The Thanksgiving Pony Heist

by Julie Stanley

​It was Thanksgiving Day, 1960, and I was visiting my friend on Fancy Farm Road.  My mother had been glad to get the kids out of the house so she and my grandmother could cook and clean in preparation for all the family coming over for Thanksgiving Dinner that evening.  For some reason my friend suggested that we ride our ponies back to my grandmother’s house near Hampton Ridge in town where my family and I also lived.  Why I thought it was a good idea, I’ll never know, but I was excited.  We had had many experiences with our ponies, but never had we ridden them into town!
The problem was that my own pony lived at my cousin’s farm – too far away to retrieve for our adventure.  My friend insisted she had a solution, so we jumped onto her pony Patches and rode double down Fancy Farm to a neighboring farm to ask if we could take a pony, but the owners weren’t at home.  My friend assured me they wouldn’t mind if we borrowed one, so of course we did.  Now properly equipped for our pony adventure, we took off across the pastures, farms and creeks and rode the mile or so that separated my friend’s house from mine.  
About halfway through our adventure, it began to rain.  Hard.  And very cold.  We rode faster but the ponies didn’t understand the urgency, and we only got wetter.  Finally arriving at the house in town, we tied up the ponies in my grandmother’s oversized garage and presented ourselves to her as conquering heroes.  To say the least, she was not amused.  In fact, she and my mother were furious!  So furious they quickly sent us back out in the rain to return ourselves and the ponies back to my friend’s house.  
Duly shamed, we took our medicine and tromped back out to the garage to retrieve the ponies.  By now the rain had turned to sleet, and shortly icicles started forming in our hair as we tried not to slip off the slick bare backs of the ponies.  We tried to go fast, but small branches kept smacking our heads.  At one point my friend felt her favorite tortoise shell headband being ripped from her head and insisted we ride around trying to locate it in the mud and ice.  I have never been so cold and so wet before or since, but we finally got the “borrowed” pony safely back to his pasture.
When we finally arrived at my friend’s house I had to dry off as best I could and then be driven back to my grandmother’s house to dress for dinner!  A hot bath never felt so good, and my taste for adventure was muted for a while.

Julie grew up in Bedford in the 1950s and 1960s before leaving in 1968 for college in Richmond, law school in Williamsburg, and what turned out to be a lengthy career in several capacities with the Commonwealth of Virginia.  She retired in 2010 and moved with her husband back to Bedford to be near her family, all of whom have been Bedford residents their entire lives.
​