This past May I had a unique opportunity to go through old family scrapbooks. Imagine my delight when I came across several 1980 shots of the (very early) Timaru Star II model tack shop!
These are from an old photo album compiled by my mother, labelled 1979. I had honestly forgotten the TSII ever set up shop in the den, which is what we called the bomb shelter. This unusual space was a more-or-less normal feature of homes built in the 60s in that area, the Front Range of Colorado. The bomb shelter was quite small, being totally underground (it was under the kitchen, in a corner where the ground sloped up). It had no windows, solid concrete walls and a sliding wood door. There were no light fixtures other than standing floor lamps. Yet I had lived in there when I was 15, and apparently still used it as a studio five years later when this photo was taken. Space was precious in a 2000-square-foot house when there were 5 in the family.
Above is the photo in its larger form. I was 20 years old; my tack shop was one year old. Reference posters cover the wall before me, and my red drafting lamp is my best light. You can see my German-made wooden cart above my head; near it are two trombone mutes, testimony to my musical life (I was a music major at CSU). Of the two horses before me, I still have the dark bay PAS. Bridles hang on a board to my right. The wolf poster is still in my possession, as are the ribbons hanging near the ceiling.
The radio, which would prove so important (I have to have music to make tack), is the black box with silver borders sitting just above the bridles on the right. It appears to have a glass of milk balanced on it...
Here's another view, showing what's behind me. King's Herd at this point in time numbered about 45 horses, respectable in comparison to my friends (one had 15) but by no means the largest collection we knew about (that would be Molly's, over a hundred). Even back then some were wearing homemade cooler sheets (Breyer's Coolers having come out recently). Notable horses include the woodgrain FAS, a Hartland Regal Arabian under the light green cooler on the same shelf (you can just see his red head), and, above them, what looks like 3 Decorator Fighting Stallions.
I can tell you only 2 of them are genuine, the blue and the gold. The third, closest to the wall, is a silver dapple I painted myself. (I used a can of silver spray paint from which most of the freon had been taken away; it made for great splatters.) Between them and the horse in the dark green cooler (a sorrel 5-Gaiter) is a third genuine Decorator, my Florentine 5-Gaiter. Those were the years of being able to find Decorators locally for about $20. I put ads in the papers! All but two of my ultimately 8 Vintage Decos were obtained during those years, appx. 1978-1986. The two exceptions were Ponderosa (Wedgewood Mustang), a birthday gift in 1966 (the start of all the madness!), and Lapis, a Wedgewood Running Mare I bought in 1993 for two hundred dollars,... thirteen years later and ten times the amount. The hobby was growing.
Here's a brighter version of the same shot. Excuse the streaks; they're artifacts of the scrapbook pages. There are some costumes and tack on the horses, and the shoebox of overflow tack (back then only one!) next to the woodgrain FAS.
This last photo was on the same page of Mom's album. This was my college dorm room at Colorado State University in Fort Collins. It was on the Saturdays over the winters of 1979, 1980 and 1981 that the TSII really got started as a mail order business.
So fantastic seeing these cherished old photos! What a great walk down memory lane!
ReplyDeleteWonderful pictures, thank you for sharing them!
ReplyDeleteI started getting JAH in late 1986 and one of the first articles I read was about your tack. I was absolutely BLOWN AWAY.
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