You Still Can't Kick a Dead Horse (Story)

(2010)  Stories sometimes take on a life of their own. They are passed along like a children’s game of telephone until truth and fiction are hard to separate. 

One such story involves an Allen High School student and a dead horse named Cricket. I can’t even remember who first told me the story. It was probably one of the three guys I met at the Allen Old Timer’s Reunion last year. 

 “Get him to tell you the story about the day his horse died at school,” one of them said. They were referring to Paul Knight, a 1957 Allen High School graduate who literally stood a head above everyone in the room – even without his cowboy hat. 

I spoke briefly with Paul that day but he just smiled when I asked him about “the horse.” I asked around town last summer and got the real story – or so I thought. 

 The high school junior had ridden his horse into town and tethered her outside the old red brick schoolhouse. Sometime that morning a student looked outside to declare there was a horse lying on the ground that appeared to be dead. Kids ran to the windows to witness the spectacle as a truck arrived to remove the unfortunate mare.

 It was also rumored that Paul received a good whupping when he returned home. Not so, said another “old timer” at the AHS alumni tailgate party last fall. “I graduated a few years later but my brother told me the whole story. Paul had ridden the previously mentioned horse several miles into town. Unfortunately the horse had come up lame and a veterinarian had to put him to sleep.” 

 I heard several more variations of the story before I ran into Paul at last Saturday’s Old Timer’s Reunion. It was time to get the story straight from the horse’s mouth –so to speak. “I had hurt my knee when a mule kicked me so I couldn’t practice with the football team,” Paul explained. I took the bus home from school but decided to ride my white mare Cricket back to practice for a laugh.” 

Classmate Dan Dugger convinced Paul to let him take the horse for a ride around the old school gymnasium on Belmont Drive. “Just as they came around the corner of the gym Cricket collapsed like she had been shot,” said Paul. “She just died right there next to the football field.” 

 At this point of the story I need to explain that removing a dead horse is no easy task. No tractor was available that afternoon so Cricket was unceremoniously covered up until the next morning. “Our big concern was getting her off the school property before the little kids came in the next morning,” he added. 

 The tractor did come early and Cricket was taken to Fort Worth where she soon passed into Allen’s collective history. They never determined why the horse died although Paul suspects she ate some bad Bois d’Arc apples or drank some contaminated runoff water that afternoon. 

I actually liked the first version better but it’s hard to argue with a 6’5” cowboy. Thanks Paul for setting the story straight. #