Cowboy Poet Tony Mangan Keeps on Keeping On

On those occasional nights when I can’t sleep for worries about how the Democrats are trying to stamp permanent Socialism status on the freedom and liberty-loving USA, I go in my imagination to Tony and Cynthia Mangan’s TLC ranch in Pickens, South Carolina, where peace is the reality  of a bit of Heaven on Earth, not just a word.  For me, imaginary visions of Tony riding his horse, Chief is the best way to nod off to sleep on nights when worries torment my end-of-the-day thoughts.  

Canada Free Press readers are not only the best anywhere,  many are interesting characters, in their own right.  Tony Mangan, who dreamed as a small boy in Brooklyn of someday having his own horses on a faraway ranch, is certainly on the top of the list. At the TLC ranch, where peace is a pasture, a babbling brook, and whose every day air is filled with birdsong, nostalgia ages gracefully but  never grows old.   It is there on rolling acres near Pickens, S.S. where the Mangans live with their four magnificent horses. Tony is the ‘Cowboy Poet’, whose evocative poems, come laden with beauty and inspiration.

WHAT IF WE GET TO HEAVEN

By Tony Mangan 12/9/10 “She’ll be grazin' on clouds up near Heaven She’d be there just waiting for me, with the  love in her heart that was there from the start, my sweet loving Bella McGee “I hope when I leave this green pasture behind, That I will once again see, waiting up there, near the heavens,   my sweet loving Bella McGee “And if I happen to head out before her, I’ll wait ‘neath a big old Oak tree, in a grove that Is close by to Heaven, for my sweet loving Bella McGee “We’ll ride cross the Heavens each morning, in the Sun, Amidst Angelic music, just playing and having some fun And perhaps, my sweet darling Cynthia will come up and join Us,’fore long “We’ll be young as we were when we started, with all of the love  That had grown ’til we parted, Cynthia, me, her sorrel horse Maggie,  And in the theme of that wonderful scene my sweet loving Bella McGee!”

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From the time when he was a little boy, Tony grew up dreaming the American dream, dreaming about  the kind of life that many of us wish were still here. When Tony was an infant of three months,  his father died.  His mother took Tony and his two sisters to Brooklyn where they lived with their maternal grandmother.  “I grew up in New York state during that time when people were proud of our great country, its flag, and possessed an abiding faith that God kept watch over us all,” Tony recalls.   “It was a profound blessing to have grown up in a matriarchal household. My mother was one of those strong women you hear about from those times who worked in a munitions factory during the war and held a second job as the cashier in a movie theatre.  Mother taught us core lessons in ethics, values and behavior. “I grew up like most Italian boys, free of responsibility, short of taking out the trash. I don’t know how it came about, really, but I grew to school age with a fascination of horses.  It might have been because, in our neighborhood, pedlars with fruits and vegetables came by with their goods via horse and wagon.  As long as I can remember, I wanted a horse.  I dressed in cowboy clothes whenever I could, and pretended that anything and everything I sat on was a horse—there for me to practice riding.” Disaster hit when Tony reached age seven:  “At the time, I was going to school with my youngest sister who was seven years older than I was.  I would get out of school about ten minutes before she did and I’d wait outside for her so that we could go home together.

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 “On one of those days, I was playing an on-and-off-the-curb game on the street in front of the school and was struck down by a truck.  One foot was badly crushed and I was banged up as well.  “The accident day brought chaos. The hospital I was taken to was finally disclosed to my mother by the police.  She arrived at the hospital to get all the details and to find out how bad things might be.  She was there just a few minutes and the head nurse advised her that my foot would need to be amputated.  Being the quintessential Mother Grizzly, her response was not designed to invoke empathy—her answer being an immediate and flat “NO!” “It was a Catholic hospital, so the next authority was the Mother Superior, who came to deal with this obviously overwrought woman in shock.  After several attempts to get my mother to agree to an amputation failed, the Mother Superior told my mother that it would be her fault that I was going to die. Mother turned to stone and said:  “Well then, he is going to die, but he will not be sitting on a corner selling pencils.”  “Soon a doctor came to Mother and presented himself as the surgeon that would be tasked with needing to do the amputation,  telling her that he needed her signature.  Once again, it was a resounding “NO.”  Soon, he began pleading with her to allow him to do the surgery, or else I would die, and again she let him know she understood that, by repeating factually “then he will die.” The Surgeon tried another tact.   He said to her that if she would at least sign the papers for him to operate, he would do everything he could to save the foot, and, if he found it could not be saved, then he would do nothing, but would return for her  permission to take further steps. Mother agreed, and then walked with the doctor and the gurney with me on it, to the elevator.  Arriving at the elevator, my mother grabbed the doctor by his white-coat lapels, looked him in the eye, and quietly announced, “If you use my signature to cut off his foot, I will kill you.” “The surgery saved the foot that couldn’t be saved.  The nuns told me that I would never be able walk, so—of course—I started working to change that.  I did walk out of the hospital and have been able to lead a “normal” life ever since.  I walk and ride horses using both feet and have not suffered greatly over the years because of the foot injury. 

