The blind cowpoke

'We had a hot-blooded English stallion name of Desmond Day. Bred him to mustang mares and sold the cross for cavalry remounts.

'On the first day of May 1925, Desmond Day was in the corral. He come past me and that was it. Always figured he kicked off to the side, hit me, I never saw it coming....

'They sent me to blind school - to learn me to weave baskets. Said that way I could make a livin' since I couldn't buckaroo no more....

'I don't really give a damn about bein' blind all these years. Bothers the neighbors more than it bothers me. One time I was painting the house but every time the neighbors came by and saw me they would make me come down off the ladder. But I showed them. Finished painting at night, didn't make any difference to me....'
'After the accident I was blind as a bat so I began using my hands to see a horse. Tell a lot just by feel. Tell if he has wire cuts, a capped hock, pigeon-mouth, fistulous withers.... I'm good enough I can actually tell the color of a horse and be right 95 times out of 100. Colors have a different texture, feel, hairs are distinctive. The only one that gives me fits is a paint. Depends on where you touch a paint what color it happens to be.

Give me a couple minutes and I can tell more about a particular horse than most folks would probably care to know. It wasn't a gift I was born with. It took me a while to develop it. But I enjoy eating - so I learned. I would have to say, over the long haul, that my blindness hasn't affected me all that much. Got no complaints. In this here life I've pretty much done exactly what I wanted to do.'