Looking back to April 2010
A LIFETIME WITH HORSES, by Sheila Varian
A Lifetime W ith Ar Just Call Me Litt
abians
le Orphan Annie
by Sh eil a Va ria n
Like everyone, I hav e had my stellar mo ments and my disasters. Usual ly, at least, my disast ers turn into funny stories. I go into thi ngs think ing “this can’t be that hard,” and then find out I was wrong: It wa s that hard. In the 1970s, the trainers— mostly guys—were stepping up to big trucks and tra ilers to haul more horses, and if I wa going to compete, s I decided that I wo uld step up as well. The guys all had shi ny new trucks and trailers. Let me tel l you about mine. I knew a Peterbilt was the best truck, but I didn’t have much money to spe nd, so I looked for a truck that hadn’t worked too hard. I found one with 40 0,0 00 miles that had been pullin g boats (so we were told). It was a “cabover,” the snu b-nose model where you sit right over the engine, and sin ce it was the least expensive truck I could find, it had no power brakes, no power steering , no
Peterbilt ad courtesy
sound-proof ing— act ual ly, it had not hing but 40 0,0 00 logged miles, and it must have been 15 years old at the time. It was a huge, grey Peterbilt truck that had a great, blasting air horn and a rattling constit uti on.
At that time, Varia n Arabians had app rentices because we couldn’t afford hir ed help. The three of us lived on the ranch, so there wa s always one of us here. It was pretty much hand-to-mout h; we did our ow n cooking, ate threeday-old bread, ma de a pot roast every day, and were hap about it. Some of py those apprentices stayed for years. On was a young man e I wil l cal l Dan. He had driven trucks lot before he came a to the ranch, and like every other gu who has driven a y truck, he loved it— his relationship wit trucks was like a ma h rriage. He became ver y possessive of that Peterbilt. The only trouble was, it was mine and I intended to learn to drive it.
of Tim Alborn
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A Lifetime With Arabians Just Call Me Little Orphan Annie by Sheila Varian Like everyone, I have had my stellar moments and my disasters. Usually, at least, my disasters turn into funny stories. I go into things thinking “this can’t be that hard,” and then find out I was wrong: It was that hard. In the 1970s, the trainers—mostly guys—were stepping up to big trucks and trailers to haul more horses, and if I was going to compete, I decided that I would step up as well. The guys all had shiny new trucks and trailers. Let me tell you about mine. I knew a Peterbilt was the best truck, but I didn’t have much money to spend, so I looked for a truck that hadn’t worked too hard. I found one with 400,000 miles that had been pulling boats (so we were told). It was a “cabover,” the snub-nose model where you sit right over the engine, and since it was the least expensive truck I could find, it had no power brakes, no power steering, no
Peterbilt ad courtesy of Tim Alborn
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sound-proofing—actually, it had nothing but 400,000 logged miles, and it must have been 15 years old at the time. It was a huge, grey Peterbilt truck that had a great, blasting air horn and a rattling constitution. At that time, Varian Arabians had apprentices because we couldn’t afford hired help. The three of us lived on the ranch, so there was always one of us here. It was pretty much hand-to-mouth; we did our own cooking, ate threeday-old bread, made a pot roast every day, and were happy about it. Some of those apprentices stayed for years. One was a young man I will call Dan. He had driven trucks a lot before he came to the ranch, and like every other guy who has driven a truck, he loved it—his relationship with trucks was like a marriage. He became very possessive of that Peterbilt. The only trouble was, it was mine and I intended to learn to drive it.
