Barbara's Story

This will be my attempt to put my sister Barbara's story into the blog. Bear with me. It will be without pictures which I may add later. Let's see what happens:

GROWING UP ON THE FARM
By Barbara Neill

When I was a little girl I lived on a farm in Connecticut. We raised cows and chickens and for extra cash we grew half an acre of strawberries, one acre of asparagus and lots of corn. My father said it was a good system because usually when the price of milk was low, eggs were high and when we were getting next to nothing for eggs, milk would go up. In the spring when both eggs and milk were low we had those other crops. Nevertheless we were poor.

I grew up in depression times; we had very little money. But nobody in New England spent very much then, even if they had it. There were old-time Yankee farmers in our neighborhood who had plenty of money but they bought as little as possible. We didn't have any choice. There were a couple of times in the 30's when I realized that my father was desperately worried about money. I remember him saying that if a bank held our mortgage we would probably lose the farm.

My grandfather held the mortgage. This was my mother's father and it had been his farm. My mother had grown up here. The place did not hold many happy memories for her; she had had to work very hard as a child and my grandfather was not easy to get along with. He and my grandmother now lived in an apartment in the city but every week he would come down to see how my father was doing. He didn't approve of very much. He saw waste everywhere. He would carefully pick up strands of hay in the barnyard until he had a handful, then angrily shake his head saying, "Waste, waste."

We had moved to the farm when I was just turning eight and my brother was about three. Terrible things happened right away. This was in 1927-28 when all cattle were being tested by the state for tuberculosis. We had twelve milk cows, all good ones that had been prized by my grandfather. Six re-acted positively to the tuberculin test. They looked just as healthy as the other six but they had to be slaughtered. The state paid low beef prices for them. My father had to replace them with high-priced cows which were not as good as the ones he had lost.

Then my little brother got sick. He kept putting his hands to his head and crying. We all thought he was just homesick but it turned out that he had a bone infection behind his ear called mastoiditis. The common antibiotics we have today had not yet been discovered; there were not even any sulfur drugs. The only cure was a painful and risky mastoid operation. The operation was a success. Only later did the doctor explain how dangerous it was. Since the jugular vein was right next to the bone, it took unusual skill to avoid cutting the vein. He told of a surgeon who cut seven jugular veins in a row before giving up the idea of becoming a specialist. Even after a successful operation great care was needed. The wound had to be kept sterile and the bandage changed daily. It was a painful business. The doctor came to the house several times the first week my brother returned home, then a visiting nurse took over. All this was expensive and there was no such thing as health insurance. Financially we were off to a bad start even before the depression.

But all this gloom and doom affected me only marginally. Life on the farm held great rewards, depression or not. Especially for me; I loved the out-of-doors and all living things. I had advantages. Space for instance. I had lots of space; a room of my own and about forty acres outside. Of course that's an exaggeration because most of the land was in crops or in hay or pasture. But I considered the fifteen acre pasture across from the house as sort of my playground. It had a brook running through it. A nice, clean, transparent stream, rushing furiously over stones in narrow places then making deep mysterious pools where it curved around trees, cutting under them and exposing the roots. It wore down through the land where the ground was soft or sandy, creating over-hanging embankments. It wasn't good to get too close to the edge of those sloping embankments; sometimes the whole edge fell in.

The brook was a great place to play. There were water striders, polliwogs, crawfish, snails and tiny, black salamanders hiding under stones. Most of the fish were dace. They were easy to catch with peanut-butter pails. Peanut-butter used to come in tins which held about two cups. (When you first opened the peanut-butter you had to spend a couple of minutes stirring because the peanut oil was all up at the top; nobody yet knew how to homogenize things. But it was wonderful tasting peanut-butter.)

My system of catching fish was to take a peanut-butter tin in each hand, carefully approach a school of fish swimming near the surface than make a sudden swoop, clapping the tins together just under the water. I usually got one or two. Surprisingly no fishes were ever squashed between the tins. The catch was put into a regular 12 qt. pail carried for the purpose. One afternoon I got seventeen. Most were let go but some were taken home for my fish bowl.

Sometimes I'd just sit on the bank of the brook and watch things. Dragonflies would fly past on regular routes up and down the stream. The same dragonfly would stop during each trip on a particular branch or leaf. Butterflies surprised me. I had thought they liked only flowers but I saw that most of them also liked mud; at least I saw swallowtails sitting in muddy places as well as flocks of little blues and some of the copper colored ones.

Once I was a little scared. I had never seen a snake at our brook but when I did it was a big one and it had just caught a frog. I made a feeble effort to frighten it into letting the frog go but it slithered away into the weeds to swallow the frog at leisure.

