What little kid never rode a stick horse in the make believe world of cowboys and Indians?  If he didn’t he sure missed something. I was Roy Rogers, Gene Autry, Johnny Mack Brown, Tim Holt, and Rocky Lane, depending on who was playing at the Saturday matinee. I had the art of making a stick horse refined down to a science.  The first thing you had to have of course was a good broom or mop handle. After cutting the bottom off, I would heat one of my mothers ice picks in the flame of our gas cook stove until it was red hot. I would then burn a hole through the end of the stick horse with the red hot ice pick.  Of course everytime I did it, momma had a fit. She always said I was ruining her ice pick, which was true, because once it got so hot, it lost its temper and would bend easily when chipping ice. We always had two ice picks, a new one and a ruined one, and I never cared which one I picked up so we had a high turnover of ice picks at our house. After burning the hole I would tie a knot in a leather string and stick it through the holes, pulling it up tight against the knot. That was my rein. I would then heat the ice pick again and “brand” my horse with a “T”. I had a whole string of stick horses. The best in the neighborhood, and with such a fine string it was bound to happen, someone rustled my herd.  I always kept them tied neatly in a row inside a storage building, in back of the house.  They had been gone for a couple of days when Pa Callaway, the old gentleman who lived next door came and told me he was walking up the alley behind our house and saw my string of stick horses tied to Billy Higgins fence. I slipped down the alley to Billy’s house and sure enough, there they were, all tied in a neat row branded with my “T”. I quietly untied them and led them home and I can tell you it was a long time before Billy Higgins got to ride one of my stick horses again. I rode many a mile and had lots of adventures.  It seems like only yesterday that I was standing in the kitchen making a new stick horse.