A Lifetime With Arabians My diesel truck had 13 gears: four low (first through fourth); four high (fifth through eighth), each with a separate overdrive; and one reverse. There was none of this automatic shifting you see today. Dan was my obvious instructor. Following his instructions, going forward didn’t sound too difficult. Stopping sounded more difficult. Dan told me I had to shift down through every gear to come to a stop. On the side of the gear was a splitter that switched each of the high gears into its halfgear. So if I was in sixth-over, say, I would switch the splitter and drop into sixth-under; step on the clutch and shift into fifth; switch the splitter and drop into fifthunder; step on the clutch and shift into fourth, and from there, there was no splitter, so it was double-clutching the rest of the way through the gears. Dan said with emphasis, “You can’t go from sixth to second.” Looking back, it’s fairly clear that Dan was making it as difficult as possible for me to drive “his” truck. I finally figured out that I could go straight from sixth to third by listening to the rpms, and then double-clutching, shift down to second. As the rpms dropped off, I learned by listening when to shift from one gear to the other. But early on in my ownership of the Peterbilt, I couldn’t get down through each of the gears fast enough, and when I was driving, there was a lot of gear-screeching going on—which I’m sure was music to Dan’s ears. In the fall of 1976, as we prepared to leave for the U.S. Nationals in Louisville, I took the big rig out to practice on a country road. I was by myself, sitting way up above everyone and everything, feeling mighty proud, driving a truck that was practically as wide as the two-lane road with no shoulder. I was doing fairly well, and pulled the air horn’s leather strap a couple of times just for fun. I was chugging along in fifth when I crested a hill and saw a guy on a bicycle up ahead. He heard me coming just as I spotted him, and I started trying to gear down. Instead of shifting from fifth, listening to the rpms and going into third, I was trying to double-clutch from fifth to fourth to third, etc., and each time I made one of these changes, the gears were complaining mightily. I could see this guy wobbling down the road, pedaling nervously for his life, obviously thinking that maybe he could pedal fast enough to escape. I was just as nervous as he was. Trying to gear down through all those gears, I couldn’t slow the truck down to second fast enough. Sweat was pouring down my forehead; I was closing in on this man who, I’m sure,
had thought he would just take his bicycle on a little spin, never guessing there would be a truck the size of a house bearing down on him. Finally, he wobbled to a stop, picked up his bicycle, and ran out into the grass, as I, with much roaring, passed by. Me? I just looked straight ahead, pretended all trucks were driven like this, and went home. I never mentioned it, of course, but figured perhaps I needed a bit more practice. On the way to U.S. Nationals, I was going to stop in Salt Lake City for a horse show as a warm-up before Louisville. In those days I took my own hay with me, because the quality of what you could buy at a show was poor and unpredictable. We had a pickup truck with a trailer full of hay that was going to follow the horse trailer. Dan would drive the Peterbilt and I would ride with him, learning the ways of a diesel truck as we traveled, while a kid we called “The Bullet” would drive the hay truck. The Bullet came by his name honestly, because I’ve never known anyone who moved slower and had less to say. He wasn’t lazy. He just had troubles, which simply stopped his feet and his mouth. Nothing moved. We hadn’t gotten two hours from home before the pickup truck’s engine boiled, so Bullet switched the key off and immediately blew the engine. We had to have the truck
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A Lifetime With Arabians towed into Bakersfield for repair before we could drive on with the Peterbilt and nine-horse trailer. I wasn’t waiting; I had Nationals fever. Everyone who has shown at Nationals, especially those who have hauled their own horses, will understand: Once you get on the road, you are hyperventilating the whole way. My brain was heading for Kentucky, 3,000 miles east. Dan drove to Salt Lake City without incident, I showed our horses, and we did fine. At the end of the show, our hay truck still had not been repaired, so I had Dan fly home to pick up that truck and meet us later on the road. Remember—there were no cell phones or email at that time. When you wanted to get in touch with somebody, you called home, and when they called home, home told them that you would be waiting at some gas station for them to call. This usually took a day or two, as well as caused much confusion. So Dan went home, and I, with my Nationals fever, was bound for Kentucky with the Peterbilt truck, Trailette trailer, nine horses, and The Bullet. No problem. It was only a mere 2,000 miles.
