Carol Henning:
CLASS OF 1970
East Bakersfield High SchoolClass of 1970
Bakersfield, CA
Carol's Story
Last you heard at 10 year reunion I was working for kern County. Left in 1988 to work with horses, a lifetime dream. Spent about 15 years managing ranches, riding, giving lessons, judging shows and working at a private high school with a horse program. Lived in Oklahoma for a while, traveled to Texas, Missouri, Arkansas and Kansas for business. Moved back to California in 1991. In 2003 I quit the horse business and moved to Redlands and went to work for San Bernardino County. I am now in Conroe Texas...my grown daughter wanted me to move here and like the idiot I am, I did in August 2007. Well, as life has a way of treating you funny, she is, as I write this, moving to Missouri with her fiance. I refuse to go there as they have four actual seasons and I'm allergic to hard winters. The winters spent in Oklahoma were enough for me. You know, chopping ice on ponds, feeding animals in pasture with snow so deep that even the tractor couldn't go there. I did learn a lot there though...I can drive a tractor, drive 10 horse slant load trailer, build a fence, repair a fence, dig postholes, weld, brush hog, help with lambing, shearing, foaling, haying and shooting dog packs attacking spring lambs, well, you get the idea. While working at the school, I got the chance to go camping horseback, it's part of the requirements for students. Can you imagine ten to fifteen TEENAGERS, on horseback, leading pack mules, making a clean camp and clean meals, getting there and back in one piece? The little rascals did it every single time. I loved my time there in case you couldn't tell. The single reason I quit the horse business was the last fall I took. A client's 17.3 hand(that's 5 ft. 11 in. at the wither) Dutch Warmblood gelding dumped me and I couldn't ride for three weeks. I had already given up breaking young stock to ride, the ground gets harder as I get older. Sold all my school horses and got into the restaurant business. Cooked and became a wine buyer in a couple of Ojai, Ca. bistros...one great chef but bad business manager, the other chef/owner was just an ass****, so I moved to San Bernardino and went to work for that county. My daughter has lived in Texas sinc...Expand for more
e 2000 and because at the time I moved to TX I had no family to speak of in CA, I moved here. So here I am working for a huge warehouse store, I love my job but hate the weather here. Where I am has two REAL seasons-HOT AND HOTTER with that pesky humidity thrown in for a full measure of misery. Well, one thing I know for sure, I do know how to be happy wherever I am until I'm sick of the place I am!!! When the time comes, I'll move on. My current passions are reading, cooking, crosswords, and the East Village Opera Company. You've never heard opera until you've heard EVOC rock it up. I still have most of my riding equipment and have ridden some in the past few years and hope to get back to giving riding lessons. All cash, all under the table at $35.00/hour. I'll do that after I've retired...I can teach until I'm dead !!!! Hope to hear from some of you from the old days of high school. Surely there are those of you who have joined this thing too and are willing to communicate!!
This just in!!! Survived hurricane Ike. Wow, I thought earthquakes were bad, and they can be, but Ike was a stinker. By the time it hit here it had been reduced to a tropical storm, thank God. Went without power only 5 days but still had running water. Although cold showers are never any fun I'm grateful for that as many did not and still don't. The run for generators, window air conditioners, extension cords and gas cans was astounding. Our store worked off emergency lighting and no air conditioning until the semi showed up with a company generator 3 days later. Most everything is back to normal in my area but the Texas coast, Galveston particularly, has been laid to waste. The destruction of buildings and erosion of land is incredible, many neighborhoods will never exist again as the land is literally gone. Some of the families who were wiped out had lived there for decades, such a sadness. FEMA seems to have learned from Katrina and was up and going much sooner doing more for those who needed it most. Recovery will be a long haul but will happen. After this weather mess, I think I'll do less complaining about the humidity and heat...it's minor compared to what just occurred,eh?
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