Yes, there are fireworks tonight at Harlinsdale Park. Thank you for making my point. Harlinsdale, the historic TWH farm, hasn’t had a horse on it in about a decade. The decade before that it was a breeding operation with fencing in sore need of repair and painting and a barn that even from the road looked run down. It’s hey days are well in the past.
I have lived here for 45 years and have ridden horses here for most of that. What I object to so much on this thread is posters making grand statements about the area and its residents that are either patently false or just plain uninformed and stupid. This would include a poster who said Middle TN had no industry. :rolleye: If you want to influence the people here an accurate description of the area and the people would certainly be helpful. And it might be just a little bit smart if you stopped insulting the same people whose help you want.
Let me tell you a little about Franklin. If you visited it in 1960 the population of Williamson Co–of which Franklin is the county seat–was 25,000 people. It was considered a rural county with strong ties to agriculture and all kinds of animal husbandry. Today it is right about 190,000 people and the home of the international headquarters for many NYSE listed companies including Nissan. It is one of the wealthiest counties not only in the state but in the country. The average resident is well employed, informed and educated. If a Franklin resident sees a live horse it’s not going to be a TWH. The vast majority of those 190k people don’t know the first thing about horses other than that the Iroquois Steeplechase is THE traditional Rite of Spring. In the last 10 years if the TWH has appeared in the paper or on the TV news the picture has not been positive.
When you drive in and around Franklin if you aren’t driving through some planned community development–or around the retail area that includes a mall with more than a million sq. ft of retail space–you are driving past beautiful horse farms with black four board fencing, lovely pastures, tidy barns and big houses. Those bucolic scenes don’t include walking horses. On the rare occasion you see that distinctive black plywood walking horse shape nailed to a barn that barn needs painting along with the crappy fencing and unkempt pasture (since they don’t turnout there doesn’t seemed to be much concern about pasture quality.) While you might not like the description “low rent” you have to look at it within its surroundings–surroundings that many of you are obviously clueless about.
Yes, there are some Williamson County commissioners (and other officers) that try to play on their historic past. However, at least one commissioner–a horseman whom I’ve talked about the issue with multiple times in the last few years–that has been warning these pro TWH types that the county needs to create distance because the whole industry sooner or later is going to blow up, it’s going to be ugly and they don’t need to be waving that flag. But the important point is that it is about how they look at their history because today TWH has little to nothing to do with Williamson County much less the city of Franklin. Quite frankly the average residence who sees a walking horse on county or city material doesn’t have a clue of its specific breed–it’s just a picture of some random fancy horse in a county that has lots of fancy horses.
I will give you here that there are plenty of THW trail horses and family horses, but quite frankly that isn’t what this thread is about! Nor are these horses making the type of economic impact in Franklin than say hunters are when Brownland Farm alone has 10 top rated shows a year that each bring in hundreds of horses and riders from across the country.
Someone else snidely asked what I’ve done for the issue. So for the record: I’ve had in depth face to face conversations in the last couple months with a Tn State Senator and a powerful State Representative in a leadership position from Middle Tn. I’ve had a brief conversation with another State Rep. I also had multiple long conversations face to face with the odds on favorite for a State Rep seat in Rutherford county and was able to mention the issue in passing to a Commissioner/advisor to Governor Haslam. I’ve been angling to get in front of a US House Rep but haven’t gotten in there yet. So I stick my neck out, expend my personal political capital only to come here and read insulting things about my hometown and myself that aren’t factually correct. That’s really great.
