Let’s say it was 1955. I was 10 years old, it was high
summer, warm, humid, wind out of the southeast. Storm weather. Not everyone had
“dried out” yet and left the neighborhood for California or Oregon, but they
were going to go very soon. The mid-1950s, like the Dust Bowl of the 1930s and
the Farm Crisis of the 1980s changed the rural face of the Plains states. Drought
and commodity prices.
There were still remnants of the village of Woodville, the
railroad stockyards were still there and a foundation that was the store that
burned down. The old lumber yard building had been converted to a barn, but the
Clark house was still there. Sitting on a huge parcel with beautiful elm trees,
soon to be gone due to the Dutch Elm Disease, and a big lawn. It sported a
“Hollywood” bathroom that amazed me since you could enter it from the master
bedroom or the kitchen. Little did I know then that it “sported” an infestation
of snakes due to someone’s misguided idea to insulate the house with ground up
corn cobs. That invited rodents to the feast and the snakes came as uninvited
guests. Bull snakes, harmless, but snakes nevertheless. A later resident of the house told me about getting up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom and stepping on one. First, I wouldn't have needed to proceed to the bathroom; and second, I would never get up in the middle of the night thereafter.
Jim and Helen Clark lived there at this time. Jim’s father, Jim Senior,
had been gone for years and his mother, Grace, moved to town when she retired
from teaching. Just a couple of years earlier, though, she would roar past our
house in her Model T Ford on her way to school. Young Jim was “Axel” to my dad
as it seemed that nearly everyone had a nickname back then. Jim came back from
the War, took over the farm with his brother Tracy, bought a new luxury motor
car, a Hudson, went to dances south of the river and married Helen.
Tracy would eventually go off to Iowa State, become an
equine vet professor and live a good life, but at this time they were both
horsemen and adventurous young studs. Jim and my dad, Wally, “Ole” to Jim, went to
Wisconsin each winter, brought back a truckload or two of dairy heifer calves
and had a sale in the big Clark barn in Woodville. Farmers in the extended neighborhood
needed good dairy replacements, so the sales were doing well, not great, more
like “ok” for a few years. Until everybody left. For California. The drought
and commodity prices pushed more of them off the farm.
Most farms had horses, and we had a pair of draft horses,
Lady and Ty, along with the cow horses. Jim and Tracy often bought “rough”
horses and through skill and determination would train them up to be worthy of
someone’s interest as a working cow pony. One of those, a two-year old that Jim
was training, started the events that are vivid in my mind now, 65 years later.
It must have been July, a Sunday, as the triangular wheat field
southwest of our farmstead had been harvested and plowed. After a colt is
“settled” by leading with a halter and become accustomed to the saddle, the
boys would take a couple of their cow horses, a couple of ours (two I remember
were our bay, Cherrie and their buckskin, Cindy) for a ride along. They would
go out to the plowed ground, snub the colt to one of the cow horse saddle horns
with Jim aboard and Tracy would mount up on the colt. The plowed ground would
tire both the colt and the mature horse quickly, the colt couldn’t actually
buck like he wanted with his head held up by the lead attached to the other saddle.
The goal was for the raw young horse to grow accustomed to a rider and a tired
mount is less likely to resist training. A new horse would take the place of
the mature one and they would eventually get the colt really, really tired to
the point that he could be ridden without the out-rider.
Like I said, it must have been a Sunday because there was
something like recreation. Every other day was work even though the dry weather
had caused the crops to be damaged to the point of failure. There was still
work.
Jim was riding the colt on the road, he had been trained
enough by this time that he was almost “broke,” but not completely so. He came
to our place and probably had a cup of coffee along with everyone else at 4:00
which was when we always had “lunch,” just before it was time to start milking
at 5:00. No matter if it was Sunday or a holiday.
When it was time to go back west to his house, everyone
could see that there was a storm coming from the west. A big one, dark.
Definitely a threat.
My mother had saddled up her horse, Flying Glory, earlier in
the day and been doing some riding as she didn’t get a chance to do that often.