In the spring when the brook was very nearly a small river, larger fish would drift down from a distant pond which fed it. Bullheads, suckers, an occasional trout and sometimes a few pickerel were seen. The suckers were about six inches long and sluggish. I found that by moving extra carefully I could close my hand around one and lift it right out of the water. When I put it back just as cautiously, it just swam away with a lazy flip of the tail.

In midsummer the brook ran low. It even dried up completely in places. Tadpoles, which we always called polliwogs, were often trapped in small pools. Their survival depended upon becoming adults quickly. I noticed something rather miraculous. In the puddles which were drying up, the little tadpoles became tiny adult toads faster than those of the same size living in deeper pools.

Once each summer at this time there was a visit from the Great Blue Heron. I suppose he really came many times but I only saw him once each summer. The arrival of the heron was an event. It was such a magnificent bird, unlike anything I had ever seen. He swooped in on his great, gray wings, stalked solemnly about the shallow pools, stabbing here and there with his sword-like beak as he filled up on tadpoles and fish. He was something to watch. I thought of him as a royal bird from a faraway place. Once, after he had flown away, I found a feather that had been dropped. I could hardly believe the luck; it was one of the long, slender, tubular feathers from the dark crest on his head. I saved this treasure and it became the start of my feather collection.

None of the other children in the neighborhood were interested in live things the way I was. When I say, "neighborhood" I mean a large area with not many people in it. We could see one other farm-house from our place. Two girls about my age lived there and we often visited each other. In the other direction there was a cluster of farms and quite a few children, but they were too far away to play with very often. We all went to a one-room school with 27 pupils and 5 grades. There were 3 in my 4th grade. After the 5th grade we took the trolley to the city school.

Our teacher did more than teach school; she was also the janitor. No small job, since there was no running water and the heat was supplied by a wood-burning stove in the back of the room. It was the same school my mother had gone to and there hadn't been many changes.

Two of the oldest pupils were appointed water carriers. It was a ten-minute walk to the spring where the pail was dipped into the cold, clear water, so clear you could look straight down about four feet and usually see one or two frogs on the sandy bottom. The full pail was laboriously carried, water sloshing, between the two pupils back to the school. It was set down in the entry-way where we kept our coats, a dipper beside it. We all had our own drinking cups.

I didn't know where the wood came from but in the winter there was always a big pile of fire-wood stacked near the stove. Whoever sat nearest the stove usually had the job of keeping the fire going. I never thought about it but the teacher must have gotten to school very early to heat the place; then there was the sweeping, dusting, etc. For all this and teaching too, she was paid $600 a year. It was a low wage even for depression times.

Some of those one-room, country school teachers were known for their ingenuity and wisdom, teaching with a natural talent that made pupils remember them all their lives. My uncles used to smile warmly when they spoke of their first teacher, Mrs. Dart. Unfortunately neither I, nor later on my brother, were so lucky. Both of us had teachers who were short-tempered and actually incompetent. My brother's teacher was so ignorant that she once told the children that the moon was larger than the earth.

It wasn't considered necessary to have a college education to teach school. My mother had taught one year in a small back-country school directly after graduating from high school. With the money she earned there she went on to Normal School which specialized in preparing teachers. The best teaching jobs went to those with Normal School diplomas. Along with reading, writing, arithmetic and history; etiquette and elocution were important subjects.




Before marrying my mother had taught for seven years and had loved it. It must have been hard for her to go back to farm life. One compensation surely was her garden; her flowers were a source of joy for all of us.





Our house had a lawn shaded in front by two huge maple trees. There were flower beds between the lawn and the orchard to the east and alongside the unshaded side of the house. When I was about ten I had a garden of my own in a spot near the house. I raised annual flowers - zinnias, cosmos, California poppies, portulacca, nasturtiums and calendulas. My mother liked perennials better. Now I know why but I couldn't understand it then. It was fun to plant the seeds of annuals; they came up fast and soon you had lots of big, colorful flowers. It's true that they needed thinning and weeding and lasted only one season but next spring you could always plant more. Perennials needed less attention; that's why my mother liked them; she had no time for annual flowers. Her garden changed very little - mostly iris, lilies, phlox, peonies and oriental poppies. These plants lived over the winter and once you planted them you had them for years. Mother got her plants as gifts, a few at a time, from other farm women and when she herself had extras, she gave them some. Plant swapping was the way to have a garden without spending money. (I never heard of anybody buying a plant) Seeds were cheap and once in a while my mother would try a new variety but it took perennials two years to blossom. I couldn't imagine waiting that long for anything .

