The Story of U-Dandy

Alice Cardon Crockett, now of Idaho Falls (and in the photo, looking at a portrait of herself and her mom Joyce Cardon, ca. 1950), sent us the following story she wrote about the Barn, which was to her a "magical place." She knew the barn in the 1950's, when she and her family lived on the brow of the college hill. Alice's dad, Guy Cardon, owned the Bluebird Restaurant, and her best friends were Stephen Merrill (Dr. Milt Merrill's son) and Susan Campbell. She reports that they knew the Barns, Old Main, and the Art Building (when it was by Old Main) like the backs of their hands, much to the dismay of the adults in their lives! Here, in her own wonderful words, is Alice's story of a favorite horse, U-Dandy:


I've loved horses for as long as I can remember. At first, stick horses, smooth barked and silent, were my steeds. They raced like the wind when I rode them, and walked only on the uphill or through bramble bushes. My home was built two blocks from an agricultural college. That same home place is now directly across the street from a thriving university.

The Barns with their paddocks, stalls, corrals, sheds and huge hay barn housed sheep, cows, pigs, turkeys, goats and horses, and was an integral part of the college. My friends, Susan and Stephen, and I made daily trips to the Barns, by foot or bike, in the summer. Horses lived in the side stalls and corrals of the big hay barn. A center isle inside the barn was sided with barred open windows and padlocked stall doors. A wood staircase angled to the hay loft above. We would spend hours in the loft leaping into loose hay, listening for mice, gazing over the campus, never concerning ourselves with upright pitchforks or thirty foot falls.

U-Dandy, one of the Barns' resident horses, was a handsome sorrel with a white blaze and a long line of very official ancestry. I carried freshly picked alfalfa to U-Dandy each morning. He would come out of his stall into his corral when I called him. My dream was to gain his absolute trust and love, then talk my mother and father into letting me bring him home. I never thought in terms of money, just devotion.

One morning, after U-Dandy had finished his alfalfa, I climbed the dimly lit loft stairs and gathered an armful of sweet smelling hay. On my decent I could hear mice scurrying by the grain bins. I asked Susan and Stephen to talk to U-Dandy while I climbed his corral fence to place the hay in his stall. As I was heaping hay into his bin, I noticed the daylight darken at the doorway. U-Dandy was walking in and his stall became instantly very small. I was terrified by the size of him. I reached up and touched his muzzle and uttered the only word I could think of. "Back," I whispered. To my amazement he backed out of the doorway. I slipped past him and scrambled up the corral fence. Susan and Stephen sat motionless, eyes huge with wonder--"friend gets trampled and squashed in horse stall" was written all over their faces.

"I'm going to ride him," I told them. "As soon as he comes out, I'll call him over here and I'll climb onto his back. I'll hold onto his mane...and we'll walk around." My friends said it sounded possible and agreed to watch.

U-Dandy strolled from his stall into the sunny corral. He shone like a new copper penny. I called him over to where I was perched on the top rail. He came. Holding the fence with my left arm, I leaned out, stretching my right leg over his broad back. I eased my balance to the center of his backbone, let go of the fence and latched onto his mane. Except for my pounding heart, all was silent. Then we heard it--the truck of the Barns keeper. The same Barns keeper who had told us not to herd the cows, not to chase the turkeys, not to play in the loft, and not to feed hay to the horses.

As I sat on my faithful steed, the Barns keeper slowed his truck. His stern face told me I should dismount, maybe even run. Susan and Stephen jumped to the bottom rail just as I caught the top rail. U-Dandy spun on a dime and galloped to the far corral corner, then faced me. "That's a stud horse," growled the Barns keeper as he walked towards us. "He bites and he's mean. I don't want you anywhere near him. He'll bite your fingers off. Git home, the three of ya." We did, lickety split.

Until the college horse barn became the university Art Barn, I faithfully brought alfalfa to U-Dandy who did not bite and was never mean. And in my university years, I came to the Art Barn to throw clay pots--just kitty-corner from the stall where U-Dandy had munched hay years ago.