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It was his mother who saved Tony’s foot, but it was a seven-year old boy’s six months of day dreams in a hospital bed that saw him riding horses throughout the rest of his life. It was his mother’s brother, who kept his nephew’s dream of horses alive.  “He recognized my fondness for horses, and that provided him with the opportunity to keep me entertained.   He would take me to an associate’s home or a pedlar’s barn in which he might have had an interest.   He offered me the chance to have any horse I wanted, and would always announce that that particular horse was now mine, and that we’d be back to visit him soon.  Of course, we rarely went back and often I would find out that the horse had “gone away to the country” to be with his family.   But he assured me that we would get another one and—sure enough—he would repeat the process so that I would then own yet another horse.  It was all fantasy, but I was happy, and it didn’t seem to do any harm, so that’s how it went.” As a teenager attending military school, Tony discovered an interest in poetry with which he began to vent vented his frustration with things going on around him. “I took an interest in changing politics at about fifteen or sixteen and railed against the growing trends toward disrespect for all that we cherished.  From that time, I took an interest in poetry and have attempted to use it to vent my frustration and dismay at the onslaught of disregard for America that has plagued us for decades.    “Also, with age I have been blessed to have been able to expand my spiritual life.  In fact, the one into which I was born but so often strayed from has given me this great gift.   After a long search, I was pleased to realize that it was there for me all along.  Lack of finances and a belly full of believing I could do anything, put me on the path which would let me find my future life.” It was when he was Eastern Seaboard sales manager for an international freight forwarder that he met his wife, Cynthia.  

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Because Cynthia was on the West Coast and Tony on the East, they had a two-year phone courtship.  “Twice during those two years we met in-person—once in San Francisco, and the other in New York:  “This is our 43rd year together . . . still in love and still happy, each and every day.” In essence, Tony is every horse lover’s unsung, and un-marketed Horse Whisperer. He not only adopts horses, sometimes including wild mustangs, he makes them loved members of his family. “In was back in 2008, after we had lived in Idaho for about a year, that I adopted Chief, a three-year-old gelding, from the Bureau of Land Management auction which was held in Spokane. He caught my eye as soon as I saw him. It was obvious that he was a strong leader, evidenced by the bevy of mares which surrounded him, as well as the way he carried himself —full of confidence and bravado.  He may not have yet figured out that he had been gelded along with the other stallions that had been gathered up by the BLM!   “A natural practice among wild mustang stallions is to gather up the mares that become too old to keep up with their own herds and get left behind.  “Too old” in the horse world could be around 18 or 20 years old, far in advance of their life expectancy of about 30 years. In any event, Chief was full of himself and very defensive.  He was unapproachable in terms of accepting a halter, or even a touch, for that matter.   “It was early summer when we brought him home, and left him pretty much untouched through fall and winter.   Other than allowing us to provide him with food and water, he was having nothing to do with us. I was running Panhandle Equine Rescue at the time, and had him in an open-air paddock while our barn was being built, also in the same pasture of Chief's pen.  A pasture across the way had several mares in it and another gelding, who considered the mares to be his herd. Chief, with his desire to gather a herd of his own, began a crafty process of standing by the gate to his pen and gently rocking from side to side to slowly wriggle the post holding the gate, loose enough to unhinge it.  Sometime during one night, Chief’s gate finally swung open and he managed to run across the separation between the pastures.   He jumped over the fence and joined the other gelding and the mares. The other gelding was older and I had no doubt had had a herd of his own back in his day.  So, all poor Chief got for his trouble was a sound thumping!  In order to get him back to his own paddock, through what seemed like a Rube Goldberg maze, we spent the day building a chute where we could run Chief from one section to another.   “When winter turned to spring, I began to work toward gentling Chief down so that I could halter him and coax him, until one magic day when I could begin to groom him and gain his trust.  I used training methods that were gentle and non-threatening. I never did anything to hurt or frighten him, and within a couple of months, Chief became my friend.  He’s a terrific horse, and I never fail to be amazed at my good fortune to have found him.   “Members of the Idaho Farm Bureau visited the TLC ranch and made a video to bring our horse rescue to the attention of the public and local ranchers.”  Yes, that really is Chief  kissing Tony in the video and still shot picture. 

But the picture that Cynthia took of  him riding Chief, which shows Tony looking much younger than his years, is my favourite. Cowboy Poet Tony Mangan is not only living the American Dream but is the Living American Dream. It is the ‘Little People’ like Tony Mangan who are the unsung heroes of today’s society. These unsung heroes, never seen on social media because they’re too busy living the American Dream, are the ones who put love of od, family and country ahead of the current hatefest called Politics. Says Tony: “As I approach my eightieth birthday, I can’t think of anything more rewarding than to keep on keeping on.” Over the years, Tony has never lost his love for God’s Creature, the magnificent horse. Not only his wife and family, but everyone who knows Cowboy Poet Tony Mangan thanks God that he “keeps on keeping on”.