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      This Day That I Remember, Which Must Have Been One of the Very First Days of Spring

On April 21, 1934, publication of "It Must Have Been Spring." The New Yorker. The Doctor's Son. Gibbsville, PA.

This is one of the earlier stories. I think it ranks with "Winter Dance" (1962) in emotional intensity. Both are autobiographical; they describe two relationships, one with the father, Dr. Patrick O'Hara, the other with the girl friend, Margaretta Archbald.

Father and teen-age son are two head-strong individuals who have been fighting. The father has bought riding gear for the adolescent son, who puts it on with the hope of getting his father's approval.

The first paragraph reads:

   It must have been one of the very first days of spring. I was wearing my boots and my new corduroy habit, and carrying my spurs in my pocket. I always carried my spurs on the way to the stable, because it was eight squares from home to the stable, and I usually had to pass a group of newsboys on the way, and when I wore the spurs they would yell at me, even my friends among them. The spurs seemed to make a difference. The newsboys were used to seeing me in riding breeches and boots and leather putees, but when I wore the spurs they always seemed to notice it, and  they would yell "Cowboy-crazy!". and once I got in a fight about it and got a tooth knocked out. It as not only because I hated what they called me. I hated their ignorance; I could not stop and explain to them that I was not cowboy-crazy; that I rode an English saddle and posted to the trot. I could not explain to a bunch of newsboys that Julia was a five-gaited mare, a full sister to Golden Firefly, and that she herself could have been shown if she hadn't been a blanket scold.