Stories from the Amazon - Horse trading

As a white girl in another country you get to experience lots of different sides of humanity. One of these was a pretty obvious nickname I happened to acquire in my dealings with the horse people of my town.

By the time this story happened, I was already a young adult and getting my name out there as the knowledgeable horse person in town. Our town was very large with around 400 thousand people in it by this time. When I was a child it was a very small town of only around 40 thousand, so I've been told. They discovered gold in the river  beside the town and overnight it became a gold rush city, full of crime, greed, lust and all the sins of the flesh. We were quite protected in our mission base and worked mostly deep in the jungles with the native Indians. By the time teenage years arrived for me, my parents missionary work had led them to become more involved with the Brazilians themselves and we moved to town and got a ranch. But that's another story for another day.

Horses continued to be a big part of my life. I came to the USA to study more about horses and then life led me around the world a bit but I eventually came back to my hometown. There's a saying in our town that says whoever drinks of the muddy waters of the Rio Madeira will always return. In my early to mid twenties I returned and started the grand plans of beginning a Riding School. Many people who knew me begged me to teach their kids or themselves. I doubted myself at first and didn't think I could actually do it, but having the great desire to work with kids, and also especially with horses, I made plans and everything started to fall in place. With help from some generous friends I was able to get a horse barn built and an arena fenced off. I already had a few horses but figured I needed to get a few more really gentle horses.

I was dating a guy at the time who told me about someone who did some horse trading. Now, my favorite thing to do on the weekend was to go to someone's farm and look at their horses for sale. I usually didn't end up getting any but sometimes I'd come across one that looked like it might be suitable and on the rare occasion I'd manage to work out some sort of deal with them. So I took him up on his offer to go visit the guy, Polones (which mean Polish)  He was a smallish middle aged man, who looked like he had been on a horse most of his life. He was what I always figured a horse trader would look like, with his string of trading horses, a few real decent ones and a bunch of average, some skinny, some fat, some big and occasionally a pony.  He lived on the "poor" side of town but that didn't bother me. As soon as he met me I became Americana (American) I'm pretty sure he never called me by my actual name. He must have thought I was rolling in cash the first time we met because he brought out his best horses. I rode them all but when I laid eyes on one little sooty palomino mare, I knew I had to have her. He insisted she wasn't for sale and no amount of haggling, dealing, or begging made him change his mind. I think I ended up with a horse or two that day but dreamt of the palomino mare for months. Occasionally I'd trade him back a horse that wasn't working out too well. One time I ended up with some half crazy horses but I enjoyed the bantering and bartering back and forth.

One half crazy, or should I say all crazy, horse I got from him was a grey gaited mare. She was a pretty thing and smooth as butter to ride, and light in the bit.... if you could catch her, saddle her and get on her. She could only be caught with stealth and a good lasso. Once you caught her you had to very carefully ease your way to her exactly by her shoulder. If you got too far back she would swing around and kick you and if you got too far forward her ears would stick to her neck and all you'd see would be big, ugly, yellow teeth coming at you. If you survived that and got the saddle tight and managed to get on unscathed, well she was a downright comfortable ride, the kind where you can carry your drink and not spill a drop. I decided however that having kids around a horse like that would not be a good idea so she only stayed for about a week or less and I traded her back from something a little more gentle.

Then one day I was looking at some horses and I saw her, the sooty palomino mare! Only she was thin as a skeleton and half dead. But I knew it was her and this time he was willing to let me work out a trade and I got her. I named her Esperanza because I had hope that she would be healthy again and that she would be a good lesson horse. When I finally got weight on her she turned out to be everything and more than I knew she would be. All my students begged to ride her and she would tolerate anything they did, except riding double. She'd buck them off if two kids tried to ride her.  After a while I started teaching kids with special needs also and she was perfect with them.

One day while doing some horse trading with Polones, after a few times of meeting him. I asked him why he was called that. He started telling me that he was born in Poland and his mother was Polish but his father was Brazilian. He weaved a tale so fascinating, and I was so gullible at the time that I believed every word, until he busted out laughing at me because he couldn't believe I believed him for so long. He laughed at me every time after that too. I guess it became our little inside joke.