“Glory” was a handful and on top of it all she had a foal, a filly (colts are
male) maybe three months old that usually went along for the rides, trailing
the big mare. Flying Glory was an American Saddlebred, rangy, leggy, all of 16
hands and she looked taller than any of our other horses. My mother, Norma, was
about the only one who wanted to ride her, especially with the foal. It wasn’t that
she was mean in any sense, but she was big, concerned with her offspring and
not ridden much which makes just about any horse a bit squirrely.
With the storm coming up, Jim asked my mother to ride along
to the railroad tracks, about three-quarters of a mile west, to keep his young
mount easier to control and to get him very close to his barn. Not a problem,
but they decided for some reason to leave Glory’s filly at home, not unusual,
but it was not the mare’s preference. They sense these storms just like people
do, probably better.
They headed for the Clark place, careful not to go too fast
as a young horse can run away. Turns out, so can mature ones. They got to the
railroad tracks which spooked the colt a bit, but Jim got him across and about
that time a wave of rain came across the hills from the southwest, huge cold
drops of a summer thunderstorm hitting Glory on the rear end, lightning and
thunder all around and she took off for home.
We had unsaddled the other horses in the alley way of our
barn, brushed them down, hung up the tack and spread out the blankets to dry
while we waited for Norma and Glory to return. Gave the horses a pan of oats
and turned them out with Glory’s filly, Susie. They were all a little jumpy
with the weather, and Susie was nickering, she needed the mare.
The west-facing barn doors were traditional sliding doors
that completely opened the alley way so a wagon could be backed in.
The wagon would then be unloaded of its cargo, typically oats or
cattle feed, into bins along the side. The barn doors were opened, the alley
way empty. The floor was covered in planks laid longitudinally 70 years earlier
and worn to a smooth sheen that extended about 25 to 30 feet to a wall. We
could see from the open doors the drama developing to the west as Glory and
Norma turned toward home. And she just laid out flat. My mother tried to rein
her in, but it was useless.
The wall of rain came sweeping down the hills from the
southwest and across the fields toward our place and the horse/rider were just
at the edge. When she was named “Flying,” they must have sensed something.
When you get things like Sears-Roebuck catalogs in the mail,
you need a big mail box, and one of those was set at the end of the driveway
where Glory would turn into the home place. Was it slick enough yet that she
would lose her footing coming around the corner? Well, she hit the mailbox, or
rather my mother’s left leg hit the mailbox, but she came around the corner successfully.
Next, the alley way.
She blasted through the barn doors and Wally tried grab the
bridle, but decided to not hold on as everyone would certainly end up falling.
Glory sat, all four feet locked, skidded along those planks all the way to the
far wall that she hit with her chest. She stumbled to her feet...she had not
lost her footing OR HER RIDER, which was a miracle.
She was wild, blowing, of course and anxious to get to
Susie. We opened the top door to Susie’s pen so they could greet each other and
everyone calmed a bit. My eyes, I would imagine, were still huge and the noise
that had been quite deafening, turned down a few notches. Then we all started
to realize that nobody was hurt. Nobody was injured, well, my mother’s left leg
was bruised from hitting the mail box, but compared to what could have
happened, nope. The hailstorm followed, but everyone was safe.
The rain was welcome, too late to help the crops and the
hail hurt more than the rain helped, but that is the way life on the farm plays
out.
I have replayed this scene many times. Not sure what that
means, but the word that comes to mind is “vivid.”
The days of horses were about over in Woodville. Hell,
Woodville would be completely gone soon thereafter. A guy in town, Art Poole,
liked to tease Wally about being the “Mayor” of Woodville. Flying Glory
disappeared from my memories about the farm, I don’t know what happened to her,
but Susie was sold soon after and was killed in an accident.
My schoolmates were about to leave, too. They were all in
other grades at Big Cut, District #12, Nance County, as I didn’t have anyone in
my grade after kindergarten. One after another, the farmsteads would be abandoned,
the buildings derelict and eventually cleared along with the shelter belts and
other trees. Irrigation systems, pivots, would be installed. In many ways, the
Prairie returned to grow tall grass, only this time it was corn. Trees were
never supposed to be a part of that landscape, the vistas are longer now with
fewer interruptions. The way they were before people tried to alter the
landscape, a time before those barn planks were laid and a time before a ten-year-old's eyes were huge and a memory was set.
