Archive » January 10, 2008

Valley’s nostalgic past alive and well

 

Imagination is a wonderful thing.

If you were to focus your imagination on a serene and beautiful scene, it might very well be a leafy country lane. You’re walking along quietly enjoying the sunshine, inhaling the sweet smells of the earth and listening to the songs of birds. Then, off in the distance, you hear the tympanic sounds of a horse’s hooves trotting slowly toward you.  The horse and carriage stop, and the driver invites you to join him for a pleasant drive. 

 

   This enticing scenario is relived over and over by members of the Santa Ynez Valley Carriage Club, who treasure having nostalgic moments with a faithful horse as their companion. Perhaps it is the desire for a different kind of adventure that inspires them to revel in this peaceful yet invigorating activity. Or are they re-imagining the early history of this valley and refusing to let a part of the unique charm here vanish?

After a hiatus of a couple of years, the Santa Ynez Valley Carriage Club has regrouped and hitched its hopes to a star. The timing was right, as our valley has been blessed by new residents who understand the rare essence that it has to offer.

 

Art Lacert and his family are relatively new residents. When they first saw the Santa Ynez Valley they fell in love with the natural beauty. But one of the main reasons that Art purchased the famous and historic Palacio Del Rio estate was that there was plenty of room on the grounds for him to drive his horse and carriage.

When we visited him there recently, he took us on a complete tour, and we were taken back to the time when it was the Juan Y Lolita Rancho, built in the 1920s by J.J. Mitchell for his wife Lolita Armour.

 

We remembered when Mitchell and his friends, Ed Borein and Elmer Awl, formed the gentlemen’s riding club, The Rancheros Visitadores, in 1930.

Then, as time went on, the rancho was owned in turn by film star James Stewart and singer Dean Martin.

“This is the bar where Dean liked to hang out,” Art told me, as we wandered from room to room. He is restoring the old house and replacing broken tiles and light fixtures so that it will reflect its former character and beauty. Every room has windows that look out on magnificent views of the valley and mountains beyond.

 

Art keeps his valuable carriages in a spacious garage that has beautiful murals painted, long ago, by an artist named Paschall. The garage holds a Spindle Seat Concord that is more than a century old and a shiny, newer Amish-built Meadowbrook cart.

“What I love about horses is that they are so much like children,” he said, “and I like caring for them. I think that the reason so many women love horses is that they bring out their maternal instincts.”

Art rode horseback for years, and then one day he just plunged into carriage driving. “For 22 years I had a wonderful companion named Blue who was a leopard appaloosa,” he said. “He was often smarter than his humans, and even had a sense of humor.

 

“Blue was very affectionate and would give everyone big kisses. He just loved people and was not above playing little tricks on you. For instance, when I would ride out in the country, we would take a route that passed by wild apple trees. Blue would always stop at the first tree and wait for me to give him an apple. In fact, he would not move ’til you gave him his apple. Then he wanted you to have one, too,” Art said.

 “It was with Blue that I first began driving,” he said. “I started reading a book on driving, and then I bought a Meadowbrook cart and harness.  I didn’t have a clue as to exactly what I was doing.  But I followed the directions exactly, chapter by chapter, and I finally actually harnessed Blue to the cart. I will never forget the expression on his face, when he turned around and looked at me and seemed to say, ‘What the heck are we doing?’ But he was so tame and kind that away we went without any problem.

 

“The thing I really like about carriage driving,” Art told me, “is that when I get out of the carriage I don’t ache anywhere, but when I dismount from a saddle I ache everywhere. You know a lot of people love horses, but they don’t want to ride. So carriage driving fits right in. I was delighted to find that there was the Santa Ynez Valley Carriage Club here and they had thirty or forty members. So, right away I found kindred spirits.

“These carriage people are very generous with their help and time. It’s sort of like instant friendship. I’m careful and use safety precautions like wearing a helmet and having the harness put on correctly. My driving horses are two Morgans named Dylan and Goldie,” he said.

Art, like many others, remembers the famous Carriage Classic that was held here in the 1990s.  He feels that if a professional team of show managers could be found, it might very well be successful again. The Carriage Association of America is the powerhouse behind carriage shows and would be the entity to contact for further investigation.

 

The president of the Santa Ynez Valley Carriage Club is Mike McCormack, and he, too, is enthusiastic about the future.

“We have a lot of new members, and some of them are just people who like to be around carriage driving,” he said.

“Our club has been invited to drive at local ranches like the Chamberlin’s and Steve Lyons’ ranch near Los Alamos, and the Gainey Ranch has been kind to us, too,” McCormack said.

“We’d like to have a permanent base like the Santa Ynez Valley Equestrian Center.  Then, perhaps, we could leave the parts of our course, like the bridge, cones and mail box, in place, and people could go over and practice whenever they wanted to,” he said.

 

“We’ll be holding some official events this year,” Mike continued. “One will be American Driving Trials, where we do various events like dressage, cones and marathons. There will also be CDEs, which are combined driving events, and those are three-day events. These will take place on a local ranch and have a large number of entries; perhaps 85. It would also be fun to have drives through towns like the one we had last year through the town of Los Olivos. “Maybe Old Santa Ynez Day parade would be a good event for us.”