At Home, part 26

Along with spring in Spain came the smell of manure. Manure was spread liberally on lawns and fields as a yearly fertilizer, and it just stank to high heaven for a few weeks. This was noticeable everywhere, but nowhere more so than on the road to La Cañada.

La Cañada was a little town west of Madrid where the Mazzilli kids took riding lessons. I had asked Julie and Lisa during vacation if they might like to ride—Lisa Mazzilli had told me the lessons were really cheap, in English, from a Swedish girl—and they seemed mildly interested. This was in contrast to my own childhood experience. I was the sister of a Horse Girl—one of those girls who was just crazy for horses. If you had asked Sally, even as a little kid, what she wanted for a birthday or Christmas present, the answer was always the same: a horse. In our family that was never going to happen, but when I was ten (and she was just six) she agitated so hard for riding lessons that Mom and Dad started sending us up to the fancy Onwentsia stables in Lake Forest, Illinois, for weekly lessons. A little red bus came along Green Bay Road and picked up girls all along the way. I was never any good as a rider, but I did love it—though I was nowhere near Sally’s level of devotion.

Lisa Mazzilli had idly complained to me that her allergies made her nuts when she took her kids out to the stables, so I offered to do all the driving for the kids if she’d once lead me out there, and she agreed to do so. From Pozuelo we went south and west, through Boadilla del Monte and past many farmers’ fields—all layered with manure, all incredibly stinky.

“Ugh! Close the windows! I can’t stand it!” the kids chorused week after week as we sped down the empty road between farms.

“The smell is already in here,” I said. “If we close the windows, we’ll just seal it in!” So the kids would hold their noses and moan till we got to the stables.

The little riding club was a dump. An unpaved road near an asphalt plant led to it. There was a stable, an abandoned bar (everything in Spain had a bar), a cracked fountain, and a couple of paddocks for horses. There was a dusty outdoor ring, and there were empty (manure-covered) fields all around where, if the teacher let you, you could ride.

Elena, the Swedish riding mistress, assigned the horses and handed out the helmets. Grooms were sent to catch the horses that were out in the paddock, but you had to learn to groom your horse and put on the saddle and bridle by yourself. This was something I was happy to do—at Onwentsia the grooms brought your horse to you all tacked up; the little princesses never did any work. My girls had no horse sense, so I was happy to run between them, throwing a saddle on here, tightening a bridle there, helping a Mazzilli in between. Most of the horses were wily and ill-tempered, and they’d escape or step on your foot if you gave them half a chance—which Julie and Lisa did from time to time.

Elena gave a good, tough hour-long lesson for about $12 a person—an incredible bargain. There were usually only five or six kids in the class. Elena put a lot of emphasis on balance, and she often had the kids ride without reins or without stirrups, or backwards. She’d have them ride on their knees in the saddle, or make them go “around the world”—turn 360 degrees in the saddle while riding. Julie and Lisa hated these exercises, and their interest in riding waned.

One time, before they stopped riding altogether, Julie asked if she could bring her friend Andrea to ride someday. Andrea was from the U.K. and had taken riding lessons before moving to Spain. “Sure,” I said, “we can take her next week.”

When I picked Andrea up she was wearing nice leather riding boots and her own helmet. “I should warn you that this stable is not very fancy,” I said.

“Oh, I hate those posh stables,” she said agreeably in her lovely English accent.

Another time the Mazzillis had relatives visiting, so Frank Mazzilli, Lisa’s husband, took his kids and the visitors to the stable in a separate car. One of the relatives was a twelve-year-old cousin who, when watching the horses get hosed off after the ride, noticed one horse’s huge penis hanging down. It looked like another hose.

The kid went pale. “What’s that?!” he asked his Uncle Frank. Frank and I looked where he was pointing, went speechless for a second, and then dissolved in laughter.

Of course, though the kids quit riding, I was re-hooked, and I started to drive to La Cañada on Tuesday mornings, when Elena gave a class to some other ladies. I met a German woman, Elsa, and a couple of Spanish ladies. They helped me learn to do the major grooming chores, like pick dirt out of the horse’s hooves and get the tack on efficiently. We’d have a great class—always physically challenging, always working toward more delicate guidance of the horse and better balance in the saddle—then cool down the horses, clean them up, and put them away. The time with the horses before and after riding was as much fun for me as the lesson was.