TSII NAN Auction Pieces: 1995 to 2009

Photo by Karen Gerhardt

Like my webpage on the TSII bridle Cat Bar II, this will be an in-depth look at a narrow slice of TSII tack: just twelve pieces.  (The narrower the better; otherwise I don't finish!)  It's quite time-consuming to translate my massive scrapbooks to this blog post format... especially since I'm not using my scanner.  But I promised (in my NAN Cookies post), and, once started, got hooked.  Enjoy!

 The North American Nationals began in 1994.  The TSII's first donation piece was the very next year, 1995.  I started out small:  Two Western Show Halters of our fanciest make.  These were "filigree enamel inlay," my own phrase for cut-out silver tape laid upon prism tape (holographic tape) color for the plates.  One was black leather with blue; the other was dark brown with pearl.  The halters landed in the hands of Karen Gerhardt, and like the artist she was, she used some of her own donation horses to photograph them.  As is normal with early pieces, I am lucky to have even one photograph of it.  I believe it sold for $225.00, a pretty high price at the time.

Imagine my astonished delight when, yesterday, "pawing" through PawPrints Saddlery blog (I randomly do this to other model horse blogs), I stumbled upon what could be this very halter!!  See picture 39 of the 89 of her GLC No Frills Show Report, the Matriarch.
http://pawprintssaddlery.blogspot.com/
The twisted-hammered-wire buckle and keeper are giveaways.  Aye it's true!!  Seldom if ever do we connect again with a piece nearly twenty years old...

The second piece, in 1997, was a saddle.  The first donation had been such a success I became brave and bold.  This was TSII #398, Rose Silhouette, a cutting edge piece in terms of the tooling pattern, the bridle and many other aspects.  It was based upon a picture I'd seen in R. Beatty's great reference book, Saddles.  My bravery was justified when TSII #398 went to Donald Meiner for $660.00, one of the highest prices paid to date for a TSII piece.

For a long time, the third piece was overlooked and forgotten.  Just one photo exists.  I found it in my Grey Braid scrapbook. 

This is a shot of the actual page.  The label says "Halter made July 1998 and sent to the NAN auction in CA at 100% donation.  I believe it fetched 65.00."  The piece featured double silver ferrules and red/black/white braided buttons.  This was the start of "smalls alternating with larges," because a large piece took so much effort and time that I could not put one out every year.

Here's a closer view.  The background ripple effect is a light reflection off the scrapbook sheet.

The fourth NAN Auction donation piece was a real flagwaver.  We pulled out many stops!  It was the year 2000 -- what a great excuse for a lot of fuss!!  The resulting saddle, an extraordinary work of contemporary art, was TSII #415, the Millennium Set.  I took apart a watch (I think-- don't really remember) and used the circuit boards from it on the saddle, as well as tooling a computer and keyboard on the breastcollar.

Notice the serapes with their world maps; the offside featured the Western Hemisphere.  Note the drops on the breastcollar and hip:  made from resistors!   The tapadero on the near side is a goldfish; note the heads of the birds on the shoulders.  As for the creature on the chest of the breastcollar, well, I'm not sure what it is.  A superbunny?

Probably, with all its copper wiring and extensive silver tape, this set is rather corroded by now.  But it was a great deal of fun to design and build:  my personal contribution to the Millennium.

The fifth piece was donated in 2002.  I had been inspired by a trip to Nogales, south of the border from Tucson.  I had gotten inside a real Mexican tack shop, and seen amazing things.  For whatever reason, I wanted to do something 'barbaric, circus-y and flashy' yet still falling within the bounds of TSII calibre and quality model horse tack.  Again, for whatever reason, it didn't catch on, and no piece was made even remotely like it afterwards.

I called it the Mexican Horsehair Bridle, done in blue, black and white nylon sinew.  The bit was handmade sterling silver -- I was starting to come into my own --  with Rio Rondo conchos soldered on top.

In 2003, inevitable pressures caught up with me.  What artist does not bite off more than they can chew sometimes? Two Peruvian sets were started in February.  One of them, for a customer, was finished on May 6.  It was numbered 3 because I had started the other one fractionally earlier. The NAN-bound set, offficially #2, missed the Auction by not being done on time.  :(   This sixth donation was finished the 9th of July, 2003, and sold on eBay in August.  Colette  Robertson demonstrated her great support for the TSII by smashing all records previously paid; the winning bid was $1925.  As with most of our NAN Auction pieces, the contribution was fifty percent.

