Day 12: Today is the 12th of 15 days of holiday gifts to our
readers. We hope you enjoy them, with our thanks and
compliments.
Mounted carolers
Star columnist Bonnie Henry penned this holiday column in 1997.
It first ran on Christmas Eve of that year.
To see all our reader gifts so far, go online to
www.azstarnet.com/gifts
Youngsters sang on horseback in the mid-'50s. Santa wore cowboy
boots, the lone "reindeer" was really a mare, and sleigh bells
jangled against a backdrop of saguaros and prickly pears.
It's been close to 40 years since a ragtag group of kids mounted
their horses and burros and went a' caroling through the sparsely
settled neighborhoods of the Catalina Foothills.
"We'd heard of people Christmas caroling and thought, 'Why don't
we go?' " said Tucsonan Margaret Canning, who got to wear the Santa
suit.
Older sister Harriet, then a freshman at the University of
Arizona, did the organizing.
"I was a horse lover and rode on the UA quadrille team," said
Harriet Canning Perkins, who later moved to Puyallup, Wash. "I did
it with a couple of university students. We got the younger kids
involved."
But first they had to get their parents' blessing.
"Our parents said it was all right," said Canning. "After all,
we had the horses, and since it was winter, the snakes weren't
out."
Which is how it came to be that for several years in a row back
in the mid-1950s, the sounds of young voices wafting through the
clear desert nights of late December supplanted the usual coyote
cacophony.
"I think the coyotes went and hid," said Canning, with a
boisterous laugh.
Originally from Tennessee, the Canning family - parents Graeme
and Mary Margaret, sisters Harriet, Margaret and Andrea - moved out
West in the late '40s.
"My grandfather had bought some property down by the university
and when he died, my father came out here to develop it," said
Canning.
By the early '50s, the family was firmly ensconced in a new
foothills home off Campbell Avenue, a couple of miles north of
River Road.
"There were six houses on our street and nothing north of us,"
said Canning.
Rustic is the best way to describe the old neighborhood.
Most of the roads were dirt, everyone had septic tanks, and
there were no phones. "When we did get a phone, it was on an
eight-party line," said Campbell.
Just about everyone had horses. "Hardly anyone had fences and we
would ride all over," said Canning.
To the north of them sprawled a still-working cattle ranch.
"Every once in a while, the cattle would get loose and come down
and steal the hay out of our corral," said Canning. "We'd chase
them on back on our horses."
School was held at the old Catalina Foothills School on River
Road, which is now headquarters for the Catalina Foothills School
District.
Back in the early '50s, however, it was still a two-room
schoolhouse, grades one through eight.
"We had two teachers and about three kids in a grade," said
Canning, who counted among her classmates future actor Ted Danson,
who lived just up the street.
"I was in third grade; he was in first grade," she said.
Sometimes the Canning girls' father took them to school;
sometimes they went by horseback, trotting down Camino de Escuela,
which is still there - and still dirt - today.
The girls had several horses to chose from, including mares Tip
and Sandy, a half-thoroughbred named Wrinkles, and a burro dubbed
Little Fellow.
Only Sandy, however, would tolerate the sleigh bells, said
Canning. Or the antlers.
"We'd put the bells around her. Then we'd hook deer horn antlers
right to her bridle."
"They were whitetail deer horns," said Perkins. "We covered them
with aluminum foil."
Depending on whom you talk to, Canning was privileged - or
forced - to wear the Santa suit.
"I wore the beard and the whole thing," said Canning.
"We made her," said Perkins.
Meanwhile, the rest of the kids had to settle for jeans, jackets
and cowboy hats.
"We were not real organized, to put it mildly," said Canning.
"But we did braid the horses' manes and tails with red and green
ribbon."
They also slung saddlebags onto the backs of their mounts, in
hopes of sweet reward.
"Sometimes we got Christmas candy. Sometimes people would come
out and hand us hot chocolate. But we never got off our horses,"
said Canning.
"A lot of people offered to make donations, but we took no
money," said Perkins.
The first year they only went out one night - Christmas Eve -
enlisting no more than six kids, none younger than 10.
"People were shocked," said Canning. "Nobody had ever done that
before. A first, it was like, 'Who's that out there bothering me?'
But then it was like, 'Oh, gee. This is really nice.' It was a
complete turnaround."
So pleased were the neighbors, in fact, that the old eight-party
line was soon jammed with callers.
"People would call my mother and tell her we had just been
there. Or they'd hear from their neighbors that we had been there
and wonder why we hadn't come to their house," said Canning.
Through sandy arroyos and up and down washboard roads they
clip-clopped, traveling as far south as the university farms on
Roger Road, as far east as Hacienda del Sol Road.
"We only went to houses where we saw a light," said Canning.
No lanterns or flashlights, however, did the carolers take. "We
went by the light of the moon and stars," said Canning.
After arriving at a house, the horseback carolers would form a
semicircle, then launch into their repertoire - beginning with
"Jingle Bells," followed by "The First Noel," "Silent Night" and
ending with "We Wish You a Merry Christmas."
"No, we never practiced," said Canning. "But we did get better
as the night went along."
By 10 or 11 p.m., they were back home, horses brushed and put
back into the corral at the bottom of the hill.
"My mother always had hot cider, hot chocolate, cookies and hot
dogs for everybody," said Perkins, who remembers both Ted Danson
and his sister trotting along on those rides. "Everybody came back
to our house."
The following year, the carolers went out two nights in a
row.
"We started getting calls in November," said Canning. "People
wanted to make sure we didn't pass them by."
Would-be carolers swelled their ranks to about a dozen singers
that second year. Who got in, however, depended less on
vocalization skills than on horse deportment, said Canning.
"We had one girl who wanted to go, but her horse did not like
the sound of the bells. And when we got in the semicircle, it would
bite and kick the other horses," said Canning. "You had to have a
horse that would tolerate sleigh bells and close quarters with
other horses."
One year, one of the local papers even came out and took the
group's photo. But times were changing. "Some of the kids moved
away," said Perkins.
"The Foothills were getting filled up," said Canning. Fences
started going up. It became harder and harder to find a decent
horse trail.
"My father eventually got rid of the horses."
Three years, that's all it lasted, said Perkins.
"There was a group of adults that tried to get it started
again," said Canning. "But as kids, we didn't want to be organized.
We didn't want to be told what houses to sing at.
"We liked it more when we could just ride out there and pick our
own houses."
And so once more, Christmas Eve came to be serenaded only by the
yip and yodel of the coyote.
