I love reading books. And the first time I ever went — first time my mom ever took me to the library when I was a kid, I was probably, I don’t know, eight, nine, ten, maybe. And the librarian asked me what kind of books I enjoyed, and I said horse books. And she took me to a shelf that had nothing but horse books on it. And I am pretty sure I read every single one of those horse books that were in that library. The first day, I took out four and read them all, you know in the two weeks that I could have them. And then went back and probably got four more, I don’t know.
But anyway, one of the, one of the series of horse books that I really, really liked when I was a kid were the Black Stallion books. And they were just amazing. I loved them all and got most of them from the library. But there was one year for Christmas — my grandma lived in Florida, and Walter Farley who wrote the Black Stallion series also lived in Florida. And she bought a copy of his latest book and I, I can’t remember right off hand which one it was. She bought a copy, a hard, a hardcover copy of his book and she had him autograph it for me. And I still have it here somewhere. And, oh! It was a prized possession, let me tell you. I was thrilled.