Lecture: Symbols and Group Processing Demo (1) (1954)

I used to write western stories many, many years ago and my name was W. R. Colt. You will still find me in the library. And the funny part of it was, was all the time I was writing western stories, I was really interested in yachting. I never had anything much to do with the west and, and as a matter of fact, tried not to close terminals with it because of my early boyhood misadventures with mustangs, which I do not consider very romantic.

They are very bad transportation but they work if you hit them hard enough in the head with a leaded quirt. The SPCA and I have never seen eye to eye (laughing) on the subject of horses which would buck you off and tromp on you. I always… I asked… when I was six, by the way, I remembered this the other day when I was talking about this to Congress. I had an argument with the SPCA when I was six. I had managed to bring to curb by running him into a brick wall, a 1200 pound Kentucky saddler and somebody had placed it off as a riding horse and I couldn’t stop him. And, he was going places and he wasn’t bright enough to climb the wall or do anything imaginative like that so he merely ran into it. Of course he fell down so I sat on him waiting for him to more or less come to and shake himself out of it. This lady came up, and lo and behold, it was the SPCA because this happened within half a block of the capitol of Helena, Montana and they had quarters right in that vicinity in those days. And she started to sound off about cruelty to horses and I don’t know where she got off bawling out a six year old boy who had just almost lost to a 1200 pound horse but we had quite an argument which almost put me in police court. Which was to the effect, I said rather profanely, that she ought to engage herself in forming a society for the prevention of cruelty to children by horses (laughing). And that she belonged to the wrong gang. She didn’t appreciate this. She went and told some of my relatives and they of course told me off. She was a very influential person. I think her husband was the Treasurer of the state of Montana, or something you know, I mean something influential. They had money, had the state’s money anyway.¹

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