For a brief period at the turn of the century (the 20th to the 21st to be exact), I found myself deep in the throws of horse ownership.

Now, for anyone who is a regular reader of my weekly offering may be doing the math in their head and wondering how a fiveyear- old finds himself owning a horse outright, which I’ll gladly explain. This wasn’t your typical breed of horse. No equestrians were busting down the door with bags of cash in hand to purchase him. He wasn’t the next in line to qualify for that year’s Kentucky Derby. You definitely wouldn’t find any sculptures of him in your grandmother’s living room.

Side note: did anyone else’s grandmother have sculptures of horses in their living room? Mine never showed any interest in horses yet for some reason they were a part of her décor. Did they come with the house? Who’s to say?

Anyway, my horse was very thin and gangly, almost stick-like. His skin was a yellowish greige (gray + beige) color. His eyes never seemed to have any brightness or life behind them, and the hair on his mane was a dirty grayish color almost as if somebody had used it to clean the floor with… If you haven’t deciphered it by now, my horse was made from a mop.

The school was gearing up for the annual kindergarten rodeo. We were all given instructions on what to wear for the event: a white shirt, jeans and a red bandana. Cowboy hats were suggested but not mandatory. The big ask was that everybody has their own stick horse to ride.

I relayed the message back home by way of a note from the teacher. There was just one problem with that, though.

For a lot of my childhood, there wasn’t a ton of extra to go around. All of the other kids were going to come in with those store-bought stuffed stick horses with the button in the ear to make it neigh like an actual horse, but my parents scrambled to figure out how they would get me what I need.

One day, we went to my grandmother’s upholstery shop just off the square in Woodbury. She ran the place with my uncle Charles and the two did everything from furniture upholstery to refinishing to alterations. They had a steady business for many years in town.

Charles is one of those guys that seemed to be able to make something out of nothing. He could go into any thrift store and buy something for $5 and then turn into something worth $500. He built beds for his family completely from scratch and from his mind.

Whenever I was old enough, I started working for him after school stripping furniture, cutting out material and mostly delivering the finished pieces. We spent countless hours together, especially during the summers when I didn’t have to go to school and could be at the shop all day.

He’s also incredibly funny too, so those days would often be incredibly enjoyable.

On the particular day that we walked into the shop leading up to the kindergarten rodeo, he presented me with something that he had made with stuff laying around the shop: my horse.

Most of its head was made from some scrap fabric that was at the shop. The head was made from an old mop, as was the stick that represented its body. For some reason, I remember the eyes being googly ones that were glued on, but they may have been buttons.

My stallion awaited me, but I was reluctant to hop on. Just as I had suspected, everyone else brought in their store-bought steeds to ride around the gym in all their glory, yet here I was with my homemade mop horse.

Often when I recount that story, it’s about how embarrassed I was to have to bring that thing to school, but as I’ve grown a little older, I find myself just feeling thankful that my uncle was willing to pull something together for me so I wouldn’t be without, especially considering how some of the other kids did.

That mop horse now reminds me of this ingenuity that seems to run through my family tree like, well, a pack of wild horses. This ability to find a way to make something out of nothing.

I’ve written before about my mom being able to pull together a Halloween costume from items at a thrift store. I have many memories of my great-grandfather searching his property (and occasionally other people’s but that’s a story for another day) to find things to make work in his various projects.

If you scour our family recipe book, a lot of them stem from pantry staples and proteins that are relatively cheap or were at the time. It’s full of meals like tuna wiggle, salmon patties, and goulash or, as it’s referred to in my family, slumgullion, the definition of which online is a “cheap or insubstantial stew.”

Even my dad (though from a different set of genetics) can make something out of nothing just by visualizing it in his head.

I come from a group of people that somehow always made things work. While it may have been slightly embarrassing at times to have to show those skills off to my peers, I realize now what a blessing that ability has been in my life.

We never went without despite circumstances where that very easily could have been the case. Never an empty stomach or a need unmet.

And while that mop horse may not have looked as pretty or pristine as the rest of the participants of the kindergarten rodeo, it rode exactly the same, and it symbolized an ingenuity that I can only hope somehow made its way to me.