Silver With Mother Buff
While cleaning my desk in preparation to paint the room I cleared out two boxes of books. I put the books into the laundry room in the space Peg uses for folding clothes. What this did was make the pile of books a high visibility project. Not to mention, they were within the domain a highly charged woman who wanted her space back. I vowed not to return anything to my office that wasn’t an absolute necessity. So far, I am holding on to that self-imposed rule. The important junk is back in my office and now I find myself sorting through the left overs.
I came a cross a very old book with a battered cover, yellow pages, and ripped binding. The title is Silver, the Story of a Wild Horse by Thomas C. Hinkle, published in 1934 by William Morrow & Co, New York. There are a couple of hand written inscriptions on the inside cover. The first line says “Excelsior School Dist. 32. 6th grade, Jan, 1936. The second line reads Arlie Richard Davis, November 27, 1951, Xenia, Ill, RR#1. Once I saw the name Davis I knew where this book came from. Arlie Davis is my son-in-law’s father. Arlie is just a few years younger than me. Since I had never heard of Xenia, Illinois I looked it up. Xenia is in the southern third of the state in line with Saint Louis. The current population is 658. I urge you to visit the Xenia website to learn about this quaint little town in Illinois.
Since I knew the owner of this book, I felt a moral obligation to read it. I loved it. It is for kids ages 12 -80. A few years ago I wrote exclusively for kids and have a book on Kindle titled Dooley’s Dilemma which I recommend for your kids. Enough of the commercial. Silver is a story about wild horses. One horse in particular is an Arabian breed who is white. The author Hinkle has an amazing grasp of wild horses. He describes their habits, noises, fighting postures, and aversion to man, and is very descriptive. At first I thought the story would divert to a good guy, bad guy cowboy story. Instead Hinckley surprised me by drafting a story where the central characters are all wild horses. It is obvious that Hinkle had a love for these animals. If I had read this book in sixth grade, I would have loved it even more. This just proves to me that it is never too late to do stuff and to venture down paths never taken before.
Filed under: Biography, Book Review, family, Warm and Fuzzy | Tagged: Arabian Horses, Children's Story, Horses, Thomas C. Hinkle, Wild Horses, Xenia | 2 Comments »
