Remembering Chub and the police stables

   I remember vaguely when I first discovered the police horse stables in Golden Gate Park, though I can't recall the exact time. I had been visiting the bison paddock on the other side of John F. Kennedy Drive, and somehow I ended up here. I don't think it had anything to do with my friend Karl, who I found later used to go to the Golden Gate Angling & Casting Club right next door, but somehow I did end up here, and it became a favorite place of mine to visit for a while.
   I used to come here to look at and talk to the horses, whose personalities seemed easier to comprehend than the comparatively drowsy, though equally sweet bison across the street, and it refreshed me and made me feel happy to be alive when I did. My wife and I would give them grass to eat which grew just out of their reach, and we enjoyed seeing their faces up close, marveling at their big nostrils and feeling their hot breath on our hands.
   When I would visit, either alone or with company, there would often be one horse off in a smaller pen by himself. I think that in some way I felt sorry for him, but also perhaps related to his isolation, and to my horse-behavior-uneducated eyes, he seemed as content as the other horses, who shared a large pen attached to the stable where they lived (the road separating the two pens is called James W. Bloesch road, named after a mounted police officer accidentally shot here in the head by a colleague).
   At some point a worker had come out while I was visiting, and he told me that this single horse's name was Chub, and that he was there because he didn't get along with the other horses. He also told me that this horse was retired, and was being sent out to stud.
   When I would visit after learning this information about Chub, I would call his name when I arrived, and he would come over to me. To a city kid like myself, knowing the name of a horse that I could go to visit was something special, and whether Chub was special as an equine specimen, I don't know, but he was to me.
   At some point, my visits here subsided, and when I returned on a few occasions, he was no longer here.
I don't know what made me think of him today, it's been awhile since I have, but I knew that I should revisit this place physically, emotionally, and in memory. I'm glad that I did.

The collective pen as seen from Officer James W. Bloesch road.

Chub's old pen, apparently unused.