By John Kass

November 16^th, 2025

The other day I set aside the great book I was reading—“A War Like No Other” about the Peloponnesian War by Victor Davis Hanson—got up from my chair and used my cane to hobble over to the glass doors.

I opened the doors and there it was, a perfect Northwest Indiana lake effect snowstorm.

The flakes puffy and white against the red burning bush in the backyard, on the evergreens, the wind swirling the flakes cold in the yard beyond.

And that’s when I thought about that horse and how great it would be to ride that horse in the snow.

Sounds odd, I know.

I remembered it years ago. It was a different life. This was years ago when I rode that horse, and years later when I first wrote of it. About seven years ago now, in another column and another snow, like this quiet heavy snow from days ago that I’m thinking about now.

Mid-November was time for bird hunting back then in my world with my stubborn mule-headed German Shorthair Pointer, Jason.

I could still walk then, and ride, and hunt a field of cut corn, and train a dog and wade a cold river fishing for trout, steelhead and salmon. And I could drive a car.

But things change. You know this if you have wits. And if you can’t grasp this truth of life then quit or grow the (bleep) up.

Many of you probably don’t give two figs about the horse. That’s OK too. But back when I could drive, I was heading east on Ogden Avenue in that snowfall and my car wipers stopped working. I had to repair them. The Honda guy noticed the tread was gone on my front tires, and the front brakes were gone, too. Merry Christmas to me.

But I was thinking of how nice it is to ride a good horse in the first snow.

Not some picture-book horse with flowing mane and tail, but a real horse, an American horse.

“I’ve often said, there is nothing better for the inside of a man, than the outside of the horse,” said the late President Ronald Reagan, paraphrasing Winston Churchill.

Both men were right. It’s good for women and men.

It’s quiet out in the woods on a horse in the snow, with your heels down in the stirrups in the trot, your weight on your toes, the plumes of breath rising, the warmth, the squeak of the leather, the muffled thump of hooves.

There’s a rhythm to the gait of a decent horse. And if you’re lucky you’ll see things, like deer in the woods. Most often you’ll see the does near a trail, but once there was a big buck in his prime. The buck’s eyes were wide; he had a thick neck to swing those antlers which were weapons on his head. He waited.

The horse and I stared at him and he stared right back. The trees were bare and black against the snow. Then he was gone.

When you write a newspaper column, it’s easy to be reduced to stereotype by readers who are angered by your opinions. I’m sure it happened to my colleagues, too.

It’s how things work now. Ridicule is the coin of this realm. But people don’t know what they don’t know. And they don’t know about me and that horse.

Back when I was writing a column at “the paper, “but could still drive a car and ride a horse.

I left the car at the dealership, contacted editors to say I would miss a meeting, and stopped for coffee on Clark Street. On the menu they offered eggs “The Chicago Way.” Hmm hmm good.

Across the street there was a BMW dealership, and I thought of that blue BMW that Chicago Outfit boss Anthony “The Hatchet” Chiaramonti drove once to an urgent morning meeting at a Brown’s Chicken in Berwyn.

They got him in the vestibule.

And later, I asked a Grand Avenue guy who knew the dead Hatchet: Why did they call a morning meeting at a Brown’s fried chicken?

“Where do you think it should be?” he asked. “In an Italian restaurant with checkered tablecloths and candles stuck into bottles of Chianti? This isn’t a movie. It’s life.”

Riding that horse in the snow, was life, too, but a different life.

Let me ask you: How many different lives have you had? How many lives were broken, with the beginning of some new life sprouting from the broken place?

Back then I was a kid, having come home from the Merchant Marine, forced to give up a career at sea because of an allergy to grain dust. I was angry and raging about coming home and hated myself and the world.

I took a few courses at Moraine Valley Community College in Palos Hills. They offered a horseback riding class. And I was lonely and the student female to male ratio in the horse class was about 18-1. (smiley face)

The young women had long flat hair like Joni Mitchell, their hair smelled of herbs. They were artsy and long legged like volleyball players and wore Justin boots and listened to Dylan. And so, that angry, lonely boy took a riding class, and fell in among the horses.

Riding is one of those things you learn when young, like hunting or fishing. If you don’t learn it when that window of your life is open, you might never learn it at all.

I was lucky. The instructors were looking for help in exercising horses that were boarded at their stable. I could ride a bit. I wasn’t a cowboy, but I could ride. Some owners didn’t have the time to ride their horses regularly. A few students were quietly chosen to take the private horses, and class horses, out on the trail when they required exercise and let them work out the kinks, let them work off the friskiness.

Not for some stupid full-out run, not cutting wildly through the trees risking injury to the horse. But just enough to get their blood up a bit, so they wouldn’t go crazy in their stalls, then leading them on a long walk to cool down and finally, a thorough brushing.

They helped settle things in me. And I hope I helped settle them. They weren’t blooded thoroughbreds or dynamic stallions like the great French jumper Galoubet A, a magnificent, temperamental horse you probably never heard of.

The ones I rode were decent pet horses. I kept carrots and apples in my coat pockets for them.

 

The broken windshield wiper was random, and what had been completely forgotten rushed out at me from some other life I once had. And I wondered: Who was that guy?

That angry kid on the chestnut quarter horse in the woods in the southwest suburbs of Chicago, angry that a life at sea had been taken from him, the kid with apples in his pockets, the black bark of the trees and that buck in the snow.

And now I just can’t get myself back in the saddle, just like I can’t hunt a field with my two sons, just like I can’t wade along the frozen river rocks with Steve the Pilot and Ross the Baker.

And I can’t engage in Hoplite battle like the Spartans and Athenians.

Like I often tell myself, John Grow the Bleep Up!

But I have been blessed by God with the love of my wife Betty and the boys, and the young women they plan on marrying.

And though I can’t ride a good horse in the snow anymore, God has given me the gift that I can write about it and get myself in the saddle that way. And that way I walk the river and hunt. But I can’t train a dog from the red leather chair in my study. Or from the laptop in my home office.

Still, God has blessed me with work I can do, the ability to think and write. He left my brain pretty much intact, and He’s given me wonderful readers who inspire me and read what I write, and to make a living doing what I do, and time to cherish them also. But I’m not writing or riding now.

Right now, I remember the weight of the chestnut quarter horse standing next to me in the barn and brushing him, and the plumes of his breath in the cold stillness and the scent of it.

The brush in my hands, the weight of the apples and carrots in the pockets of my field jacket, all of it.

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About the author: John Kass spent decades as a political writer and news columnist in Chicago working at a major metropolitan newspaper. He is co-host of The Chicago Way podcast. And he just loves his “No Chumbolone” hat, because johnkassnews.com is a “No Chumbolone” Zone where you can always get a cup of common sense.

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