Thus I was a pioneer in the practice of auctioning off a piece separately from the formal Auction.

The seventh piece, contrary to my big-and-small pattern, was a fantastic saddle.  Even now this beauty amazes me.  It was a companion to, part of the series if you like, to my famous Elk Saddle.  In 2004  TSII #437, the Bongo, was a fifty percent donation.

Grey Scrapbook page

The paper label says:

"TSII #437
"the Bongo"
begun 0406.18
Finish 0407.21
featured in
the North
American
Model Horse
Shower's
Association
auction held
in KY 0407.29
Tammy Davison
won with a
high bid of
$630.00
A
bargain- !!!"

Note the white braided edges, and the extensive braided buttons on the bridle and breastcollar.  The piece was a tour-de-force.  Even the dee rings are covered in braidwork.  The color was achieved by hand-dyeing natural leather.  I remember the coating process, with Super Shene, being fraught with danger and difficulty, because the dye ran.



During my research for this saddle, I learned that old Bongos develop dark coloring.  I have always loved these members of the deer and antelope family.  Someday I must make more deer-themed sets...

In 2005 I set out to repeat the triumph of the Peruvian set, and started with a jaquima, since it was small and could be finished easily.  This was our eighth donation.  The 4th TSII Peruvian, P4, was auctioned as just the jaquima.  Margaret Olson won it, $300.  A month later the bridle was built.  Not until the end of January 2006 was the rest of the set finished.  It was sold to Margaret -- we have a price, $695 -- and ten percent of this donated to NAMHSA.

Thus there is precedent for a rather slow and complicated path to being born.  But a Peruvian set takes so much out of the artist, and has so many parts and pieces, that this was necessary.

Amazingly in 2006 there was a donation, nominally a "small" since it was a bridle.  What a bridle!  As mentioned, I wrote up an entire page of my website about it.  http://www.timarustarii.com/braid/tmcatbar.htm
 It seems to've been the ad for the auction.  Our ninth donation sold for $325.00.  It was begun 0604.09 and finished 0605.03, and celebrated the making of the first Cat Bar's braided rawhide bridle in 1986.

In 2007, not to be left out but unable to contribute a 'large,' I chose again a braided bridle, our tenth donation.  This was the Cleghorn, named after the man for whom it was intended as a gift.  It was based on a real braided bridle, seen in a High Noon catalog, which was made by prisoners in the 19th century.  Begun 0704.19, it was finished 0705.04.  Robin Lee had the high bid, $260.00, at fifty percent donation.

I recall the Cleghorn as being a difficult piece, both to decipher (engineer) and to get excited about.  The reference picture was hiding some crucial details.  I have not done any more mud-colored braided bridles.

The TSII's eleventh donation was in 2008.  As told in my other post, it was not really our tenth piece -- I had miscounted over the years, missing the second and not being sure about some of the Peruvians.  Nor was it really ten years; since 1995, the true count was 14 years.  TSII #448, officially the ten year anniversary set, sold for an even $2000 to Colette Robertson.  It was based on a saddle seen in one of the High Noon catalogs.

Dig that blanket!
This was one of my earliest coronas, made with Melody Snow's book's help.

horse by Carol Howard

In January of 2009, a braided bridle, our twelfth donation, was originally made with the intent of testing Auction Barn as a venue.  Astonishingly, it was created in just 5 days, 0901.15-20.  Auctioned in early March, it failed to meet its reserve.  On June 27 of 2009, having created a brand new bit for it (my first ever engraving), I re-auctioned it, this time as a NAN donation.  It sold to Susan Peet for $250.00.  It was understood that she had the option of ordering a matching Breastcollar and Romal reins for the bridle, to be made and sold at the same donation percentage.  Somewhat naturally she availed herself of the opportunity!  These pieces were made July 21-August 7, and they fetched $175 total.

There should have been a NAN donation piece in 2010, but that's the year everything fell apart for me.  I could go to neither NAN nor BreyerFest.  I was recovering from surgery, a hysterectomy.  No pieces have been donated between then and now.

For the future, I certainly want to start up this charming habit again.  We shall just have to wait and see.  Right now I'm working on my remaining 9 Lottery winners.  The Goehring breastcollar is done, the bit and reins are done; the noseband and browband of the bridle is done!  Thank you for your patience, and Stayed Tuned!

