Girl on a Pony, Volume 61

By Laverne Hanners

Book Overview

Girl on a Pony is the gritty, humorous, unflinchingly courageous story of five children growing up on a cattle ranch in the remote Valley of the Dry Cimarron in northeastern New Mexico near the little border town of Kenton, Oklahoma. Narrated years later by the oldest daughter, LaVerne, it is a vivid and authentic portrait of ranching life between the two world wars, from 1925, when the family moved to the Goodson Ranch from a half-dugout claim shack in Colorado, to 1936, when they began to disperse. During those years, people in the region endured blizzards, sick and maddened animals, drought, the Dust Bowl, and the Great Depression-with stoic good humor. In Girl on a Pony, cowboys go about their daily tasks, teaching the children all they know. Women endure the hardships of life in an isolated area, coping with the brutal labor ranch life requires of them, and maintaining touches of beauty and civilization where they can-creating lawns from relentlessly rocky soil, holding dances for their children, and painstakingly tatting when all else fails.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0806130555
• ISBN13: 9780806130552
• Release Date: February 1998
• Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
• Length: 224 Pages
• Weight: 0.44 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 4.8" x 7.6"

Customer Reviews

Laverne was my Aunt

I knew many of the people Laverne talked about in this book. In my teen years, I spent a few weeks staying with my uncle Jiggs Collins. Jiggs lived in Trinidad when I first stayed at his house. He had a wild baby bobcat residing in his living room that winter. Jiggs introduced me to the songs of Ramblin Jack Elliot. Jiggs was a LADIES man. Lots of ladies loved the old guy. He was one of the nicest and most considerate men I ever met, except that he could not manage to keep appointments. Jiggs's brother Bob said that Jiggs "woke up in a new world every morning." I asked Laverne why she loved Jiggs. She said he was handsome and was a gentle lover. He was not gentle when he killed a bear or rode a horse. Jiggs moved to Weston and built a stone house at age 60+. He built it from scratch, working the stone then setting it. I miss him. I agree, this story would make a great movie.

A powerful woman's jewel

You wouldn't guess at the power of this book from it's size. As finely written as the complicated, intricately tatted lace fancywork Laverne's mother tatted into bleached sugar sacks, "still whole after fifty years." Stories as gripping and gritty as anything Hemingway ever wrote, featuring hailstorms that break every window in the house, treacherous horses, dogs, and rattlesnakes, and scandalous cowboys. Frequent flashes of wise, deep humor, understated and droll, that catches you unawares and leaves you laughing out loud. This was a woman worthy of the name. Would make a terrific movie.

Funny and honest life of a girl growing up in the desert

I wish you could all have met Dr. Hanners! Janet Reno wrote to Dr. Hanners praising her mutual memory of growing up wild and free while trying to control nature and nature in the form of a pony. These are real people, many of whom still live in Kenton, Oklahoma, population 52.