The Morgan Show.......... A Little Mystery......

Part 1

The second "personality" of the horse show showed up in my view on Saturday afternoon. The first time I remembered seeing this face was in the show office asking about the particulars of the exhibitor's party. There was to be a potluck as part of the festivities and he was wanting to know how could participate and what they should bring.

I remember at the time registering some sort of internal warning signal about this guy. I can't tell you why that was, just that it was there. He seemed polite enough but somehow he struck me as being out of place at a horse show. The alarm bells were dually noted and logged away for later use.

Not long after his departure another of the "personalities" from the show arrived on the scene. This woman I knew from past shows, a political time bomb waiting to go off. I knew to steer clear of her antics if at all possible. On this day she was muttering about "one unhappy exhibitor" but not really addressing anyone in particular. I recognized the lure as the bait it was and passed on being manipulated in such a manner.

Before long the woman returned. This time she was more direct telling me there was an exhibitor who needed to speak with me. I took a deep breath and followed her outside curious to see what kind of drama was going to unfold.

Outside on horseback was an angry woman. She reported a man was "racing" through the barn area in his car. When she'd told him to slow down, he told her to "get her f***ing horse out of my way." Now the car was parked off to the side of the warm-up arena. She described the man and and told me he was "hiding" from the angry woman. The woman who'd retrieved me from the show office had the license number written down on paper for me.

There's always problems with parking on the fairgrounds. The facility does not want vehicles parked except in designated areas. The only exceptions to this rule must have permits. They even have an attendant in a gate house near the entrance to the facility.

The purpose of that attendant is to keep out restricted vehicles. However, sometimes the attendant is proactive and sometimes NOT. At this particular show the attendant was not all that proactive from what I could tell. Instead of keeping restricted vehicles out, he'd put up barriers to block off areas that were being used for parking by those unwanted vehicles.

I let both women know I would deal with this man and how I would go about it. First I checked for a parking permit. If the vehicle had one of those I could track down the source of this driver. If not, I could have the vehicle towed if it wasn't removed immediately. That should take the offending driver out of the area where horses, riders and spectators might be at risk of careless driving.

There was no parking permit sitting on the dashboard of the offending vehicle. As I returned to speak with the two women, I passed the man I'd seen earlier in the show office. He did not look to me like the man that had been described earlier. I just made another mental note, there's "that" man again.

I rejoined both women still in front of the show office. By now the rider had dismounted. She was still fuming and clearly being fueled by the political time bomb. As I was explaining to them my options, the angry woman said, "There he goes!" I looked over to see two young men walking by neither of whom fit the description I had been given.

Now the woman was even angrier and pointing down the road. Then I saw a silver car turning the corner. The woman told me that was the man she was talking about. I didn't see enough to tell how fast this man was driving. I still had nothing but the statement of this woman that the driver was going to fast for the conditions BUT the car was off the grounds and that was a start.

To be continued..............