Rikki Tavi's Prizes

This post is a reprint of one done last fall on my shipchandler site.  Two posts on that site feature horses instead of people, and thus should be over here.

This is the story of two happenings: how I did outstandingly well at Didi [Hornberger]'s Oct 14 [2012] show, and how I dragged the winning horse up to State Gamelands 100 a week later and photographed him.  The photos are almost eerie in their juxtaposition of model persnicketyness and natural beauty.  It wasn't until I'd seen them on screen that I realized:  Here was a perfect portrait of myself.  Mightily focussed on a fine model horse -- able to live by, through and for him -- I yet found myself gradually becoming subsumed by the surrounding landscape, to the point where the last photos don't have Rikki at all.

The story starts with a fairly normal acquisition... Did I say normal?  Is anything in this hobby normal?  The roots go back to Titania, she who is Lady Phase in chestnut appaloosa, my decision to sell her at BreyerFest [2012], and the fact no one bought her.  I changed my mind about selling her after seeing all the chestnut leopard appaloosa Amber foals at this year's [2012] BFest Open Show.  Amber was a mold I didn't have yet.  I'm sorry I didn't appreciate the real Lil Ricky Rocker at BFest when I had the chance; in fact, I didn't even see him.  I was busy lusting after another horse entirely: Mudflap.

Taken at NAN 2012 by y'r faithful photog'r

I first saw Mudflap, a 2009 Lone Star Event Special Run (of 80 head!) in the fall of 2011, at Didi Hornberger's great double show, Intermediaire and INTERSPORT! Live.  So I knew he was out there.  For some reason, this knowledge blended with all those foals, and with Titania; and with something else.  For a couple of years my soul's color had been charcoal.  (As in black with white mane and tail.)  Now that my treatments were in the past, it was time to find another color... a warmer one... a livelier one.  What was trickle became a flood during NAN 2012 and BFest where I tried valiantly to find a Mudflap for sale.  And then, that very month, Breyer released Lil Ricky Rocker.  What a discovery:  I've always loved chestnut leopard appaloosas!

The local dealer I bought my foals from did not carry Ricky Rocker, so I turned to my next closest dealer, Bonnie Valentine of Horses By Mail.  Much to my delighted surprise, she gave me an excellent deal.  What I did not know until afterward was she must have picked out an exceptional model for me.  A friend at the show said, "All the ones we got in our shop had such bad overspray!"  Having seen only mine, I thought they were all stunning.

 On the subject of Mudflap, I tried very hard to buy one on MH$P in August [2012].  When I failed -- when the price range went way over my head -- I indulged in a fit of boycotting.  I'd etch my own from a Smart Chic Olena, whose body could be had for as little as $25.  Meanwhile I had a problem: Titania could not marry Rikki;  she was for Mudflap (named Rinker, after a kind of boat). (Remind me to post on how the TSII got its name.)  The problem was solved when I remembered my Rugged Painted Lark had morphed to a mare, Prairi.  My friend Gretch pointed out the obvious, that the second foal from the appy foals pair was perfect for the family.

Intermediaire  2011

Intermediaire was held October 14, 2012, in the Farm Show Complex at Harrisburg. This picture is from last year (2011).  I'd had so much fun at MAR in April of 2012 that I thought I'd try my hand at showing some more, and rounded up a string of 16 head.   In the event, I didn't prepare or try very hard for most of them.  After 33 years in this hobby, my competitiveness has worn pretty smooth!; plus, I was judging a division, which would take about as much psychic effort as I could spare.  I entered Rikki in 3 classes, 2 of which were my only Performance classes.   But those two were my great strengths, and it showed.

The sleigh dates back to the mid-1990s.  It started life as a Dick Eighmey green bobsleigh.  I rebuilt it so its own mother would barely recognize it, a project taking several years.  The harness is even older, originally built in 1990; however, it still has not been completely converted to gold-filled wire hardware!  The white fleece and fake trees are all additives found over the years.

It was a great stroke of luck to have Marcella Peyre-Ferry and her husband Tim, real horse drivers, on hand.  I could ask Tim if there was any trouble with my putting the bells around the shafts like this.  Normally they'd go around the belly but my bellstring wasn't long enough!  He said they were fine and would not bind the traces.  I didn't tell anyone I was covering up a broken shaft bar brace with them.