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A Lifetime With Arabians The Bullet and I left Salt Lake City heading east on I-80, which at the time was a two-lane road, and before we even got into Wyoming, we had to climb a long grade out of Utah. Have I mentioned that fourth gear was a killer in this truck? Well, it was. Unless I had exactly the right rpms, I couldn’t shift into fourth gear; all I did was grind the gears, hoping the rpms would be right this time. I was going up the grade in fifth and began losing power because it was getting too steep. I had to shift down, and I could not get geared into fourth. Grind … miss. Grind … miss. Grind … miss. The truck was whining and screaming as we slowly lost power. I pulled off on the side of the highway, the truck lurching to a stop and pitching the horses all over the trailer. Trailer stalls in the ’70s were much narrower and shorter than they are today, so the horses were truly stuffed in, getting thrown around into their mangers and into the back of their stall doors. In the
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A Lifetime With Arabians the back of the one ahead of me and edged along. The truck ahead went onto the scale, stopped, and drove on. I pulled my truck onto the scale, paused a minute, and drove off the scale. Suddenly, all the lights in the state of Wyoming flashed red and a booming voice over a loud speaker blasted, “Stop your truck!” Oh, God. And then with only the audacity of a man, roared, “Back up your truck!” My first thought was, “I have been driving for hours. I can’t shift into fourth, and you want me to back up my truck? Are you crazy?” And the sweat started pouring down my face again. (The Bullet, meanwhile, had disappeared into some other land, and was his usual speechless self.) Very carefully coming to a stop to avoid any lurching, I stopped and sat there a moment. The weigh station officer must have been getting the drift that he might have a problem on his hands, so in a calm but firm voice, he said, “Pull around to the back.” Sheila and Bay-El-Bey.
group were horses about to become national winners: the stallions Bay-El-Bey, U.S. National Reserve Champion Stallion, and *Essaul, U.S. National Top Ten in Formal Driving; Baytar, U.S. National Champion Gelding; the mare Kaliki, U.S. National Reserve Champion Futurity Filly; and others. By the time we crawled with much lurching to the top of the grade, I was shaking and my teeth were chattering, I was rattled and exhausted—and I’d been gone only a few hours by this time. The Bullet, of course, had nothing to say through all of this. He just sat there with a typical Bullet look on his face. Finally, with the grade behind us, we cruised into Wyoming and I began to relax. My teeth were still chattering, however, because the truck rattled and bounced along, pretty much spring-less. You could hear nothing—no music, no talking of course (which didn’t matter, because The Bullet didn’t speak), no air conditioning and no heating. Things were looking up. I’d even stopped sweating. The countryside was pretty, with antelope and the occasional coyote trotting along. When I saw the “Weigh Station” sign, I began to sweat again. I had never been through a truck weigh station and was still worried about my gear-shifting. I pulled off the highway, carefully watched the other drivers, and followed their lead. With all the rigs creeping along in second gear as close together as they could get, I put the nose of my truck six inches from 188 | AR A BIAN HORSE TIMES
In those days, even with my three-horse trailer, I had to go through ports and show all my papers when I went from state to state, so I knew I had to show paperwork and maybe pay a fee. It always seemed like they charged you by whatever mood struck them. If you looked like you weren’t real smart, they might charge more than if you looked fairly savvy. By that time, I had been in the truck for seven or eight hours, and I was four hours behind schedule. Not only was I probably the only woman in the weigh station (you didn’t see many women truckers in those days), but I was tired—worn out is a better word—and I had the jitters from the rattling of the truck. I had no more sweat to sweat. I went into the office having no clue of what they were going to require, and not even sure I had the right papers for Wyoming, since Dan had handled the paperwork. The weigh station officer sat behind a counter that was on a platform, so I had to hand my papers up to him as he looked down on me. I was quite a sight, I’m sure— dirty, tired, hair tangled, full of alfalfa, and sweaty. I said hello and pulled out all my papers, handed them up to the officer, and looked at him. He looked at me, then at the papers. I looked back at him with the past eight hours of sweating, grinding gears and no food, and said defeatedly, “Sir, just do with me what you will.” If I was going to jail, this was as good a time as any, I figured. He looked at me again. I must have been a pitiful picture to see. Handing me back my papers, he said, “Okay, honey, you just go on.”