In New England the seasons are sharply defined. Winters are harsh with brilliant snow and sleet, spring is a long, slow awakening with lots of rain, summer is warm and lovely and fall has magic when leaves that were green turn red and gold. I thought all of it was beautiful. Maybe spring was best. Then as now seasons and holidays were celebrated in special ways. On the first of May we hung May baskets. It was more a custom for girls than for boys. If you could find a small woven basket you were in luck, especially if it had a handle. If not, you made your own out of colored paper. Baskets were filled with wild flowers and ferns. The idea was to tip-toe up to a neighbor's door without being seen, hang the basket on the door-knob, knock, then run and hide. Although it was often the lady of the house who came to the door it was a children's game. One May day coming home from school I was greatly surprised to see old man Henley with a may basket in his hand, stealthily approaching his own front door. Small and wiry, Mr. Henley was called "old man" not because of his age but because he was dour and unsmiling. I walked along the road slowly, wondering what would happen next. I heard the door open, then running footsteps, a silence, then peals of laughter I recognized as Mrs. Henley's. Astonishing - I would never understand adults. When I told my parents about it I was pleased to see that they were as surprised as I was, also highly amused.

The Fourth of July was a big day. Every year we had a huge picnic with lots of my mother's former high school friends. When it was our turn to be hosts the lawn looked like a festival. Each family brought a dish; there were pork and baked beans, cucumber salad, brown bread with raisins, scalloped corn, potato salad, chicken, corn muffins, fresh strawberries, watermelon and lots of pies and cakes.



Thanksgiving and Christmas were feast days too. Thanksgiving was with my father's relatives, Christmas was with my mother's, but our own Christmas was best. While we had a woodlot, we always cut our own Christmas tree. Having no spruces or fir trees, we used white pines. They were quite pretty with their long, blue-green needles, but young pines growing naturally in the woods don't have many branches. One year I persuaded my father to cut a hemlock. He said OK but it wouldn't last. It was cut the day before Christmas; my mother and I trimmed it right away. For two days it was like a Christmas tree in a fairy tale; thick, soft, feathery branches festooned with strings of pop-corn and cranberries, chains of colored paper, a tin-foil star on top and the nice old glass and tin ornaments we saved from year to year. Then the needles started to fall. In less than a week more than half the needles were on the floor and mother said it had to go. It was the last time we had a hemlock Christmas tree. I thought it had been worth it but I am sure my mother didn't think so. We found the little hemlock needles in cracks between the floor-boards for months afterward.


We didn't have the kind of farm I used to read about in storybooks. Those farms had geese, rabbits, ducks, goats, sheep, pigs and of course the child always had a pony. We had none of these extras; my parents thought there was enough to do taking care of the necessary animals - cows, chickens, cats and my one dog.

My first dog was a gift, arranged by friends of my mother. It was a small, black-and-tan terrier that needed a home. I loved it and so did my brother; my parents tolerated it and my grandparents disapproved of it entirely. My grandmother just didn't like dogs and my grandfather said you could always tell the real dirt-poor farmers - they usually had about six hound dogs hanging around the door-yard, a medium-poor man would have two or three, a well-to-do man might have one but a really rich man never had a single dog. "Take Old Man Brant", he said (the richest man we knew) "never saw a dog around his place, did you?" I was unimpressed. And in time Fido who was a feisty little dog, won my grandfather's affection. He was seen petting it when he thought no one was looking and finally he accepted it openly, even taking it with him on trips with the horse and wagon.

We generally had an abundance of cats. All were females since they were the best hunters and the cats' job was to keep down the rat and mouse population. Already on the farm when we came were two tortoise-shells, "Loungy", short for lounge-lizard because she loved the kitchen lounge and "Ougen", her big-eyed daughter whose name means "eyes" in German. These were the only two house-cats, that is they were sometimes allowed in the kitchen. There were a number of barn-cats too wild to approach; the few that would let themselves be stroked were given names, the rest were anonymous.

For awhile rats invaded the hen-house. Each night one of the cats was shut up with the hens; even if she didn't catch a rat her presence would keep them away. Ougen was always first choice since she was a superior rat-catcher. She was known to tackle anything, having even been seen bringing home such exotic fare as garter snakes and young rabbits for her kittens.