The ermine cloak is something I made from 3 ermines (winter weasel skins) I'd gotten from a special sale at Tandy's in the mid 1980s.  In earlier sleigh entries, I'd pin it in place, but this time I just draped it around Mr Steve, my driver doll.  Steve originated with Lenore & Kim Jacobs, but I've tinkered a whole lot with his hatband, driving lap rope, and whip.  We're talking decades here; he was born in the mid-1990's.

Rikki took first of 5 entries in harness class.

Right about here is where I realized the landscape was taking over the photo shoot.  This was a week after the show.  My husband and I 'collect' strip mines to go birding and hiking on, and though I often take a horse along, rarely are they photo'd.  This is State Game Lands #100 off German Settlement Road, in northwest Centre County.  And that's George coming up along the horizon, peacefully giving me time to shoot whilst hiking.  We lucked out on the weather.  If you wait for PA to have blue sky you'll wait forever.

The second performance class was Costume/Parade.

There's probably not much question that the silver Parade Saddle maker's own saddle is going to be hard to beat.  (Rainbow Brilliance, TSII #400, built in 2000.)  What made more of a story was the judge's telling me that the other silver saddle entry was badly adjusted --- corroborating what I'd seen myself.  It had a rider on a fine Stone Bogucki Saddlebred in glorious palomino; but the bridle didn't fit at all.  There were other costume entries as well.

These ribbon roses and streamers date back to

1984.  The ones on the bridle have galv.-steel wire hoops that can be stuck into a browband.  The tail roses are conveniently hiding the fact that the crupper wasn't long enough!  The blanket, a Melody Snow/Unicorn Woman, didn't orignally come with the saddle,... (moment of confession.  I don't normally use stock inventory for showing, but this blanket had been hanging around for years.)  And the bridle and hip drops aren't from TSII #400 at all!!  Yes, Rikki's dainty little head was much too small for the big Rainbow bridle, which had originally been made for Breyer's Hanoverian.  It couldn't be adjusted smaller.  Thank heavens I had other old TSII silver saddles in my collection... like, really older....  This one happens to be TSII #12, built in 1980 and bought back from Liz Bouras after refurbishing with silver tape (it was originally painted-silver).   What luck it had hip drops.   No. 400 didn't have hip drops; but Rikki, with that super long hip and croup that all Zippos have (almost too long, what a habit, d'ye hear me Sommer?!) desperately needed hip drops if he was going to compete in silver Parade.

Notice that some silver triangles have fallen off the fender, from sheer age.  Yet he took first, out of 6.  This triumph led to the Other Performance Championship ribbon.  I was duly impressed; I hadn't won such a nice ribbon since last year at Intermediaire; and before that, since NAN 2008 --  a single Top Ten rosette, given me by a very kind-hearted good friend, who had used a TSII saddle to win it.

I had a lot of fun at Intermediaire; Rikki was only part of it.  I was showing my other horses and trying to show my moose.  As happened last year [2011] the judge didn't like my moose.  :(

I recall I won a fistful of ribbons with my 16 head.  All but Rikki's were turned back in at the end of the show.  My Del Fuego took a second place out of 21 in Paso Fino; my woodgrain 5-Gaiter took 4th of 5 in woodgrains.  My Kandinsky did not place -- but a Kandinsky won the class!  My two appaloosa Stone Weanlings took 5th and nothing out of 15.  My Precious Stone ISH took nothing out of 12 -- but one just like her won!  My Decorator Fighter took 2nd in Decorator class; the mare that beat him, a Red Roan Running Mare (yeeps, I don't consider Red Roans to be Decorators!) went on to win Champ of that division.  My Akhal Teke took 5th of 6; and Rikki managed to get 2nd out of 30 in his O.F. Breyer Stock breeds class.  I tried a halter on him at the last minute but it did not fit, so left off.

Somewhere along in there, as the three Performance Divisions of Intermediaire were finished (Other, Western and English), and the 10 Halter Divisions were winding up, Rikki was 'called back.'   In hindsight he was lucky to have finished his Halter class (sixth of the ten divisions) because it gave me the chance to plop down a red alongside his 2 blues and his Other Champ.  Then ensued what can only have been a battle royal.  I asked a couple of judges about it later; one of them told me "It came down to writing names on pieces of paper, I can tell you that!"  He was up against some fine remakes and Performance winners.  Yet the gods smiled on me.  For the first time in a decade, one of my horses was declared Grand Champion.

