, so we could refold it exactly as it was. The boxes were addressed to our mother, but, of course, we didn’t let that stop us, and the first cooler we unwrapped was The Kitten’s. After ooohing and aaahing and exclaiming, we refolded the cooler, wrapped it carefully in the tissue paper, closed the box, re-taped it shut, and replaced the twine, exactly as it had been. Once Kitten’s was checked out we proceeded to the next box, knowing it contained a dark green cooler with Kerry Spades stitched on it. That cooler vanished long ago, but our exclamations on that long ago Christmas morning still echo in my head. In those days coolers were rare indeed, and no one had names embroidered on what few coolers were around.

Now this cherished cooler was the first of dozens, scores, hundreds of coolers, which passed through Carol’s hands over the years. Among the most illustrious, now moth-eaten and moldering in some forgotten tack trunk in the hayloft of her barn, were the ones she used as a member of our US Equestrian Team when she represented our country here and abroad, and at the 1968 Olympics in Mexico, where she was an alternate.

Red, white, and blue, these two coolers announced her horses’ dubious names, Out Late and Can’t Tell. They came with those names, and together with Carol, made themselves known here and abroad. Because they won so many classes over big jumps against the clock, Carol was known as The Fastest Girl in Europe, also a dubious epithet….

In recent decades it’s been traditional for stables to have coolers in their barn colors for each of the horses their clients have under their care. Carol’s farm, Quiet Winter Farm, featured dark blue coolers with bright green trim and lettering, usually the horses’ name and/or the riders’ as well. Since she was in business for over fifty years, I cannot begin to guess how many Quiet Winter coolers are scattered around the world, as she often had about twenty clients horse showing under her wing every year. Most of those coolers have vanished, for often the kids took theirs off to college to spread on their beds. Instead of a worn toy or blanket, teenagers clung to their beloved horses’ coolers, since often said horses were sold to help pay for college tuition. Surely there are a few tack trunks somewhere still stuffed with Quiet Winter coolers left behinds by clients on to the next, whatever that was.

Other coolers Carol assembled over the years are championship prizes given at the big horse shows and hung all around her tack room on racks with the name of the show and the year won prominently displayed. In recent years the coolers are often of shoddy material with the letters glued on, not stitched, like in the old days. Usually the letters fell off before we get home from the horse show and the now-anonymous coolers are relegated to some do-good organization like the Pony Club where they are used and appreciated. Our most cherished ones were from the National Horse Show, held annually until recently in Madison Square Garden. Those coolers, bright orange with black trim are carefully packed away in mothballs, for what, who knows? The rest are gathering dust on their racks in the tack room at Carol’s barn.

Just the prior winter, after Carol was hospitalized, a big box arrived from Florida. We gleefully un-wrapped it to find a beautifully, old-school, real wool cooler with the letters sewn on. A student had won it in Florida on a horse Carol had been instrumental in getting for her to ride. I hung it over the foot of my bed with the lettering facing her and whenever she looked at it, her eyes sparkled.

As I pulled The Kitten’s cooler off the brass bedstead and laid it carefully on the bed, I realized that unconsciously I had decided to sleep under it that night and so I did, dreaming of the good old days, long gone, but not forgotten. The next morning, Carol’s husband, Willard, admitted he had put it out for me to spark old memories just as she had planned to do before she fell ill. Well, they sparked my memories, and I’m glad they did.

I

FAMILY AND FRIENDS

A Letter in 2012 to

My Granddaughter, Maxine

As a school project, she sent me several questions.

Bedford, N.Y.

February 22, 2012

(Washington’s Real Birthday)

Dear Maxine,

You asked me to tell you about women’s roles and how they have developed during my lifetime, as well as my own personal experience. In brief, I’d say we are making progress, but we are not there yet. It’s a man’s world still, which is fine as long as they do a good job and allow us our just due. There’s only a handful of women CEOs of major corporations. My opinion is that we women could do a lot more than we do…. Typical of our situation is there are no women at the meeting on abortion in Washington this week!