Kittens were a problem. The excitement of finding a litter of kittens in the hayloft was tempered by the knowledge that they would soon be drowned. My brother and I tried to keep their whereabouts a secret. It never worked for long. My father or the hired man would find them and they would be gone the next day. Once in a great while I was allowed to pick out one to keep. What joy! Would it be the gray and white one? The tiger? The biggest, or the smallest? It wasn't easy to make a decision; they were all cute. Replacements were seldom needed. Occasionally a cat would be struck by a car or just disappear; one cat had to be shot for catching and eating a baby chick. But far more kittens were born than we could ever keep. I understood this well but it was very hard when my father handed me a burlap bag of kittens one morning and told me to drop them off the bridge on my way to school. I shriveled inside at the thought. It never occurred to me to disobey and I did it. The bag didn't sink right away. No rock had been put in to weigh it down. The kittens mewed as the river current carried them downstream. I felt wretched for days.

The time came when we were actually short of cats. A disease which had always attacked the kittens, giving them sore eyes for a while, became much more virulent. They would seem to recover, then be struck down again, this time fatally. At last we were left with the two aging house-cats. It was decided that new blood was needed. A friend offered us two unusual kittens, just weaned. They were part Manx; the male had a stub of a tail, the female none. Both were jet black with extra toes on all four feet. I thought they were enchanting. I brought them into the kitchen to introduce them to Loungy. She couldn't have been more horrified if they had been bear cubs. Her hair stood on end, she spat and hissed, her eyes got huge and fierce and her face looked like a demon's. They were such little kittens and she had always been such a good mother, I couldn't understand her reaction. I continued to play with the kittens, hoping she would get used to them. She did not. After half an hour or so she went to sleep on the couch. Even in her sleep a deep throaty growl issued from her throat from time to time.

The black kitten, Sam, grew into a healthy, handsome cat. His sister met with disaster before she was grown. She was killed by a car while the two of them were walking along the roadside. It seemed that he understood what had happened because forever after he ran when he saw a moving car. He was afraid of little else. He never picked a fight but he allowed no other male cats on the place. He was an outstanding hunter, one of those unusual male cats who consider catching mice and rats a worthy vocation. With all this he was the friendliest cat we had ever had, even coming out to the vegetable garden to keep me company whenever I had weeding to do.

We hoped such sterling qualities would be passed on to his offspring. They were - at other farms. At least we had reports of bob-tailed kittens appearing in the litters of neighbor's cats. We never had any. Loungy and Ougen found mates elsewhere. A few of their kittens grew up so we never ran out of cats but none of our cats ever resembled Sam though he lived on the farm for nearly ten years.

Most farmers had automobiles by the early thirties but they weren't very reliable and the roads were generally poor. It is hard to describe a really bad road to someone who's never seen one. I don't mean a little-used road through the woods with boulders and overgrown bushes. Ordinary bad roads were the usual gravel roads seen everywhere in the twenties and thirties. Only major highways were paved. The road past our house was a typical dirt road. It was wide enough for two cars to pass anywhere; it was scraped with a road-scraper spring and fall and fresh gravel was put down in the worst places. The trouble was the mud in the spring and ruts in winter. Looking down the road you would see a driver in a Model T Ford churning through the mud, trying desperately to maintain his speed since to slow down would invite stalling. A large puddle posed a problem, especially if it covered most of the road. The driver had a choice of splashing right through it, hoping it had no hidden depths to bring the water over the running board, or steering way over to the side where the risk was plain to see since the shoulders were always muddy. We helped locate burlap bags, old boards and flat stones for those who had made the wrong decisions.

Winter was often worse because any ruts formed in late fall and not scraped in time, stayed frozen all winter. There was a joke about a road sign someone had seen. "Choose your rut carefully, you will be in it for the next mile." Snow actually improved the worst roads since all were ploughed even then and the snow filled the ruts.

We had a good time with snow just as children do now. We made snowmen, built snow-houses and forts, had snow fights and of course went sliding. Most of us had Flexible Flyers and we took them to school. The school-house sat on a hill so there was good sliding close by. The hill was not long but it was very steep and had a rise at the bottom which gave a roller-coaster effect. When one of the older boys brought his home-made bob-sled, half the school population could get on at once. We all clung to each other, little ones on the laps of big ones, then screaming wildly, the whole over-loaded bob-sled hurtled down the hill on its short run. We never had a single accident.

At home when conditions were slippery enough, we went sliding in the road. The road had just enough slope beyond the house so that, covered with ice, it gave a tremendously long ride. I would walk up to the next farm, meet friends there and we would continue on to the steepest place for a good start. If it was really slick we could coast for nearly a quarter of a mile, ending up in front of our house. Our parents took a dim view of this even though were almost no cars ; we were usually called in after one or two rides. In a few years it was all over; our town bought a sand truck. It was rare that the whole road remained slippery; they spread sand over the best sliding places. We hated that sand truck.

