Another Tale Bites The Dust

" I became known as Lily Casey, the mustang-breaking, poker-playing, horse-race winning schoolmarm of Cocosino County, and it wasn't half bad to be in a place where no one had a problem with a woman having a moniker like that."

I'm never certain how I'll react reading about people like Lily Casey, the grandmother of author Jeannette Walls and the subject of her 2009 "true life novel" entitled "Half Broke Horses". Sometimes people who defy convention inspire me. Other times, I'm skeptical and they annoy me. And any story like Casey's, no matter how many liberties an author takes, has the potential to propel me into a short tailspin.

Aside from fear - and what else is there, anyway? - what blocks any of us from marching to our own drummer? If most of what Walls recounts about her grandmother is true, I'm compelled to re-evaluate people I'd previously thought of as fearless. More significantly, I'm re-thinking the story I've told more than once about unconventional Pat.