LETTER: HORSEBACK RIDERS SHOULD BE CAREFUL ABOUT PROPERTY RIGHTS OF OTHERS IN COUNTY

To the editor:

I would like to respond to the Oct. 10 article concerning an abandoned road and one gentleman's fight to keep this road open.

It needs to be brought out that this fight is not about abandoned roads. This is about the attitudes of some of the horse-riding population that have sprung up in the county over the last several years.

There is an attitude of some of the horse-riding population that if individuals know how to strap their legs across the backside of an animal, follow each other in a straight line and hook up a trailer to the back end of a vehicle they should be allowed to go wherever they wish in this county. I must admit that my bottom is too large to strap across a horse. I couldn't care less if the horse walks a straight line as long as it's away from me. And although my husband sells horse trailers, I couldn't hook up a gooseneck to save my own neck. But I do know that, should the day come that I feel the need to do any of the previously stated items, I wouldn't choose to do it somewhere that hasn't been designated a riding area. Doesn't that make sense?

I used to live in New Wells. Prior to the time I moved, a large area of land was designated to the Conservation Department. Guess who thought they had the right to ride on this 400-some acres of land? The individuals who had no problem parking in front of my mailbox. Would you park in front of someone's mailbox in town?

That was all easily solved when we moved to town. So I thought. Now I get to pull out of my drive in the mornings to the unpleasant sight of horse excrement on a city street in the middle of town, because some individual has the right to keep a horse in town.

Sounds like I'm a little anti-horse, huh? Well, I'm not. I just believe that "sometimes citizens have to take extreme measures to wake up people in this county," as Ms. Whitledge of Shawneetown has previously stated in the Oct. 10 Southeast Missourian.

Wake up, rude horse riders. Take a look around you when you are saddling up. Do your other trail buddies act as rudely as you are? Clue up. This is not the wild frontier.

KELLE LANE

Jackson