Thankful for Button

Sunny Eugene

We spent our Thanksgiving in Eugene, or, more specifically, Crow, with the in-laws.  What can I say about giving thanks on a year that's been pretty rough?  I'm not sure, but I'm an optimist, so I can at least name a few things, generic as they may sound.  It's the usual suspects, the family-friends-health that everyone mentions before they dive into a twenty pound bird.  Enough said.

What I love about hanging with Peter and Vovo is the blend of traditional and non- that comes together during the holidays.  And let's face it, Thanksgiving is pretty blah on the holiday scale.  There's pie, sure, but no one comes to your door begging for candy and there aren't any cool decorations (don't count your lame cornucopia, Nancy).  No lights are strewn and no one goes wassailing.  The highlights are a bird no one eats 364 days a year and a day of fistfightshopping the day after.  So Lucy mixes the day up with Brasilian dishes (Pudim de Leite), American dishes, and straight up country dishes (goat).

My Dad -- forgive the digression -- was notorious for buying horses.  Good, bad, ugly, he bought them all.  He gave a second (or third) chance to a lot of ponies that were destined for the dog food factory.  One was named Chicken, because he was saved from becoming chicken food (he didn't last).  One broke his hand, another his ankle.  A few tore apart the hitching post until he had a steel one built, then they just broke lead ropes and halters.  But more often they were great.  Boy and Cody.  Mars and Pete.  So-so was paid for with his first Social Security check and was a good one.  Dylan now rides a gentle paint named Romeo, Dad's last horse.  The list of good ones goes on.

Button!

So the highlight of Thanksgiving break, for me, was we bought a horse.  Specifically, we got a little cream colored gelding from my in-laws that I've liked since they picked him up at an auction a couple of years ago.  His name is Button and I've only been on him for less than a half hour, and that was over a year ago.  But I liked him then, so we bought him now.

And I know Dad would have been thrilled that I was horse trading over the holidays.  My gut tells me he's a good one.  I've had my teeth kicked in when my gut's been wrong, but hey, I'm an optimist.  I think this one will work out fine.