I started riding in the 70’s…didn’t own a horse until I was 14…We did 4-H and we had a blast. The funniest thing was we never had money to trailer to shows so we got up really early in the am and walked our horses there. Thank god it wasn’t that far. But the real kicker was the rings were next to a freight train track and when a train came they said dismount and we did then waited for the train to leave and we continued on! Could you imagine doing this now! We went out bareback and swam in the resevoirs and had a great time.
The one thing I see missing is that horses are not used for enjoyment now the kids are too busy to spend every day at the barn so kid rides a made horse that is tuned up by some trainer instead of working hard themselves and letting the horses have fun also…
I also loved hunt courses. I remember taking my pony to NY pony show and ridng the course, you actually felt like you could ride with the hounds…I do not know to many hunters today that would do that well. I can say I am happy that the Hunter Derby is here…
Going to MSG and trying to win the Courvoisier Arabian that was raffled off and watching Rodney Jenkins with Idle Dice and my favorite was Stocking Stuffer for hunters, boy could he move…those were the days…
And ALL the hunters and jumpers were Tbs! Gotta love the breed…
Well, back in the late 60s when I started riding, we had a very cool piebald half-draft named Bozo in the school horse herd. He was steady Eddie, honest, fun to ride and huge! Everyone wanted to ride Bozo, and if you got to ride him in your lesson that week, you felt like a queen!
Well, flash forward 30 years, and there a few of us were, talking about the good 'ole days at the barn, and the subject of Bozo comes up. Someone had seen him recently at a local farm, now retired, standing tall and piebald in the pasture. She confirmed his identity with the owner because she was floored to see him standing there!
We did the math, and our steady Eddie half-draft Bozo had been…3 years old when he was being used in the school! Can you imagine? We couldn’t believe it, and thanked our lucky stars we were still here to exchange stories! Yikes!:eek:
Hay 4
Seven up said: Must be a different man, because Jack Rockwell is still kickin’ down here in LA. I know his father died in the past 10 or 15 years, but I don’t think his name was Jack. I know he came from CT, and his father was at Old Salem. ?
Must be his son because Jack Rockwell from the Hill (now Old Salem) died of, I think, lung cancer from smoking 10 - 15 years ago. I didn’t know he had kids…
Hay 5
Speaking of Rodney Jenkins! We used to sing a song when we were show grooms. Think the tune to Glen Campbell’s Rhinestone Cowboy…
I’ve been grooming these shows so long
Singing the same ol’ song
I know every dirty brush at the H-ill
Where poor kids get washed away
like the snow and the rain
There’ll be a load of compromisin’
on the road to my horizon
and the light will be shinin’ in me
Like Rodney JenKins rid-in’ Idle Dice
in Madison Sq…uare Gar…den
I can’t remember the rest…
And before you get all huffy about poor kids, we were the poor kids but we had dreams!!! The punctuation is where you lengthen in your singing…
I grew up with out a horse (no funds) but enjoyed every minute of my junior years working for Mark and Kent Jungherr at Coach House Stable in Rye, NY. I rode any horses they had; off the track, from the auction or otherwise. I was also fortunate enough to be able to hack some of the jumpers for Mark. I braided, groomed at the shows, mucked and taught the beginners. An really exciting year was when he had the PHA Jumper of the Year, The Hun, and we went to NY. I am sure if you were around OSF (The Hill) back in the early 70’s you remember this horse! We all had a great time. The comraderie was teriffic and the knowledge I gained from those years is with me today. The Jungherrs (Karen included and I then rode with her after I got out of college) were very good horsemen.
I got riding lessons for my 8th birthday, in 1964. I was so horse crazy - I slept at the barn all summer, rode in the back of the van with the horses. We used to take the horses swimming in the river, have hair raising races along a steep path with a drop off one side. We would ride bareback all the time, jumping anything in the way. I, too, did not own a horse and was not allowed to join Pony Club. Then, a neighbor gave me his Morgan gelding conformation horse. Of course, being a chestnut, everyone said he was “too flashy” for the hunter ring (remember when you couldn’t ride greys, either??). But that didn’t stop me spending every waking minute with him. I often feel badly for my kids because they haven’t had those moments of total abandon with their horses. What great memories!
I was a working student on the “show aisle” from 73-77 when I left to go to college. If I wasn’t working for Jack, I sometimes worked for Michael Page. We had some amazing times back then. I wish I could find some of the people who I rode with there - Jamie Marshall, Gretchen Blair, Helen Greene and Wendy Kessinger.
I saw Jack about a year or so before he died. He was a true horsemen!
Goodness, what youngsters there are here! 
To me, “olden times” would be the 40s and 50s because I started riding in the 60s. Must’ve been before the rule about flashy chestnuts and greys because I saw plenty of both at Pony Club shows, along with bays and browns. What I didn’t see were pintos and Apps and palominos.
Does anyone know when short stirrup came along? I was away for about 20 years from hunters, and when I came back the divisions had all changed and kids were riding something called “short stirrup”. I never did really get what it meant, not being a kid by then, and before I learned I was away from hunters again.
MintHill, my son worked for Mark for three years during and after college. He loved the experience, and learned a ton.
Think my olden days are more like ancient days compared to all you youngsters! Like, the '50s and early '60s…Grew up in Fairfield County at the time GHM was a rising young trainer - his family lived down the street and his cousin was one of my best friends. We used to get really excited when he would come, along with Tab Hunter, to judge the member shows at Ox Ridge. We rode with him, Gordon Wright, Otto Heukeroth - when Patty was a high school student. Bill Robertson and Bill Steinkraus were dieties to us.
