Five Photos, Five Stories Challenge: Day 3…Dream ride

This is Day 3 of the Five Photos, Five Stories Challenge.   I was invited to participate by Emilio Pasquale at “Photos by Emilio”. The challenge is  to “post a photo each day for five consecutive days and attach a story to the photo. It can be fiction or non-fiction, a poem or a short paragraph and each day nominate another blogger for the challenge”.  

Today’ nominee is Jan Marler Morrill at https://janmorrill.wordpress.com/. Jan’s the author of “The Red Kimono”, a novel about the interment of the Japanese in the US during WWII.  You need to read it.  She also writes haiku and explores various issues on her blog.

“Mom, may I ride the horse today?” The high point of any trip to the grocery store was getting to ride the mechanical horse by the front doors. I loved horses, although we didn’t have one. Living in the city, even a small city, made having a horse an expensive impossibility. But I dreamed of having a horse someday. In the meantime, this short ride was as close as I could get to a real horse outside the pages of the books I checked out religiously from the library. I knew where every horse book was on the shelves and knew most of them almost by heart.

I didn’t get to ride every time, though. The horse cost a dime and although we weren’t poor, we watched every penny. Mom planned her meals and any stocking up based on what was on sale that week and we often went to several stores to get the best deals. Armed with her list, we made good time through the stores and I never asked for anything extra. I didn’t care. Riding the horse was better than any food treat.

Today Mom smiled, “Yes, you may.” I climbed onto the base, swung my right leg over in my best cowboy style and she put the dime into the slot, sending me riding into a dream world of happiness that lasted long after the ride was over and fueled my dreams for the days ahead.