HORSES
- Christine "Liz" LaRue
- May 3
- 4 min read
November 2 at 4:34 AM
I’m missing my father. His heavenly birthday is coming up in a couple of weeks. This is a favorite photo my father got done especially for me. I’m sure he had someone shoot the photo for him cuz he had difficulty remembering how to use the camera on his cell phone.
Someone in our neighborhood was having a Western Day, complete with horses and baby farm animals. Dad had on his favorite “Pocatello, Idaho” cap of his hometown. He struck up a conversation with the exhibition owner and got this photo taken.
It was in homage to my learning how to ride my first horse at the age of 6, even with my leg braces, at a Chicago stable in the heart of the Woodlawn community. Rich whites stabled their horses there to enable them to ride through Jackson and Washington Parks. In the 1940s through the 1970s, it was not unusual to see people riding horses through Chicago’s stretch of park systems along the lakefront. We even had a racetrack on Washington Park on the Southside, which is now a field house with a pool. Though it took a while for the city to let us Black folks IN that pool, even though the neighborhood was 99% Black.
Looking back on that horseback riding thing, it was highly unusual to let a child with leg braces learn to ride. That didn’t become a thing to do medically for handicapped kids until the 1980s, recognized as physical therapy. My parents were avid bearers of Western culture, being from Idaho and Utah. They were so gung-ho about it, they didn’t care that Chicago Black folks viewed this as “odd duck” behavior. Mom even celebrated Utah’s “Pioneer Day” while living in Chicago.
The high school I attended on the far North Side even had an equestrian club. You know I joined! I rode horses every Tuesday at a stable waaaaay out near our main airport for 4 years. Dad would pick me up late in the evening once back in our high school’s neighborhood. He would make me sit in the back seat cuz of course, I smelled like horses. He often gave rides home to other “rarebird” buddies, like my high school buddy Wanda Flagg!
Dad recounted a story about our family’s trips to the Wisconsin Dells many summers. One day, I spied a stable in Wisconsin and pleaded to go horseback riding. I was 7, still in leg braces. Of course, the folks agreed. But one of my parents had to go with me for supervision.
My folks drew straws, and Dad got the short straw; he wasn’t personally thrilled about that. He said the ranch hands put me atop the biggest horse he had ever seen in his life! As he mounted his own horse, a much smaller one, the group prepared to ride through the thick forests of the Dells. Dad said as soon as I got my stirrups set up, the ranch hands gave me the reins, and Dad said I took off on a gallop following the lead trail guide. Dad said he was stunned! He wasn’t sure he could keep up with his own 7-year-old as he could barely get his horse into a fast, jarring trot!
Turned out I had a great time. Dad was sore from his ride and complained about how I left him in the trail dust in my exuberance.
So decades later, he got this photo for me in memory of all those horse hijinks. When I saw the photo, we both cracked up. I asked, “Dad, did you get on the horse in this photo?” He snorted. “Are you kidding? I hate horses. They smell!”
I was stunned. “But Dad, all those times you rode with me in the Wisconsin Dells?”
He snorted again. “I’m your father. It’s what fathers do…and at great sacrifice to their rear ends! And you outrode me every single time. That’s what I got from getting you horseback riding lessons.”
I rode all the way through college. So I see this photo and chuckle at the great sacrifice my father made. I didn’t find out until this photo that Dad actually disliked horses. It was Mom who loved horses, but she always connived with Dad to ride. She just liked petting them and feeding them!
Sneaky mother!
Happy Heavenly Birthday, Dad!
Artist Bio
Christine “Liz” LaRue is a clay artist and illustrationist. She is known for her intricately textured figurative sculptures and emotionally illustrative drawings. Chicago-born, though also raised in Utah and Idaho, Ms. LaRue is of Creole/Cuban descent. Her art has been influenced by her Afro-Latino heritage. Ms. LaRue’s interests have been in pre-Columbian art of the Olmec, Maya of Mexico, Nazca, and Moche face pots of Peru. This also includes the bronze sculptures of the Ife of Nigeria and Tā Moko tattoo art of the Maōri.
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