Dressing for winter was complicated. Cotton stockings had to be pulled over long winter underwear, a difficult task. I had "arctics" for my feet, each with four, hard-to-manage buckles. Usually I had a woolen skirt and a middy blouse with a kerchief which had to be tied. Then there was the heavy cloth coat, a woolen scarf around the neck, a knitted cap and mittens. We were often too warm but since nothing was waterproof except the soles of the arctics, we were also often wet and had to come in to dry out.

Boys outdoor winter clothing was much the same with the difference that they wore pants instead of skirts. And they had long, woolen stockings which came up to the knee since that is where their pants were buckled. Knee-length knickers were worn by all boys until they were in the seventh or eighth grade. The first pair of long pants marked the beginning of young manhood.

Clothing was more formal then. No woman would think of going to church without gloves. Everybody wore hats. My father had a good felt hat for best, a straw hat for summer and several caps for everyday wear. All the boys wore caps. Even though we had so little money, mother and I had spring hats and fall hats. Every spring I looked forward to the trip to Rockville to pick our a pretty new hat. There were two places to buy; a regular clothing store which had a hat section and the hat shop which sold nothing but ladies' hats. To have to wear last year's hat was a sure sign of dire poverty. Only once or twice were we reduced to that state.

On the other hand a coat was worn for years and years. Mother had a blue-green, woolen coat with a raccoon collar. The year I was nine she announced that she was going to get a new coat. I looked at her in amazement. "What is the matter with the one you've got?" She looked at me and said, "Barbara, do you ever remember seeing me in another coat?" I thought about it, then had to admit I hadn't.

I remember very well the coat my grandfather bought for me the next year. He simply announced one day that he and I were taking the trolley to Hartford to get me a new winter coat. What excitement! I had never been to Hartford or to a big department store. It was an hour's ride by trolley to Hartford. The size of the stores and their bewildering variety of goods overwhelmed me. The sharp, quick-talking salespeople seemed unfriendly.

The saleslady who sold us the coat was not only unfriendly but unhelpful. The coat was at least two sizes too big for me. True, it was a lovely material of a rich, brown color and the collar was genuine beaver. When she asked if I liked it, I nodded dumbly, too shy to point out that it was for someone much older than me.

My grandfather believed that buying children's clothes too large for them was the sensible thing to do - this way they could be worn for years without becoming too small. For clothing to be outgrown while still in a wearable condition was bad management and a sinful waste.

He was so enthusiastic about my new coat after we got home (Such wonderful material! Such a soft fur collar! Feel the thickness !) that I was convinced that I was lucky to have a coat like this. But by the time it fitted me it was an old, worn-out coat. My mother said hardly a word; undoubtedly this sort of thing happened to her many times while growing up.

Two of my grandfather's sons were mechanically inclined. One summer they bought an old Reo, got it in running condition and took a trip out west to Ohio. They also experimented with electricity. Several years before we moved to the farm they had rigged up a Model T Ford engine and a generator to produce thirty-two volt electricity. The engine was also used by itself to run a big rotary saw for cutting wood for the stove.

We had electric lights before anybody else in the area. But we had lights only in the kitchen and the dining room - and in the barn. My grandmother believed electricity was dangerous and hadn't let her sons wire the rest of the house. One of the chores on the farm was to run the Ford engine to generate electricity. It was housed in the "shop", a building adjacent to the woodshed. It had to be run about every other day and since it was an old engine it often broke down. When the engine hadn't been run a few days the lights would get dim. They got dimmer and dimmer as the electricity became weaker but I never remember them going completely out.

When I went to bed at night I carried a kerosene lamp upstairs with me. I was entrusted with this only after I had proved that I could hold the lamp steady and straight, then could set it down correctly, keeping it perfectly level. Everyone was careful with lamps; I simply never heard of anyone dropping one. Living beyond the range of fire engines, we knew that once a fire got going, it would burn everything to the ground.

Lamps needed daily care. We had three. The fragile glass chimneys got smoky and had to be washed, wicks needed trimming and shaping and new kerosene had to be added. We also had a gasoline-burning Aladdin lamp with two carbon mantles. It threw a brilliant light but was tricky and time consuming to start; it was only used on special occasions.

When we first moved to the farm and for several years afterward, there was no furnace and no running water. My grandmother raised seven children without these conveniences and so of course did and do thousands of other people all over the world. There was a well in the backyard and a pump above it.

When my grandmother first came to the farm she had had to carry water into the house by the pail-full, but in a few years she had raised enough chickens and sold enough eggs to buy herself a new pump which was installed inside the kitchen. The pump was not hard to work; you just pushed the handle up and down a few times and soon water would pour out of the spout.

There was no bathroom. There was an outhouse or privy; we didn't call them johns then. Although it was reasonably close to the house it was a cold trip in mid-winter.

