Bingo
Before I would get the chain over top of the post, so I could swing open the big gate, Bingo would have his head out of his stall, nodding up and down, and whinnying his hellos. Paper route finished, I’d make my way to the stables on Bollingwood Rd., behind Ellie Wood Keith’s house. The sun would be up, but not hot yet, not oppressive, as it would be later, on an August day in Charlottesville, Virginia.
By the time I saw the stables, in 1980, they looked like they were 100 years old, and in fact the true number wasn’t much less. A horse stable, right in Charlottesville, near the University. Certainly it hadn’t been the only one, but it was the only one left. And now these few lines of stalls and one hay barn sat sagging and worn, leaning like their owner, Ellie Wood Keith, then about 86 years old. Ellie Wood, who wore furs in July, sang through the house for the lemon juice and occasionally hopped up on a pony and had a trot around the ring. She called me “boy” mostly (I assumed because I was the only one, amidst a gaggle of girls) but a few, memorable times used my actual name. But she didn’t snap at me as much as she did the girls, or so it seemed to me. I helped her with things: fetching a can of salmon, or running upstairs for one of those coats. I didn’t ride, like the girls, at least not seriously; I just hung around. I lived a few blocks away and had started coming around because of a girl, Debbie, but stayed and found other loves, like Bingo.
One line of stalls ran up the left side of the lot behind the big house, and another line ran along the back, broken up by the open front barn. In between the house and the stables was just enough room to accommodate a lopsided and dented figure-8, which served as a riding space. There was also an old claw foot bathtub mounted on a crude wooden pedestal, like a statue of a failed conqueror, serving as a trough. At the time there were also two empty lots across the street, so the girls could take a pony through the gate and down the driveway that ran up the left side and have a bit of field to trot around without going far.
The stalls themselves were wonderfully aged: grayed old wood, with split stall doors, so ponies could hang their heads out and watch the action. The tops of the lower doors were all darkened and shiny from decades of ponies rubbing their massive jawbones across them. And along the fronts of the stalls a row of posts about 6 feet out, to support the roof that hung over, the posts not clean cut lumber but actual trees — smoothed by some sanding I’m sure, but then more so by years of touch — young people’s hands softly, and the wide bodies of powerful animals less so. There was a tack room at the near end of the row closest to the big gate, filled of course with saddles and bridles and their leather smell, and also the rich, lemony smell of Murphy’s oil soap.
The barn had an open front and its rook was maybe 25 feet high, with a large enough interior to house a couple hundred bails of hay. There was a feed room tucked around the right side, a thin room, with buckets of sweet grain in wooden lockers with wooden doors that lifted up, on a floor of hard-packed dirt. Any human movement in this room produced noisy responses from every stall in the stables — whinnying and naying and shuffling of heavy hooves, rattling of old doors against loosened metal catches.
You could climb the fence around that side of the barn and hop up on the pitched roof of the stalls and sit. Behind were some trees, so there was real privacy — more than you were likely to get on top of the hay bails, even if you made a little nest up there.
The house itself was large and stately, if not somewhat dilapidated by then. The biggest house, and property, on Bollingwood Rd, with its high ceilings, tall windows and large rooms, was occupied by one small, old lady and one only slightly larger old man. Joe Hill had worked for Ellie Wood and her family for decades, at least. His parents had been sharecroppers in nearby Greene County and his grandparents had been slaves. Joe’s birthday was unknown, and I believe we celebrated it on July 4. He didn’t know how old he was and no one else did either. He lived in the room over the kitchen, the servant’s quarters, and he and Ellie Wood didn’t interact much. In the warm months he sat on the kitchen porch and in the cold ones in the kitchen itself, in a thatched wood chair stationed next to the radiator. A lot of the time he sat in his room, just large enough for a single bed and a chair, and watched the small slice of the riding ring he could see. He didn’t seem too interested in that though, having seen young people ride around on horses for over half a century at that point. He didn’t move around much anymore — damaged, angry, drunk, sweet. I was told he had been run over by a horse as a young man but didn’t get much medical attention, given he was the help, and black. But he could tell just from the sound of the hooves whether a girl had crossed a pony’s lead leg up when moving from trot to canter.
I went to Ellie Wood’s after school a few times a week, mostly sitting with Joe. I have no idea what we talked about, but we talked. Or at least I did. His fingernails had grown so long they curved over the tops of his fingers and his room smelled strongly of urine and alcohol, as did he. I’d run down to the 7–11 for his Newports and cans of potted meat. And we’d sit and smoke together (probably the only grown-up I knew that thought it was perfectly normal for a 13-year old to smoke). Once in a while a man and a woman came and took him to get a haircut, and I think they brought him alcohol. For a long time, I assumed they were relatives, and assumed that Joe couldn’t really be alone in the world. I came to find out I was wrong. They were just nice folks doing a kindness to an old man. As far I know, Joe had no contact with any family at all. But Ellie Wood, her granddaughter Sue, who ran the stables, and others took care of his burial when he passed, and he had a well-attended funeral in Oakwood Cemetery in Charlottesville.
I also spent time with Bingo, a paint pony with a feisty attitude and a warm heart. I headed for him on early weekend mornings, after finishing my paper route, but before the serious horse people, the girls, showed up. I would lie on his back in his tiny stall, or just stand at the stall door and rest my head against his. I would look into his eyes as I spoke to him, and must have kissed his black, rubbery cheeks a thousand times, taking in that distinct and wonderful smell. I loved that pony. Sometimes I would take him out and walk around the ring, with a bridle on him or just a halter, or ride around bareback for a few minutes. “Ride” in the truest sense, as he decided where to go, and at what pace. Partly because that’s how he wanted it and partly because I wasn’t much of a rider. I was a hanger on, to the ponies, and to the place.
One Sunday I showed up and was making the rounds of the stalls, saying hello to everyone, and found Strawberry lying on her side. She had already started bloating when I arrived, twice her size already. She had gotten out of a locked stall, and a closed yard and hit by a car, apparently. I don’t know. The dead horse hauling truck showed up by mid-morning and scooped her now-massive dead body up with an odd contraption rigged to what might have been a tow truck at some point. I can’t remember if it made me sad, but I sure can remember it.
But I remember Joe more, and Bingo, and Ellie Wood.
Ellie Wood Page was born in 1894, July 17. Her father passed away a week after her birth and she was raised in the boarding house her mother ran next to the University of Virginia. She married in 1920 and at some point moved to Bollingwood Rd., where she raised her children, helping her daughter, also Ellie Wood, rise to national prominence as an equestrian. And where she taught dozens of young people the joys of horses and riding, and in my case the joys of horses and the people that love them.
