Ambitions

At 80 I often reflect on my ambitions
Many unrealized but not for lack of trying
Many secret until now
So here is my confession

My first ambition was to be a farmer
But recurring droughts and collapse of cattle prices
Taught me in the 1950s
That I could not make a living from the soil

Two numbers are cemented in my memory
42 and 14
The first the price per pound I paid (in cents) for feeder calves
The second the price per pound (in cents) I sold them for

My next ambition was to be a writer
This fueled by professors who
Introduced me to Conrad, Shakespeare, Faulkner and Hemingway
I have writ some all self published but commercially all failures

My next ambition was to be a journalist
And for two decades I have writ reports for the American Field
But alas that venerable periodical published weekly since 1874
Pays not a cent to its reporters

But these ambitions have paled compared to my dearest held
That to be a good equestrian
That is, to look good on a horse
Here I have failed utterly and miserably and I have proof

That proof came at my favorite place Chinquapin
From the mouth of an expert judge of all horse matters
That judge was the traveling farrier Howard Wood
A character straight out of Lonesome Dove

There Howard a man known by all to be forthright
Said to me one day after watching me mounted for a week
“Tom, I hate to say this but I must
You just do not look right on a horse”

Devastated
Would be an understatement
Of how this judgment hit me
For all my years I’d longed to look good on a horse

But as one of Shakespeare’s characters said
(I forget which said it)
“Ambition should be made of sterner stuff”
(I remember now twas Antony said it in Julius Caesar)