I haven’t done anything since I retired that wasn’t fun.

Mac Grizzard has had many jobs since taking early retirement in 1976, but he has seldom been far from horses. Urban sprawl may force him to leave Ventura County, but he already sees a corral in his future. Grizzard, 63, keeps his horses near Agoura Hills and lives in Thousand Oaks.

My dad came to Ventura County from the Ozarks and went to work in the oil fields in 1941. During the early part of the war, the country was mobilizing, and I was an air raid warden’s messenger. I was 14. I hunted and fished in the Ventura River. I caught steelhead trout in what’s now Foster Park. You just threw your line in, and you had a trout.

I finally got what I had been waiting for. I went to work for the county Sheriff’s Department. I started in the middle ‘50s, when Ventura County was a cow county. It was a good life. I watched Ventura County grow, and I like to think that I had a little bit to do with some of it. When I went to work, there were 37 officers. Last I heard, we’ve got almost 500 officers in this county.

Things were a lot different then. We didn’t have the city problems that came later when the population explosion came out here. We never had the drug problem in my early days.

I knew my kids in my district. I knew where they hung out, and early on I figured out that there are a helluva lot more of them than there is me, so I’d better figure some way to get along. So, I hung out in the kids’ hangouts, and we’d rap. They trusted me.

Law enforcement used to be fun. But it’s changed. Now it’s a jungle. I worked there for 22 years. On the day I was old enough to retire with a little better than half pay, I went. That was 1976, and I haven’t done anything since I retired that wasn’t fun.

I thought at one time I wanted to buy a liquor store. I worked there for three months. I was ready to quit after 30 days. I felt that security might be an interesting thing. I tried that. In the meantime, I wrote a few grants and a couple of programs for various agencies. This was all after I retired. I spent a couple, three years as assistant chief of security at Leisure Village. I ran the back stables at the old Westlake Stables, which are soon going to be offices or condos.

After that I started a little back yard horse business in the Agoura area. I would charge a guy an arm and a leg to clean his corrals and feed his horses. I had a good little business on that. I did the feeding myself, and I had high school girls do the cleaning and play with the horses. High school boys weren’t worth a damn on that job.

I’ve worked for Newbury Park Feeds 3 1/2 years now. I work four days a week there. I’m here at the corral maybe a day a week, usually Sunday afternoons. We have 10 or 11 horses. Jackie does most everything that’s done around here. Jackie is my partner, and she takes care of the horses. She is a woman who does not like the 9-to-5 any better than I do. And we get along.

I sit here and look around these hills, even with all this building in the last year and a half, and it’s still beautiful. There’s not too many places around here where the horses have the luxury of running around. These animals do, because we’ve got 165 acres here, and they race back into the canyons and up on the hills.

We are leasing it, and I don’t think that’s going to last too much longer, because I understand the property is being sold, which means that we’ll have to sell a bunch of horses.

I’m sure Jackie and I will go together. There’s no question about that. We’ve been partners too long.

I just heard about a place in New Mexico that fascinates me. I can rent a house for half what I’m paying here and have good acreage and a couple or three horses. And some day, I’m going to have a mule out of that little mare. I have no business with a mule, I just want to see if I can raise one.

So one of these days I’m going to say, “Hey, goodby.” What’s the use of doing things if you’re not having fun? That’s my philosophy.