A Lifetime With Arabians I walked out to the truck. The Bullet was standing by its door, shifting from one foot to the other nervously, which was a lot of action for him. “Okay, Bullet,” I said, “get in the truck.” So he did. “All right,” I thought, “I’m back on the road, I made it through the weigh station, the horses are watered, there’s little traffic, and I only have four or five more hours before we get to our overnight destination. I’m relaxing.” And the truck engine went cough-cough-cough. With that, we slowly coasted to the side of the highway. “I have a dirty fuel filter,” I thought. I knew how to put on a new one. On a cabover truck, the whole cab lifts up pretty easily. I replaced the fuel filter, thinking, I can do this, and down the road we went again. I figured my karma was definitely coming back to get me for all the things in life I must have done that weren’t pleasing to whoever runs the Store Upstairs. As I pulled back on the highway, a trucker named Pony Boy, who had seen me parked by the side of the road, drove up behind and asked over his CB if I was okay. He said he would follow me for a bit to be sure all was well; truck drivers then were polite and always helpful, especially out in the country. All the truckers were on CBs and everyone had a handle. My handle was Little Orphan Annie, which I had thought was really funny when I picked it. However, it was becoming more appropriate by the moment.
About 10 miles down the road after I’d changed the fuel filter, the truck went into a coughing fit, losing power again. We limped over to the side of the road and Pony Boy stopped behind me to see what was going on. He had an extra fuel filter in his truck, so he decided to change mine again—maybe the one I put on was defective. Once more, down the road we went, Pony Boy coaching me on the CB radio. (“Put your rearview mirror on the center strip,” etc.) At this point, I was really tired. It was heaven having Pony Boy, who knew about coughing trucks and weigh stations, following behind. I’d have married him then and there if he’d only followed me on to Kentucky. On the nose, 10 miles down the road, the truck coughed to a stop again as if it had run out of fuel. Pony Boy climbed out of his truck with a length of baling wire, curved the end of it into a hook, and explored my fuel tank. A moment later, he fished out a big roll of paper towel that had been floating in the fuel. As the diesel was used, the paper was sucked down until it blocked the fuel intake; then, when I stopped the truck, it would float back up to the top. Once on the road again, about 10 miles of driving drew the paper back down to flatten over the intake screen. Must have been a very close friend who wanted to make sure I learned the way of truck driving, I thought, so he made sure the lesson would be memorable. And it was, to this day. A few hours later, Pony Boy came to his fork in the road, so he wished me luck and headed off his own way. I stifled a tear and reminded myself that driving the Peterbilt and nine horses to Kentucky was my idea. As we went on, bad directions made me miss a lot of turns (no GPS in those days), and I began to become very proficient at backing out of dead-end streets. With no power steering, to turn the front wheels from a standstill, I had to stand up, grab the steering wheel and fling myself down, turn a quarter of a turn; stand up, grab the steering wheel, fling myself down, turn a quarter of a turn; do it over again. Again. Again. More sweating. If you keep moving forward, you eventually arrive somewhere, and our somewhere was where we were spending the night. It was usually at cattle layovers. There, the horses could stay in pens and move around. We got them unloaded and cared for, and The Bullet and I even got a couple of hours of sleep. Then we got up and set off again. APR IL 2010 | 189
A Lifetime With Arabians By the second day, I was feeling a lot better about my driving skills. I was even shifting into fourth gear fairly well. We had passed Council Bluffs and were crossing into northern Missouri when somebody came up beside us, honking and pointing to attract our attention. What now, for heaven’s sake? One of our taillights had fallen off the back of the trailer and was bouncing along down the street, hanging by the wires, with the turn signal blinking. We were going through a little country town at the time, and I saw a repair shop with a driveway beside it I could get the truck and trailer into. I walked in to talk to an old man who was sitting behind a pedal saw. Me: “Sir? I’m wondering if you can help me. My taillight on my trailer has fallen off.”
miniscule slice of iron fell away. This could take hours, I thought. Maybe days. Push-push, zing-zing, and four hours later, we finally had a piece of metal cut and the light fastened to it. He attached that to my trailer, the light worked, and we were ready to go again. Meanwhile, the frazzled horses were getting more tired and all of us were getting cranky. They were stomping, and Kaliki was beginning to kick. They were saying they’d had it. I’m thinking, “What do you mean, you’ve had it?” The Bullet, of course, wasn’t thinking at all. I’ll say this for that little man in Missouri. That light stayed on that trailer for as long as I had it, and I’ll bet wherever it is, when it finally goes to trailer heaven, that little old man’s push-pedal artistry will be the last thing to disintegrate into rust.