Oh, the prizes!  An engraved pewter cup.  A fifty-dollar gift certificate (this is the FIRST time a horse of mine has ever won money!!)  And the rosette!!  I measured it later:  24-inch streamers.  No other ribbon I've ever won, not in 33 years, measures as long.  The longest previous was an 18.  So you see, taking him up to the Gamelands for a shoot a week later was justified.

I hope you've noticed that my initials signing the photos have gotten fainter and fainter.  As the horse is getting smaller and smaller, heading out onto the trail, my sense of the fantastic is rising, and the camera is capturing it.  How outre, how incongruous, to go on a trail ride in such rococo finery.  If this is a trail ride a plain working saddle would've been better.  Nonetheless it's just possible the someone would be been using Rainbow Brilliance to take Rikki Tavi across the fields.  But only just.  As I rise -- as reality comes in -- he reverts, everything reverts, and the clean smell of the prairie and rain washed gravel takes over.  This is the land of birds, voles, hawks, deer.  This is a pasture on the verge of winter.  This is a day hovering on turning cold.

It is also a landscape in the heart of fall color.

I don't know what that thing in the grass is.  Probably just a weed or bush.

By now my initials have faded to almost not being there.  The wind hisses in the ears.

NAN cookies: of a different color

 With the whole model world still ringing from BreyerFest, what do I choose to blog about?  North American Nationals!!  I have a unique cookie collection...

The shot above shows my living room in 2008, five years ago.  The NAN cookies are arrayed on the strip near the ceiling:  they are hung as high as they can get.  Thus the measure of how prized they are: nothing higher.  This picture was taken for my website back then, and while I did save the code, no one sees those pages once they're taken down.  On this blog I have the opportunity to go back and revisit a little history.
P.S. The carousel horse is fibreglass, still in primer, draped in a rainbow serape, with my Smucker's Harness bellstring on his rump.

(Above) This is what that strip looks like today, in 2013.   Added a few haven't we.

Back then, in 2008, was a particularly appropriate time to show them off, because I'd just received a very special plaque, second from right below.  And for the first time ever, one year had given me 3 cookies.  I found the wood strip and put up all my trophies in a fashion that would allow expansion.

Danielle Miller, bless her heart, had gone to the trouble of recognizing one of only two NAN Auction donators to have stuck with the whole enterprise from the start.  (The other was a jump maker, Polly Fields.)  The plaque says "For 10 years of NAN Auction Donations."  If truth be told, this is not strictly accurate.  What it should have said was "For 11 NAN Auction Donations spread over 14 years."  Truth is often messy.  Decades are neat.  But I'll take it in the spirit in which it was intended.  It was a fabulous honor and, so far as I know, unique.

My first donation was a pair of halters for the 1995 show.  They sold for $225 (!).  That same auction I bought Ghirardelli, who went on to win my first NAN cookie, the silver one on the left, with which my collection begins.  I think a future blogpost will deal with those 11 tack donations, as they are a story unto themselves.
I showed Ghir in harness.  I don't have a picture of his winning entry, but here is one of my favorite shots of him.

This is actually a photograph from way back.  The sleigh was originally a Dick Eighmey bobsleigh before I rebuilt the heck out of it and painted it red.  The harness (again, not what he showed in) is one of my famous Red Team pair, adapted to single.  The doll is buried under a robe I made from 3 ermine skins.  And Ghirardelli today is in England, waiting for the Utterly Horses Hullaballoo to give him another chance at life.  I don't want to surrender my cookie, but the horse needs someone who will work with him and show him.  I have a feeling my showing days are largely past.  However, I had great fun with this photo; notice the white streak on the sleigh front.  It was snowing.  :)

The greenish-turquoise cookie is for the volunteers of 1999.  Apologies for the out-of-focus; thanks to PhotoShop.  From here on, the cookies would be of this smaller size, and the volunteers' would be of various colors.  The next cookie, sculpted (again) by Minkiewicz, is painted gold on one side and purple on the other -- one of my favorites!  It's for 2001.   I was judging in those years.