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My Mother, your Great-Grandmother, Mary Kain Hofmann, in her 80s.

I was born June 22, 1939 in South Weymouth, Massachusetts, a small town outside of Boston, where my father, your great-grandfather, was the New England Sales Manager for Johnson & Johnson.

Here’s some history: He graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in the bottom of the Depression, could not get a job, so he slept on the couch in the Beta house, his fraternity, and wrote an occasional obituary for a local paper. His father, a pharmacist in Ottumwa, Iowa, their home, wrote to Johnson & Johnson, told them his son was amazing, and they should hire him. They did and he worked in Kansas City as a shipping clerk for $15.00 a day (or a week? I’m not sure.) From there he leap-frogged to New England Sales Manager in Boston and finally to the main office in New Brunswick, N.J. where he eventually became Chairman of the Board.

My mother’s history was typically obscure for those days…. She grew up in poverty in Maysville, Kentucky, went to Miami University on scholarship. I don’t know her major, but she landed a job in Kansas City as a buyer for a big department store. Her salary was much bigger than my father’s. They met at a place called the Saddle and Sirloin where the fast, young crowd would ride after work and then carouse. She bought my father’s first horse for him, so clearly, even in those days, she was doing very well. She was way ahead of her time, but the times caught up with her.

When they came East, he got a big, raise and didn’t want her to work anymore. By then she was busy enough with me. She also took care of their now-two horses that came East on a train. Her mother joined our family then until she died in 1950 because my grandfather drank and could not get work. More than my mother, my grandmother took care of me. I was her pet and was devastated when she died….

My mother never worked after that, but she was real busy outside the home as they say and she was plenty busy in the home as well. In New Jersey, my parents bought a run-down farm, with an 18th-century house (mud walls for insulation! I remember my dad drilling a hole for a light fixture!)

Besides restoring the house, taking care of the horses, running the farm, and eventually bossing the help around to do the above, my mother and a friend founded the local Pony Club, a national organization inherited from England that taught children horsemanship and horsemastership. There were perhaps fifty local kids eager to learn, so she was busy taking us to rallies, competition as far away as Montreal and Toronto. She also fox hunted three days a week and for decades was secretary; she did all the bookwork for the Essex Fox Hounds, no small job at all! And she was raising two obstreperous daughters. We kids had a lot of freedom in those days, no fear of kidnappers, so we sort of raised ourselves as did our sons, your Dad and Uncle Phil.

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My Parents, your Great-Grandparents, Philip and Mary Hofmann at the Hartland Fair Horse Show, a favorite horse show in the 1950s.

My father was away on business a lot of the time, for travel then was not what it is now: a week on an ocean liner to and from Europe where Johnson & Johnson was trying to get a foothold. He was preoccupied with his business, but very positive about us, expecting us to be all we could be: get good grades in school, work hard, and ride well. He often reminded us that someday we might have to earn a living (unlike my mother. He didn’t want HER to work!) He encouraged summer jobs but insisted we take one whole month off, for who knows, you may have to work the rest of your life.(!) Both my sister and I worked several summers in the Pharmacology Lab at Ortho, a subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson. As the boss’s daughters we were treated well, worked hard, and learned a lot. I learned I did NOT want to be a veterinarian, an early childhood dream.

I remember some testy dinner table conversations/questions like:

How come there are no women on your Board of Directors????

Um. In the 1950s there was really no answer to that one…. It hadn’t dawned on them yet that women could bring something to the table. However, my sister and I often raised that question.

I went to a co-ed grammar school and a private girl’s school before Smith College, a women’s college in Northampton, Massachusetts where I had the best of both worlds, of all worlds. During my freshman year I met Max, your Opa, who became my dear husband for almost fifty years, and I attended a college where the faculty and everyone important truly believed in women. So I sailed