Baths were taken in the kitchen in a large, round, galvanized iron tub. The tub was kept in a rear entry-way we called the "back kitchen". At bath time it was brought into the kitchen and filled with water dipped from the hot water tank. Kitchen ranges which were huge, flat-topped, cast-iron stoves, nearly all came with a twenty gallon metal tank along one side. If this was kept filled, hot water was usually available since the kitchen fire was always going except in the hottest part of the summer. Woe betide anyone who used hot water, then forgot to replace it with water from the pump. It took hours for a tank-full of cold water to heat up.

Connecticut winters are cold. With no furnace, only the kitchen and dining room of the house were kept warm. The big kitchen stove, polished every week with "stove blackening", burned off its polish quickly. The heavy, round, stove lids which covered the roaring fire inside sometimes glowed dull red. The pot-bellied stove in the dining room was less successful. It was not adequate on really cold days and it was not large enough to hold enough wood to last through the night. One of my parents would have to get up around three in the morning to add more wood to the fire. The bedrooms were icy. Country kids learned to undress under the covers. In the morning the thing to do was to grab your clothes, dash downstairs and dress in front of the dining room stove.

Even after we got the furnace (a Holland costing $300) we still burned wood for years. We owned a woodlot, a separate piece of land more than a mile from the house. Enough wood was cut each winter to last a full year. Trees were cut down when the sap was frozen and the ground was covered with snow. Branches were trimmed off so the logs could be loaded onto a sledge drawn by our two horses, Prince and Jerry. It was tough work; my father and his hired man chopping the trees and working the crosscut saw until they were sweating in the freezing weather. And it was hard for the horses struggling to pull a loaded sledge over uneven terrain where iron runners hit rocks or high spots, forcing the runners through the snow into the ground beneath.

Jerry was finally buried in those woods. He was a nervous, impatient horse, the opposite of Prince, an easy-going sort. My grandfather had bought them more than ten years before we came, the first young horses he had ever been able to afford. Though they were the same size and color, both bay, they were never a smooth team. Prince, ever one to take care of himself, always lagged two steps behind Jerry. The year that Jerry died it happened that our hired man, Armand, was a match for Jerry in temperament. He was a hard worker but he was an excitable man with a quick temper. It was never clear what happened but when my father went back to find out why Armand had not returned with the logs, he found the sledge stuck, the horses wet and steaming and Jerry staggering, barely able to stay on his feet. They quickly unharnessed the horse but he fell and died there in the snow. My father always believed that Armand had beaten the horses and that Jerry had broken a blood vessel trying to pull the immovable sledge.

It is hard to realize the importance horses used to have, especially on farms. Even after automobiles were common, nearly all farm machinery was still designed for horse power. Very few farmers I knew had tractors. Not only were they costly but those early machines had unpredictable habits. Many were unbalanced, being lighter in front than behind which caused them to flip over easily. To stabilize them, some farmers chained heavy rocks to the front end.

Horses were not much safer. Runaways were one of the excitement of the times. I was involved in only one runaway; Jerry was the culprit.

Every town had a blacksmith shop where horses were brought in to be shod. Jerry needed shoeing and there were errands to be done in town so the horse was harnessed to the spring wagon for the forty-five minute trip to Rockville. The spring wagon was an open delivery wagon, the fore-runner of the pick-up truck. It had a comfortable wooden seat on springs up front. I was pleased when my father asked me if I wanted to come along. All went well until after the shoeing, when we made a short stop at a lumber yard at the top of a hill near the railroad tracks. Just as my father got back into the wagon and turned the horse toward home, a loud train whistle sounded. Then Jerry saw the train. Down the hill he galloped.

"Hold on tight!", said my father. I saw him pulling on the reins as hard as he could, but incredibly I wasn't afraid. I had complete confidence he could stop the horse. As he told it later, he had no confidence at all. The horse was out of control; he had a fast decision to make. At the bottom of the hill the street came to an end; there was an intersection; directly in front was a wooden factory building; to the right was a bridge over a river and to the left the street angled so sharply that the wagon would surely tip over. Since we could also skid off the bridge into the river if we went right, he opted for straight ahead into the factory hoping the horse would make a big effort to put on the brakes. He certainly tried, but his downhill speed with the wagon behind him was too much. As we hit the sidewalk curb then slammed into the building, the spring seat flew up through the air with me still clinging on tightly. I landed right beside the horse's head. He had a skinned face and a bloody mouth. The ends of both shafts were broken off. My father was wedged between the horse and the wagon. Neither of us were hurt at all. When the seat was replaced and the horse calmed down, we climbed back in the wagon and had a sedate ride home.