We would ride anything anywhere, hunted, camped out, rode random loose horses in their fields w/out tack, even rode a couple of cows, showed. Did the big Eqs on a leased camp horse, a 17 yr old TB mare who took a very quiet ride, and qualified for the Medal finals at MSG, but didn’t compete. I, too, loved changing horses, because this mare was so sensitive she made me look really good!
Loved the outside courses, swimming horses, fuzzy bareback rides on frigid days…
Schoolies I remember? BooPeep and Johnny, at Wilton Riding Club when I would go ride at age 6, no helmet and turned out in the ring to figure it all out with very little supervision; Little Bit, Lord Byron, Meadow Lark, Meadow Sweet, Rocket, Drummer Boy,Rob Roy, etc at NCMT, Tar Baby at ORHC; Brownie, who I rode to win my first blue at camp at age 7
Then parentals decided, after I graduated from Chatham Hall, that I had outgrown riding. Had never owned a horse and had to wait until I was 40 to finally have one. You guessed it, an OTTB, age 4, who I still have 24 years later!
Wish I had started my professional career when I was young as I had wanted, but folks had other ideas and I was too passive to fight it!
OK, I’ll chime in from the West Coast…
I remember when the Grand National was a BIG show. Sleeping in the tackroom. Watching the jumper classes, Jimmy Williams taking a wild fall in about 1968 or so, then coming back the next night to win the go-round.
The first GP out here, at the Rose Bowl, maybe '73 or so…seeing Rodney Jenkins…he was such a legend I couldn’t say a word.
I rode/showed western mostly in the late 60’s/early 70’s, though I had some lessons with Barbara Worth, then worked at a couple of BNT H/J barns in the early 70’s. The shows had different disciplines, and you had friends that rode H/J, saddle horses, western. It was a different time.
Fences were 3’6 and more…I think regular hunters were 4’. No short stirrup, and no pony classes out here in those days.
I’m with you Wellspotted and Boosma4. I started riding in 1960-1961. Outside courses—what fun! Short stirrup and now long stirrup? What is this stuff? Boyohboy, things sure have changed! I feel like a dinosaur…
Boosma - I am sure your son gained a ton of knowledge from Mark. He is a wonderful rider and horseman. Mark had some really nice horses when I was at Coach House…Just Plain Wilber, The Hun, Friendly Regards, and others that made up my teenage years! He and Kent also picked out very nice horses and ponies for the clients as well, they were all well mounted…My memories of this time are still so clear!
I boarded at Coach House in 1973 right before I moved, with my horse, to Florida.
I have asked this before, but anyone around from Gladstone, NJ in the 60’s-70’s?
I wouldn’t consider this the "olden days’ but I was a junior in the late 70’s-80’s.
On the west coast.
I remember going to the show at the Ventura showgrounds and riding our horses on the beach.
I remember going to the Santa Barbara “turkey show” every year and having Thanksgiving dinner in this huge banquet hall.
I remember that schooling areas were small, so they would set up fences in between the barn aisles and we would gallop down them and jump fences before going into the ring! Yikes!!!
Fun times!
I wouldn’t consider this the "olden days’ but I was a junior in the late 70’s-80’s.
On the west coast.
I remember going to the show at the Ventura showgrounds and riding our horses on the beach.
I remember going to the Santa Barbara “turkey show” every year and having Thanksgiving dinner in this huge banquet hall.
I remember that schooling areas were small, so they would set up fences in between the barn aisles and we would gallop down them and jump fences before going into the ring! Yikes!!!
Fun times!
And yes, all we rode were ottb’s. I remember when the first WB’s started coming in and we were fascinated by them 
Ah- I remember it when is was “Salem View” (run/owned by Mr Greenspan and then run by Mark and Kent Jungherr) before it was called “the Hill”. I occaisionally helped out in the show office when it was “the Hill”.
Also worked from Reiner Neivisch who I understand is working out of some large farm in Westchester. Man, was he a clean freak but boy was that great experience. You should see my barn now, Reiner would be happy.
Now THATS a name I had forgotten! IIRC he was first at Sunnyfield (when Mrs McIntosh owned it), then went to work for the Simpsons , then had his own farm on Succabone Rd in Bedford- that would be about 1970. I had no idea what he did after that.
I groomed Native Gem for Beverly and infamous Sweet 'n Low who eventually went on to, I think, hold the record at the Garden for jumping the Puissance Wall.
That was at Washington, ridden by Tony d’Ambrosio. I saw it. As a teenager, I occaisionally rode against him. One time he beat me in a jumper class by less than a tenth of a second on a handheld stop watch. So I figure we were really tied! That was on a TB x QH.
Did anybody else ride and jump sidesaddle in a regular saddle? If anybody knows the clock tower at the intersection of Guard Hill and Succabone in Bedford, we used to jump the low fence around it “sidesaddle”.
That is distinctly odd, because there was Meadow Lark and a (Golden) Rocket at Sunnyfield in the same era.
The REAL old days
Awe, Janet…I must be older than all of you. How about the 40’s and 50’s riding in the Chicago area. Does anybody remember jumping the six jumps BOTH ways? (just like the QH hunters…) Let’s hear from you…:yes:
