Sometimes, even the most wondrous childhood dreams actually do come true.

“I was just 4 or 5 years old and I’d get up early in the morning and still be in my pajamas when I pulled on my rubber boots and ran outside,” Bill Castro remembered the other afternoon. “My mom would come to my room, but all she’d find was an empty bed.

“I’d be out at the corrals with my face pressed against the fence so I could watch my grandfather and my uncles and all the other cowboys as they herded in the cattle for branding. The noise and the dust, it was really a spectacle.”

This was back in Colombia — the family’s homeland, where Bill’s father, Herman, and the other Castro brothers owned several big ranches in the Los Llanos region and had large herds of those droopy-eared, large-humped Zebu cattle.

“I’d be out there for hours just watching the cowboys and the way they handled their horses,” Castro said. “Being a little boy, it just seemed so magical. One day I wanted to be like them. I wanted that magic, too.”

Sunday — almost 50 years later and with his pajamas now replaced by a long-tailed black riding coat, black pants, white shirt, perfectly knotted tie and jaunty fedora — he will experience some magic of his own astride a mount as majestic as anything he imagined as a child.

Castro — who runs the popular El Meson restaurant in West Carrollton with his family and has become a show ring horseman of note — will ride his 5-year-old Arabian, Alejandro, in the U.S. National Championships in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Alejandro already has had a huge year, winning three national titles — two Reserve National crowns with Castro and an outright national title (for young horses no older than 5) with New Carlisle trainer Matt Siemon — at the Canadian National Arabian and Half-Arabian Championship Horse Show in Brandon, Manitoba in February.

The U.S Nationals is the preeminent show for Arabians in this country. Well over 1,500 horses are entered in several categories.

And Alejandro has to be considered one of the favorites.

“I’ve never had a horse at this level before,” said Castro. “I’ve had horses with real talent, but not the guts he has. I’ve had others that were beautiful, but maybe didn’t have the intelligence. Alejandro has it all. He’s like a fine- tuned Ferrari. He’s got a regal presence, a personality. He looks at you. He nickers when you pass. It’s like he wants to be a part of the party.

“When you go into the competition ring, there might be 20 horses in there at the same time. You’ve got to have something about you that radiates the “WOW’ factor. Something that says, ‘Hey, look at me!’

“And he’s got it.”

In the genes

Herman Castro — Bill’s dad — was a computer tech instructor for NCR in Central and South America. He was transferred to the company’s parent headquarters in Dayton in 1966 and 12 years later he flirted with his real passion in life.

A cooking aficionado, he bought a small, failing pizza shop in West Carrollton. His wife Gloria left her job at Rike’s to run the place along with the family’s three kids — Herman Jr., Bill and Marie.

Soon the place began adding dishes from their homeland on the weekends and eventually it became a mecca for Hispanic cuisine and culture. Today the restaurant — El Meson — is one of the largest and most popular eating destinations in the area.

Although Bill has worked at the restaurant since he was a teenager, his passion with horses never waned. He was 6 when the family moved here and within a couple of years his folks leased a pony for him. Later, with money he earned from a paper route, he bought his own pony and stabled it at a Mad River Road farm. And while going to West Carrollton High, he was active in 4-H projects that involved horses.

Once he became more established in the restaurant business, he was able to buy a few show horses of his own. Initially he had them stabled with top trainers around the country, but he soon found he couldn’t spend enough time with them while running the family business here. That’s why he finally brought his stock — now three Arabians and a 20-year-old pony that’s a sentimental favorite — back to Siemon Stables on Lower Valley Pike.

That means he mostly can ride now when he wants.

“When I put my foot in the stirrup, there’s a certain calm that comes over me,” he said. “I’m able to disconnect from the troubles, the stress, the pressures of daily life. It feeds my soul and that’s something I can’t get from golf clubs or vacations.

“There’s something about a horse that gives that back to me.”

A star is found

Two years ago Castro said Matt Siemon called him from a sale in Tennessee:

“He said, ‘I’m looking at your next national champion. You have to buy it.’

“Too many times I’ve ended up empty-handed on the promise of a horse that was the next big star. But this time Matt convinced me and I bought the horse sight unseen. As soon as I agreed, I started to think, ‘What have you just done?’

“But once they brought him up here and I saw he wasn’t sway-backed or knock-kneed, I was OK. And pretty soon I realized he was something special. He WAS the next big star.”

Realizing he was on a horse like never before, Castro beefed up his own game, as well. He now takes yoga, regularly visits a sports psychologist and has two trainers.

After the title haul in Canada, Castro turned down six-figure offers for Alejandro. He said he realizes he has a once-in-a-lifetime horse.

“When you come into the arena on him, you just feel the magic,” he said.

And that is a far cry from that lease pony he first rode when the family came to America.

“He was fat and wide, short and real stubborn,” Castro said with a grin. “He refused to leave the barn because that’s where he got fed. He wouldn’t let me on him, he’d just spin, and I’d get so frustrated I’d start crying.

“Finally my mother would come out and she’d grab his lead and pull him to the far end of the pasture. Then I’d jump on bare back and she’d let go and instantly he’d gallop straight back into the barn.

“My mother would pull him back out again and we’d do it over and over. That’s where I learned to ride. But I remember wishing that one day I could ride someplace besides just straight back into that barn again.”

Well, that day has now come.

Sunday Castro will guide his regal Arabian into the show ring in Tulsa as a large and boisterous crowd cheers him on.

Sometimes the most wondrous of childhood dreams do come true.