Obviously runaways could be dangerous; people were often hurt. One driver-less team galloped past our house pulling a damaged wagon that had been hit by a car, the driver having been thrown from the wagon, picked up and taken to the hospital.

I had such a clear view of another runaway that I can still replay it in my mind; and no one was hurt. These horses were hitched to a wheel-harrow, easy to pull when the disks were turned parallel for road travel, which was where they were when they took off. They really flew. They went by the house at race horse speed. The driver, whom I had never seen before, looked scared to death. He was yelling, "Whoa! Whoa!" at the top of his lungs. It seemed to inspire the horses to greater speed. Apparently bored with the road, they veered off into a field. Not far ahead was a disintegrating stone wall. Instead of turning away from it, like steeple-chase horses, they made directly for it. Together they leaped the scattered pile of stones. The wheel-harrow hit the stones with an impact that threw it high in the air; not, however, as high as the driver. He rose as if fired from a cannon. Even more fascinating was that after his trip into space, he landed back in the seat. He must have been saved by his vise-like grip en the reins. But his luck didn't hold. The horses decided on a new maneuver; a hairpin turn in the middle of the second field. That did it. As one end of the harrow lifted, the driver foreseeing his fate, jumped to safety just before the whole thing turned over. That stopped the horses - they couldn't pull the upside-down harrow with the seat gouging into the ground. Since the driver was up and running toward the team, I could laugh with a clear conscience.

Runaways were a rare occurrence with us - we usually had old horses, over-worked most of the time. After a day of deep plowing Prince and Jerry barely had the energy to walk across the pasture to the brook for a drink of water. Jerry's panic at the train was the only true run-away we ever had - though I do remember a fast trip on the hay-rake when he was stung by a bee. Jerry was raw-boned and roman-nosed but our hired men always picked him when there was a one-horse job to do since he was the better worker. Prince was smoothly made with a pretty head but I had to admit he was lazy. The two did not operate well as a team. Prince always lagged behind. Any attempt to speed him up was also a signal to Jerry who immediately jumped ahead again. The problem would have been helped if they had regular bridles with blinders which prevent horses from seeing to the side or behind them. They had open bridles since my grandfather believed horses should be able to see all around - and Jerry could see the knotted reins coming down on Prince.

Good-natured Prince was practically my pet. On Sundays or when work was done I used to pile burlap bags on his bony back and ride him all over the fields and into the woods. Even my mother didn't worry... not only was he trustworthy but his energy level was so low that it took repeated blows with my heels just to put him into a jog - a jog so slow that my father said that he himself could walk faster than that.

I was always defending Prince. He had only one good quality upon which everybody agreed - he was intelligent; no one thought he was a stupid horse. Though many instances proved this, there was one episode which made me think he was almost noble. There is no way to tell how much the horse understood what he was doing, but it did seem at the time that he knew he was saving another horse's life - and maybe Jerry knew too.

It was a horse belonging to our neighbor, newly purchased for the early spring work. The horse was unfamiliar with the swamp in the pasture, unaware of the danger in becoming mired. When he was found he was on his side, half submerged in the mud, still struggling feebly. No one knew how long he had been there, maybe all night. The first we knew about it was when we saw Mr. Snellis and two other men carrying ropes and shovels into the swamp. My father went to help. Even with four men working it took a long time to get a rope down through the mud and around the body of the horse. Then all the men got out on firm ground, which unfortunately was uphill, and pulled as hard as they could. They couldn't move the horse at all. Then a piece of luck – another neighbor came down the road with his tractor. With shouts and waving of arms he was told of the predicament. He drove his tractor into the field - ropes were attached and the tractor started up the hill. We all expected the tractor to snake the horse right out of there. It didn't happen. The back wheels kept slipping on the half-frozen ground. When they did grab hold, the driver had to be very careful - too much gas and the front wheels lifted -the whole front rising off the ground. All the men had hold of the rope, trying to synchronize their efforts with the tractor with the tractor, but it was no use - it was too unpredictable.

That's when my father decided to go after our horses. They were harnessed in record time; a double whiffle-tree was located - the hired man carrying it alongside as the horses came trotting up the road and turned into the field. The traces were fastened, the long rope tied to the ring on the whiffle-tree, the horses started forward. I wondered if they could see the horse in the swamp - if they had any idea of what was happening.

