Squirrels, Horses, and Marriage Proposals

Before it was a park in the middle of the now “heavily populated” Satsuma, Alabama, under a canopy of oaks and home to a few billion squirrels, there stood a small wood-framed house with a detached garage, or as I liked to remember it — our horse barn.

We didn’t have horses.

But we did have a few dogs who could pass for horses any day — at least to a four-year-old boy with lots of imagination.

There was no asphalt or cement for the short driveway — only finely granulated Alabama topsoil baked in the afternoon sun.

It was ideal for mud pies.

Behind the house sat a little one-room barbershop and beyond that — train tracks.

My father would catch rides on trains from our personal train station. The train took him down to Chickasaw or sometimes into Mobile for work. I’m hoping it slowed to a manageable speed as there was really no depot in Satsuma at the time. I don’t know that there ever was one there.

The post office was across the street. I think that the house used as a post office is still there today, although the Postal Service relocated the post office across Highway 43 besides what used to be a neighborhood store. I liked the old house better.

Once, as a four-year-old, I wandered away from the homestead and into the parking lot of the post office.

I say wandered, but it was about 10 yards away.

I heard galloping. There weren’t many buggies left in circulation, but some non-conformists chose to travel by horse.

I’ll call the horse Mr. Ed because he’s who I think of when I remember this scene.

I gazed towards the traveler as he dismounted his horse, looped the rope over a chain-linked fence, and walked inside.

Turns out, Mr. Ed was not interested in checking the mail, or for that matter, waiting for its rider.

Mr. Ed tilted his head a few times, un-looped the rope, backed away from the chain-linked fence, and smiled at me.

OK, maybe he just winked. Regardless, one second later he was galloping down 4th Street towards East Orange Avenue.

Soon thereafter, the rider exited the post office with his mail, but with no visible horse on which to return home.

For only a brief second, the horseless rider glanced at me.

Did he think that I had freed Mr. Ed?

He didn’t wait around to ask. He took off in a gallop after his horse on 4th Street towards Satsuma High School.

I told this story to a friend years ago, who told me that he was most likely the rider who failed to properly secure his horse when he went into the post office.

After we had moved to the, only slightly larger, city of Saraland, Mr. Baldwin (for whom the park is named) demolished (or moved) our old house. In 1982, the Baldwin family gave the land to the city of Satsuma and it now serves as a public park.

In 1992, I brought a Russian Princess to this place where I had a kind of “beginning” (i.e., my parents had moved from Louisiana to Alabama when I was four — so this was my beginning in Alabama. I know it’s a stretch but work with me!)

I kneeled and asked her to begin a new journey with me.

She said yes.

My children don’t care too much for this story — especially after the 100th time.

But I like it.

It reminds me of home.