The Ride of Her Life: The True Story of a Woman, Her Horse, and Their Last-Chance Journey Across America

In January 1954, 62-year-old Annie lived on her family farm on Woodman Hill with her elderly uncle, Waldo. Unlike most Americans at the time, Annie and Waldo had no electricity or running water. They tried to make ends meet by farming livestock but continually struggled, especially through the winter months. Annie had symptoms of dizziness and fever but could not afford to heed the doctor’s advice and rest. One day, a blizzard swept in. Annie tried to complete her chores but collapsed in pain. Her neighbors came to check on her and called an ambulance. While she was hospitalized, Annie learned that her Uncle Waldo was taken to a nursing home and passed away. Her livestock was sold to help cover her hospital bills, and her neighbors took care of her dog, Depeche Toi (her best friend). Annie was the last remaining member of her family.

Months later, Dr. Cobb (Minot’s only doctor) drove Annie home. She had been diagnosed with either a recurrence of tuberculosis or the beginnings of lung cancer, and doctors gave her two to four years to live. Dr. Cobb instructed her to “live restfully.” Annie agreed to consider his advice, but privately she knew that she would have to keep working to survive, as she had done since she left school at the end of the sixth grade. Arriving back at the farm was sad and surreal since Uncle Waldo and the animals were gone.

Annie had few options to survive: At 62, she was three years too young to qualify for state welfare. She had no job prospects, bank account, savings, or relatives. All she had was her family farm, which had been passed down for three generations, and her young dog, Depeche Toi.

Because the family’s historic home long ago burned down, Annie lived in a small cabin that she heated with a wood stove. On her first night back, she slept with the door ajar so that Depeche Toi could get out if she died during the night.

Annie’s sale of her animals had paid her hospital bills, but she still owed land tax money to the government. She decided to try to produce a cash crop of cucumbers for the local pickling factory; they provided seed and paid in cash at harvest time. Annie received the seeds by mail and, with a neighbor’s help, planted them in long rows. Hoping for the best, since her future depended on them, she tended to them until they were viable seedlings.

By the end of the summer, Annie had begun harvesting her cucumbers and continued into the fall. She made good money—more than $100—yet knew it was not enough to survive the winter and pay the necessary taxes on her farm. Annie was losing her will to continue to fight for the farm and remembered her mother’s dream of traveling to California to see the Pacific Ocean. Annie began to accept that she should leave the farm and started making a new plan that would require a lot of courage to follow.

Annie began searching for a horse to buy. She had little money to spend and contacted a local horse dealer by postcard, inquiring about his “meat horses,” since they would be the cheapest. Annie was intrigued when the owner of Davis Stables turned up at her door and promised to help her find a horse. She agreed to visit the stables with him and privately worried about her ability to ride a horse, which she hadn’t done in 30 years. Annie immediately liked Tarzan, a former racehorse who was now old and had a gentle demeanor. Though the price was higher than she had expected, she agreed to buy him and hoped for the best.

Tarzan and Depeche Toi got along well, and Annie considered her tentative plan to ride Tarzan to California. She had visited two of her mother’s friends to tell them her plan; one of them laughed at her, but the other was encouraging and offered her a place to live if she needed it. While it was a risky idea, Annie began to feel more determined to do it. She spent two weeks preparing for her trip, packing clothing, sleeping blankets, cooking supplies, and hay for Tarzan. As winter closed in, Annie resolved to go and wrote the first entry in her travel diary, saying that she would “go forth as a tramp of fate among strangers” (35).

Annie prepared to leave home. She wore layered men’s clothes for the cold weather and stuffed her pockets with necessities and her only savings: $32. After carefully packing as much as she could onto Tarzan, however, she had little room to sit in the saddle. She tied a rope to Depeche Toi’s collar and held it while she rode. Annie planned to ride south and try to find work. She worried that no one would hire her as an older woman but needed more money to reach California. She hoped to eke out the next 25 months before she finally qualified for “old-age” benefits and hoped to reach California before she died. Her neighbors and friends offered to help, but Annie did not want charity.

Depeche Toi, a mixed-breed dog from a stray litter, was accustomed to roaming free on the farm. Tarzan was a Morgan horse, an old New England breed used to carry loads and walk long distances. Annie’s ancestors, the Libbys, came from England during the 17th century to work in Maine’s fisheries. Annie was born in Mechanic Falls in 1891, close to her grandpa’s farm, where she eventually grew up. With her two animal companions and her possessions, Annie set off from Minot, Maine, on her journey.

In the early 1950s, as many Americans embraced the car as the main mode of transportation, the number of horses in the US plummeted. While Annie expected to share the road with some vehicles, her rural life in Minot had not prepared her for the reality: She was surprised by the number of cars, which neither she nor her horse were accustomed to. When they arrived at a newly developed road, the feeling of concrete spooked Tarzan, and he almost bucked Annie off.

Annie believed that she could count on the kindness of strangers, and she was right: That first day, a local woman offered her water for the animals and hosted her for lunch. By the day’s end, she arrived at her friend’s house in Upper Gloucester. The next day, despite her soreness, Annie started back down the road with some money and hay from her friend. She and Tarzan reached Maine’s newly built, four-lane superhighway, hoping to make it to the town of Grey. The danger of traveling along the shoulder of a busy road was overwhelming, and Depeche Toi kept getting tangled in the rope. As Annie turned off the highway toward Grey, the traffic worsened, spooking Tarzan, who fled off the road and into the woods, with Annie holding on tight. Shaken but unharmed, Annie realized that sharing the roads with cars would be more difficult than she had thought.