 The next green one is dated 2004.  This is where the neat even-year odd-year sequence was broken, for 2003 was the "year without a NAN."  We all know Margaret Thompson absconded with the goodies.  What is less remembered but ten times more fun is that the "anti-NAN," which WAS held that year, included tack classes!!!  Yours truly gave a harness demonstration.  (Yeah, I've got a ways to go before I'll ever shine at public speaking.)  But the tack classes were incredible.  Both champions and reserves in the Western and parade classes were either TSII pieces or owned by me.

The 2004 gold cookie in this admittedly-out-of-focus shot is my one-and-only true National Championship.  It is the only time I ever personally won a NAN gold in competition.  It was for Stone Decorator Light Breed Limited Run, and my beloved Solis, a maple woodgrain Stone Arab (one of 10) took it.  The irrepressible Danielle Miller snagged a picture. 

In retrospect it all went by so fast.  This shot is misleading because it looks like the horse I'm holding won the prize.  My horses are married (they are characters in an endless story) and I'm holding the husband of the horse who won.  It's also possible that blue horse was competing too; I don't remember.  The winner is the woodgrain on the table, with what looks like white mane and tail, although it's actually a pearly light foam color.



The next cookie, the copper one, is 2006.  By now I was hoping I could get one of every shape cookie ever issued.  Since each mold was used for two years I had a decent fighting chance. 

Somewhere around 2007 (?) I let my friend Colette know about my ambitions to collect all the known NAN cookie molds.  In complete kindness, above and beyond any sort of reciprocity (this is typical of her), Colette dug up from her own boundless collection a couple of the 1994-1995 vintages, and GAVE them to me, even paying for shipping.  This was the Arab head sculpted by Sarah Minkiewicz.

It is not known who won these.  For this reason, the cookies are not mounted on ny wall strip, but kept on my bookshelves, below the buffalo conga line.  Find them in the lower left of this picture.

The black cookie, the first time I met with the tendency to paint the volunteers black, is 2008.  As told above, 2008 was the year I received the central plaque.  It's not exactly a cookie, but it certainly belongs in this collection.  The silver one is also a 2008 and marks yet another variation in my collection.  Although I didn't actually show the horse, I created the tack that was used to win this cookie.
I have Ann Bilon to thank for this gift.
Ann had ordered a TSII Parade set and gotten #428, "Bilon's Braided."  It was created back in 2005, which just shows you the time frame of some of the hobby's work!!   She qualified for NAN and showed in 2008 with an original finish horse in the Other Costume Light/Gaited Breeds class; it was a Stone Tennessee Walker I believe, a new mold at the time.  She named him "Buckeye Boy."  When it took silver she decided I should have the cookie; it was my work, as saddlemaker, that had won.  I could hardly say no.

And it was a similar set of circumstances which gave me the gold next to her silver.  The equally irrepressible Colette Robertson showed 2 TSII silver Parade saddles in 2010 and won Champ and Reserve with them.  She decided to give me the gold.  I meticulously took down the info and it's on the back of the cookie:  Custom Mounted Parade class, July 20 2010, Cat Dancing, TSII #442, known as Robertson's Medieval Vine.  This saddle was created especially for this person and has small motifs hidden in the tooling, such as a stethoscope and a syringe (she's a doctor).

 Yes, this picture was taken outdoors, up on a reclaimed strip mine in Central Pennsylvania.

The black 2012 cookie marks the first time I was neither a judge nor a steward, but something totally different:  the photographer!!  And at least for now, I feel I've found my niche.  How wonderful that I can be useful and happy in a necessary role that uses an artist's skills, but doesn't involve the stress of judging.  The only problem is that black is just not my favorite cookie color.  It adds nothing to my trophy strip.

Niki must have heard me.  The red one, 2013, is truly fantastic, and gives my strip the eye-popping  color it deserves.  Only one question remains:  What color will the volunteers get next?  Looking over my entire collection, all 17 years of it, what color is missing?  Blue?  Purple?  Orange?  Pink? 

Believe me, there's room for more.
Long live NAN!

How the Timaru Star II got its name

On a recent trip to Boulder, Colorado to see my parents, Mom dug up some old slides, and we all gathered round for a trip down memory lane.  I've been meaning to blog about this story for years, and now's my chance!

What you're looking at in the background is the famous Golden Gate Bridge of San Francisco.  No mystery there -- standard tourist fare.  Ah but the YEAR... is 1973!!!  The woman on the right is Jeanne Bensema, and her daughter is thirteen-year-old Susie Bensema, already smitten with things of the sea, and of the imagination.