The remarkable thing was the way they pulled. For once in their lives they pulled as a team - without encouragement or urging they strained every muscle. It was not surprising that Jerry pulled hard - but Prince pulled like one inspired. Both slipped to their knees several times but they never quit until drawn back by the reins so they could catch their breaths. Now with a steady pull they could count on, the men could time their efforts with the horses' pull. On the third big try, the horse in the swamp began to move. Slowly he was dragged across the hummocks to solid ground. He looked so pathetic - a fine big horse, helpless and trembling - covered with black slimy mud. He was unable to get up. Our horses were driven back to the farm for the stone-boat to move the horse down to his own barn where he could be cared for. (a stone-boat is a sort of giant skid handy for moving heavy things - every farm had one) I didn't go back with them to the Snellis's but I was told they had hot water and blankets ready for the horse and Mr. Snellis was going to call the vet.

Included in the talk that night at the supper table were remarks about the amazing way our horses had pulled, especially Prince; he had out-pulled Jerry.

"I never saw him pull like that", said my father. "I wonder if he knew?"

It would be good to report after all this that the mired horse recovered, that the efforts were not in vain. But the truth is that the horse did not recover. The vet who examined him said it was hopeless. So the day after being rescued from the swamp, the horse was destroyed. It upset everybody. Although it was conceded that the vet -might have been right, the general opinion was that he should have waited at least a couple of days before putting him down, just to make sure.

It was the next winter that we lost Jerry. Then for several months after we lost Jerry we had only one horse. The early spring plowing was started with Prince alone using an old, single-furrow plow. A replacement for Jerry was essential but with little money it wasn't easy. Finally a gray-roan mare called Gyp was found for fifteen dollars. She was a surprisingly good-looking draft type, heavier than Prince, not too old either - but she was totally blind and foundered in both front feet. Despite this she was a good worker although naturally rather slow, but then, so was Prince.

Before we bought her she had not been used for over a year. The first time I saw our new team working together I was astonished - they were a graphic lesson in what is meant by "condition." They were pulling a sulky plow, two furrows at a time through heavy, wet earth. Prince, over twenty now, ribs showing, had to pull harder than Gyp. But after fifteen minutes of work, the new mare was sweating profusely and her sides were heaving. Prince wasn't even breathing hard. I couldn't understand it.

"What's the matter with her?", I asked my father.

"Nothing" he said, "Just out of shape, that's all. She'll get better." And she did. Within a few weeks when she was in better condition, the work was easy for her.

I made friends with Gyp. By testing I learned that she could see nothing at all, not even a carrot held a foot from her muzzle - and she loved to eat.

That fall after the hay had been cut, Gyp was turned out in the seven acre lot in back of the barn. By herself in a new place, she panicked - neighing and running around wildly. She ran into the bushes in front of the stone wall along one side of the field and into the bushes and fence at the other end. I called to her, caught her and walked around with her until she was calm. I didn't have time to introduce her to all the barriers surrounding the field, but in the few weeks she was there she learned them by herself - indelibly, as I later learned.

The next spring the lot was again a hayfield. When it was time to cut it in June I used Gyp in the hay rake. It seemed to me that she was anticipating the turn-around at the fence-line but I knew this must be my imagination. To make certain I decided to drive right up to the fence then turn her at the last second. It was no use. I could not get her closer than four feet to that fence anywhere I tried. Though it seemed unbelievable she remembered the whole field. The map in her head was perfect.

In common with my grandfather, I had always found horses interesting. Years before, during visits to the farm he often let me lead Prince across the road to pasture. This was accomplished by grasping his long, silky foretop - the horse conveniently lowering his head so that I could reach it. I carefully walked to one side to avoid his feet while holding tightly to the fistful of hair lest he get away. Sometimes I got three cents for this, occasionally a nickel. No doubt the sight of a six-year-old girl firmly convinced she was in control of a 1400 lb. animal, leading him proudly to the pasture, afforded my grandfather great amusement, much more than five cents worth;

Later he taught me how to drive, setting me up on the high seat beside him holding the reins. By the time I was ten I could drive a horse by myself. My father had that in mind when he needed an extra hand during our second summer. There was a field of hay cut, ready to come into the barn. It looked like rain - only fast work could save it. It was the kind of emergency common on a farm. But this time to my amazement I was expected to help. With someone on the rake and two men pitching the hay on to the wagon, it could all be brought in before the rain ruined it. I was going to work the rake and drive the horse at the same time.

Our rake was so primitive it didn't even have a foot lever to dump the hay; I had to reach back for a handle which manually lifted the huge curved tines to release the hay. It was too hard - it was too heavy - the reins got tangled - I felt helpless. Through tears I cried, "I can't do it! I can't do it!"

"Yes, you can" said my father, "Keep trying, you can do it." Somehow I did manage. I dumped the hay in ragged piles, the horse wandered all over the fields but the hay did get raked.

Well, it worked! Later I'll maybe add the photos.