Him: “H’m.” I stand there, waiting, thinking surely he’ll do something, but he doesn’t. Nothing happens.
We got back on the road. There are big interstates now in Missouri, but at the time we were on two-lane roads, particularly narrow for a big truck. People saw me coming and just automatically headed for the bushes. The Bullet
Me: “Would you like to come look at it?” Him: “Okay.” He comes out, stares at my rig, but doesn’t say a word. “Oh, brother,” I’m now thinking. “I have another Bullet on my hands.” Me: “Do you think you can repair it?” Him: “Yup.” Okay. One doesn’t have to be a good talker to be a good mechanic. I got The Bullet, we watered the horses, and while the old man took the taillight into his shop, we found crackers to eat. Once again, fatigue was setting in. We had had very little food, as finding a place to stop a 55-foot truck and trailer, except at a truck stop, was difficult to say the least. I walked back into the shop and found the old man sitting with a foot-square, half-inch-thick piece of iron he was going to use to attach the lights to the trailer. However, he had to cut the iron first. This was northern Missouri and it was 1976. Just because I’m a Californian, what did I expect? As I watched, he pumped the pedal (pushpush)—and the cutter chewed at the iron (zing-zing). A
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“I must say, I loved driving that truck, sitting way up there, bouncing along. Although we never made a trip without breaking down, I truly enjoyed the adventure that it created, the people I met, and all the things I learned along the way.” and I were not speaking, but he never spoke anyway, which was by this time a blessing. By the time we finally got to our next stop, Kaliki was kicking the back out of her trailer stall and *Essaul, a stallion by Comet I’d brought over from Sweden, was jumping his front feet into his manger. I whacked Kaliki on her bottom, which didn’t help, and thumped *Essaul on his nose and told him to get his feet out of his manger. How they kept their legs attached, I don’t know, but I was too weary to worry about it. And they had four of them, anyway. The third day, I was tired beyond tired, and we were about two hours out when I heard a honk-honk-honkhonk. No faulty trailer lights this time—it was Dan,
A Lifetime With Arabians who had caught up with us. The shape I was in, Dan looked closely related to Jesus Christ, I was so happy to see him. He drove us on into Kentucky and The Bullet drove the hay truck. I sat in the passenger seat of the Peterbilt, too tired to tell Dan the story, and I wasn’t about to whine anyway. It was my truck, and I had driven it almost to Kentucky. Despite the challenges of getting to Louisville, our 1976 U.S. Nationals was wonderful. With nine horses, we won seven or eight national championships. I learned to drive that Peterbilt and nine-horse trailer all over the country. I backed a quarter-mile out of a city street in Edmonton, Canada, in the rain, and drove over San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge, rubbing the tires
on the edge of the bridge. I even won a $100 bet with a fellow that fancied himself a truck driver and thought he could shift into fourth without grinding the gears; to my delight, he couldn’t. I must say, I loved driving that truck, sitting way up there, bouncing along. Although we never made a trip without breaking down, I truly enjoyed the adventure that it created, the people I met, and all the things I learned along the way. When I’m 100, if someone needs to replace a dirty fuel filter or is having trouble with an alternator at dusk, they can give me call. ■
Sheila Varian, of Arroyo Grande, Calif., has bred, trained and shown Arabians for more than half a century. Now in its ninth generation, the Varian Arabians program is a dynasty of her bloodlines, with national champions in nearly every division. She has been a leading breeder at Scottsdale and the U.S. Nationals many times, and in 2008 received the USEF/Performance Horse Registry Leading Breeder Award, a selection made over all breeds. Sheila’s own record includes U.S. and Canadian National Championships in halter, English, park, stock horse, and western. She is a recognized authority in the equine industry as a whole, and was inducted into the Cowgirl Hall of Fame in Fort Worth, Texas, in 2003. Her techniques for socializing and training horses are based on the “soft approach” of the legendary Tom Dorrance, with whom she was close friends from their introduction in the 1960s until his death in 2003. For more information on Varian Arabians, and its April Spring Fling and August Summer Jubilee weekends, please go to www.varianarabians.com.
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