Our columnist takes us on a time travel trip, where we get a view of the sport and the world around it more than half a century ago.

So, you know all these time machine movies, where you go into this capsule, there’s a flash of blinding light, and you’re face to face with a saber-toothed tiger or a T-Rex? Oops! Bad choice of time and place!

Nothing so dramatic, but as one of the few current competitors who started competing in 1954, I might give modern riders a glimpse of what it was really like 60 years ago.

Much would be defined by what we did not have. We barely had television, huge, primitive boxes with tiny screens, with a blurry Howdy Doody coming into and out of view through the static and white lines. We didn’t have any kinds of computers—think slide rules—and we obviously didn’t have cell phones or Internet. Our phones were big and black, and the operator would say, “Number, please?”

We didn’t have Velcro, or stretch fabrics, or much in the way of any synthetic materials. Horse blankets were canvas, lined with wool, not waterproof, weighed 147 pounds when wet, were always wet, but that didn’t matter, because if the horse was at the gate, the blanket was lying in a sodden heap at the far end of the pasture.

Saddles from the 1950s were designed by sadists and ridden in by masochists. Why elaborate further? That’s all you need to know.

Saddle pads were either real sheepskin pads or thick felt pads. Both got as hard as a rock from sweat and were impossible to clean.

Our trucks were huge wooden boxes, set teeteringly high above the axles, into which, over slotted wooden ramps, were led, driven or cajoled as many as 10 or 12 loose horses. The horses, once the two-ton ramp was closed by the first string of the local football squad, lurched and swayed along two-lane roads because four-lane highways didn’t exist. This meant that there weren’t any trips to Florida for the winter, because to travel any distance was like watching the newsreels of the German invasion of Leningrad, hardly as fun as a trip to the mall. What mall? There weren’t any. People shopped in things called stores in places quaintly called “downtowns.” What a bizarre concept.

Indoor riding arenas, so popular today, scarcely existed. The only one that I can even remember was at Smith College, in Northampton, Mass., and it resembled a Quonset Hut, small, dark and tubular in appearance. As a result, northerners either had their horses shod with borium and rode outside in the winter, or they gave them several months off, from December until March or April.

The cars that our parents and grandparents drove were huge machines with 300 horsepower engines that got about seven miles to a gallon of gas, which didn’t really matter, because gas was under 20 cents a gallon.

The cars had plush interiors, no seatbelts, and capacious back seats designed by benevolent Detroit engineers to cater to the dating proclivities of the American teenager—unless you had a VW Beetle.

The horses came in “grade,” Thoroughbred, Morgan, Arabian, Quarter Horse, American Saddlebred and Standardbred, Clydesdale, Percheron, Belgian and Shire. The ponies were “grade,” Welsh, Connemara and Shetland. There weren’t any warmbloods. As in zero. None. Nein. Nyet. Nada.

Horse breeding was live cover only, which meant the mare had to go to the stallion. There was no artificial insemination, no Equitainers, no frozen semen, so we had a far more narrow range of options. By 2014 standards, the overall quality of horses would have been far lower because “selective breeding” was only as selective as the quality of the stallions reasonably close to where you happened to live. The “baby in the blue bucket” phenomenon was years in the future.

Hunter classes in horse shows went out of the ring, and the bay, gray and chestnut Thoroughbred geldings (they were always bay, gray and chestnut Thoroughbred geldings) galloped, often without swapping leads, over solid jumps like coops, stone walls, and three-rail vertical post and rails. The fences were set on undulating terrain. The trusty steward with his trusty measuring stick established that first year green hunters would tackle 3’6″ jumps, second year green hunters would clear 3’9″ jumps, and open working hunters would jump fences set at an honest 4′.

Open jumpers had extremely basic courses by 2014 standards—once around the outside, across the diagonal, once around the other direction, and across the other diagonal, no measured distances. Jumper riders wore tweed jackets, and the men wore “fedoras.” If you want to know what a fedora looked like, go watch an ancient Frank Sinatra movie. Unlike show hunters, which were coiffed, braided, and shiny as a new penny, open jumpers “back in the day” had roached manes, or long manes, and they usually went in standing martingales.

