Wayne Parker always wanted to be a cowboy. He wanted to rope and ride. He and his friend thought they would be the next Gene Autry and Roy Rogers Western stars.
And there were days when he lived his dream, but those days have come to a slow close.
“When I was a kid there wasn’t a whole lot to do and we didn’t have four-wheelers,” Parker said. “I don’t know, I just always liked horses.”
Early on, he would ride his family’s work horses. Parker said he didn’t have a saddle or a real riding horse so he’d ride them bareback.
“I didn’t care what it was,” Parker said. “If they let me ride it, I would ride it.”
Parker got his first horse when he was 15. It was a Tennessee Walking Horse by the name of Diamond.
Parker’s family used to get a magazine, and inside of the pages were advertisements from a school of horsemanship with items to order.
“I chose the trick stuff,” Parker said. “I think it maybe cost me $12 or $15 and I had to work a week or two to make that much money.”
When it arrived, it was thin books on specific topics. He spent many days working with Diamond to master specific tricks.
“I had it to where I could tie a handkerchief around his knee and he could take it off,” Parker said. “It would amaze me to get one trick good and then trying different ones.”
The tricks didn’t stop there.
Parker remembers going to rodeos watching the cowboys and taking a trip in high school to Memphis to the Mid-South Fair.
The professional riders performing and doing tricks had him in awe. One trick in particular inspired Parker.
The riders had one foot on the back of one horse and the other on another as the horses trotted around the arena. He was going to do what they did.
“I went home and got two horses out but I had one big problem,” Parker laughed. “One of them was a real tall horse and one was a real short one.”
The height difference in the horses made the trick more difficult, but Parker did successfully complete it, just at a slow pace.
“I didn’t fall off but I have fallen off other times.”
Small scrapes and even broken ribs couldn’t keep Parker away for too long.
Parker graduated high school in 1957 and that same summer moved to Illinois. Taking his horses north with him wasn’t an option, so he sold Diamond and another horse he had.
During the 45 years he was in Illinois, Parker did get to work with horses sometimes, but not often. He and his friends would rent horses from stables to take leisurely rides every now and again and he even helped a friend train one that was “wild as a buck.”
Parker and his family moved back to Calhoun in 2002. By 2003, he had another horse to call his own.
“I was just itching to find a horse to ride,” Parker said.
A druggist at the pharmacy Parker frequented in Vardaman raised Spanish Mustangs. Eventually, Parker earned himself an invitation to ride. He did so for a few months.
Not too long after, an old friend from his time in Illinois visited Parker and they went riding on the trails. A couple of weeks passed and Parker’s phone rang. It was his friend.
“Do you have a place where you could keep a horse?” the friend asked.
“Well, no,” Parker responded. “Why do you ask?”
“I’ve got a nine-year-old Quarter Horse Mare I want to give you.”
“I’ll find a place,” Parker answered without hesitation.
That’s when he was introduced to April.
She was beautiful and tame. He checked on her every day and would ride as often as he could.
“I could go out there and just saddle up, open the gate, and go out onto the trails,” Parker said. “My wife Barbara asked me one day if it was relaxing when I ride. I said, ’Shoot, when you’re out there riding you don’t have a care in the world and if you did, you didn’t care.’”
In the later years, when Parker rode April it was to unwind and take a leisurely trot. He figured they’d go at the speed of about three to four miles per hour. Out of curiosity, he tracked how far he traveled based on the time he spent riding and speed. One year, he surpassed 300 miles.
“As I got older, the mileage got lower,” Parker laughed. “Then it got harder to get on the horse. When you get to 77, you can’t do things like you used it.”
A few months ago, Parker had to sell April. He spent a long time making sure she went to a good place where she was taken care of. April, who is now 23 years old, lives in another area in Vardaman.
Parker may no longer own his own horse, but his love for riding hasn’t diminished.
His daughter, Kim Gregory, made Parker a book filled with photos of him and April which he keeps. She also bought him a paperweight which sits on his desk. It says, “the more people I meet, the more I love my horse.”
Along with the trinkets, Parker has his own photographs he’s kept over the years. They’re all black and white and from when Diamond was his horse. There’s a large, framed photo where Parker has make-up smeared on his face from when he was a rodeo clown one summer in Calhoun City and many small photos of him with his cowboy hat on, riding his first horse.
“Few things in life can rejuvenate the soul like a leisurely ride on your favorite trail horse,” Parker said.