What were Boulderites doing in San Francisco?  My father, Bill Bensema, had been invited to WesCon -- an early convention for electronics and electrical engineers.  In his inimitable way he turned it into a family vacation; however, only one child came along.  Two others, a younger sister and still younger brother, had to stay behind in Boulder.

We stayed at the Beresford Hotel.  I can still remember the red carpet everywhere.  There was a tiny restaurant next door called the White Horse.  Since I was horsemad this was a brilliant stroke of serendipity.

We went to Chinatown.  This was my first experience with a big city that wasn't Denver.  [Editor's note:  not quite true, there was Tucson.]  It was at this time I learned to eat with chopsticks.

Clearly most of the pictures (usually slides back then) were taken by Dad.  However this one is of Dad, so it must have been taken by my mother.

This man is not Dad, but Reverend Bob Stewart, a friend of the family we dropped in on.  Actually he was the man who married Mom and Dad, so in a very real way, if it weren't for him I wouldn't be around!
Don't you love those old fashioned cars...

We went to the beach, of course.  For Coloradans, anything to do with the sea was quite romantic.  Dad has always had a sailing streak in him.  I think it was that which led us down to saunter along the marinas and docks.

I don't recall anything particular about which park this was.  I do remember a whaling ship museum aboard an old wooden whaler named the Balclutha.  Alas, the above wooden ship is not that one.  We wandered along the docks, spellbound all three...

...and what should we stumble upon but a cargo ship in the very act of unloading!
We wandered closer and watched.

If he's interested, Dad can strike up a conversation with anyone.  I'm not sure how it happened, but he started talking with the crew, and we found out this ship was the very one which had carried our good friends and neighbors, the Walter Jones family (Walter, Carlie, Connie, Shannon and Scott) and their goods, to Christchurch New Zealand earlier that year.  That was certainly enough to capture our attention!  Connie had been my best friend before 6th grade.

I was swept away by the romance of ships.  To be able to sail anywhere in the world... free upon the high seas...  safe...  to be doing good for others...

More than twenty years later I would find out that the White Star line named all its ships with a city name followed by the word 'star.'  Sister ships to this one included the Perth Star.  The city of Timaru is on the south side of South Island, New Zealand.  The name itself (again, it took me more than 20 years to find this out) is a Maori (Polynesian) place name for the harbor there.  Te Maru means 'safe harbor,' indicating that was the only safe place to land along the coast.

 This particular slide causes my spine to chill up, because it proves Dad was actually walking on board the Timaru Star.  I have only the dimmest memory of walking on her myself, but this slide means it actually happened.

We wandered all over that day, peering into the warehouse and looking at the boats.  I don't remember much about the rest of that trip, but the die was cast.  This simple dockside encounter would start something that lasted far longer than anyone could imagine.

Sometime in the next year, influenced by a couple of other events --reading a book called "The Great Ice Ship Bear" and playing a game called When My Ship Comes In with my new best friend Gretchen Lockwood (I met her when we were both 14) -- I settled in my mind what MY ship would be like when it came in.  It would be magical, an icebreaker.  (Icebreakers took on a symbolic meaning for me: one who could conquer problems, pioneer a way through.)  It could sail anywhere; it had a model horse stable and tack shop in the hold; and it would be named after the Timaru Star.  I added a "II" or "the second" to distinguish my ship from the original real one I had seen that day in 1973.  Much later, when the time came to actually launch my model tack shop as a mail order business -- in 1979 -- I remembered that magical ship.  I wrote short stories about her, and one of them was published in Just About Horses in 1983.
But that's another story.

And so was born the TSII.  No one could have foreseen that a schoolchild's imagination would last longer than an iron cargo ship.  The Timaru Star was scrapped in the mid-1980s.  Just about the time my tackshop was getting off the ground.  (I like to think her spirit passed into it.)  To my surprise, a second Timaru Star was built in the 2000s, and it is sailing today -- a supertanker based out of Hong Kong.  Why did they keep the name alive?  I have no idea, we don't know for sure... but I like to think my little tack shop had something to do with it.. a subliminal influence, perhaps.  By then the Web was up and running, and my ideas and use of the name would appear in any search engine.

Who can say.  One thing's for sure.  I will always love ships and sailing, always have a romance with the sea, and always respect the power of imagination.

Dreams can come true.