Breeches? You could fit my entire 1950 fourth grade class at Four Corners Elementary School into just one of the flares of those babies. They were cleverly disguised to be “uni-sized,” meaning the wearer could be any shape whatsoever, nobody the wiser. You didn’t have to ask, “Honey, do these make my butt look fat?” because everyone’s butt looked fat.

There was lots of open land 60 years ago, because there were only about 150,000,000 Americans, half as many as in 2014, so English riding was all about foxhunting, point-to-point racing, show hunters, jumpers and polo. “Dressage,” for the few who’d even heard the word, was what some Europeans did to annoy their horses. Eventing was something to entertain young U.S. Army officers when they weren’t racing, pig sticking or playing polo.

Horse care was primitive. Twice a year, spring and fall, the veterinarian (always a man) would tube worm each horse with a pail full of foul-smelling white liquid wormer. If a horse had colic, he either recovered without surgery or he died. All drugs came from veterinarians. There were no horse health-related catalogues.

Tack and apparel came from stores. The biggest names were Millers, Kauffman’s, M.J. Knoud’s and Beckwith’s, and we read those wish list catalogues until they were shredded and tattered.

Finally, a word or two about that amorphous word “horsemanship.” In 1954, anyone 55 years and older had been born in the 19th century. My grandmother, Mabel Hood Emerson, for example, was born May 10, 1876. General Custer would be massacred by Sioux Chief Gall, Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull a few weeks after she was born. People 60 years ago were simply closer in time to when horses weren’t bred, raised and trained for sport, hobby and pleasure. They were primarily bred for work, transportation and war.

So, horse care and horse management for many of those who still had horses in the 1950s were not things they’d had to learn in Pony Club or 4-H. They’d learned it as kids in barns where they kept the family horse. My father was born in the old Israel Putnam family homestead, in Danvers, Mass., in 1905. The family horse was named “General” after General Israel (don’t fire until you see the whites of their eyes) Putnam, the American commander at Bunker Hill. Dad cultivated peas with General at Essex Agricultural and Technical High School when he was 9, 10 and 11. So many kids of his generation did likewise, and those were the people my generation learned from in the 1950s.

I once let my pony’s water bucket get full of disgusting green slime. Francis Kinsman, the Stoneleigh Prospect Hill School farm manager, dragged me over to Paint’s stall, shoved my nose into the bucket, and said, “Any boy who can’t take better care of a pony than that hadn’t ought to be allowed to have one.”

We didn’t learn horsemanship as much by total osmosis as those from Dad’s and Francis’ generation, but we were in much closer contact with horses than those who live miles from the barn in 2014.

So, yes, more primitive in so many ways and more basic, 60 years ago. There was less “expertise” about classical training methods, and although it was more “rough and ready,” most riders had a more hands-on connection with their horses.

So, there’s a bit of time travel. Was it “better” or “worse” 60 years ago? I think it depends upon our individual priorities. There was much more open space, more of an agrarian life style, and consequently, more unconsciously absorbed horsemanship.

Everything else though—veterinary care, horse breeding, all kinds of tack and equipment, transportation, including vehicles, trailers, and the roads we drive on—all these are better and easier in 2014.

So for all that 60 years doesn’t seem like much in any cosmic sense, there have been surprisingly many changes in the types and breeds of the horses we ride, how we equip and care for them, and how we ride them.

Denny Emerson rode on the 1974 World Championships gold-medal eventing team. He served as the U.S. Eventing Association president twice and won the USEA Wofford Cup for his lifetime dedication to the sport. At his Tamarack Hill Farm in South Strafford, Vt., and Southern Pines, N.C., he trains horses and riders, and he owns shares in stallions standing at other farms. An original Between Rounds contributor, Emerson began writing his column in 1989.