FLYING GLORY AND THE HAIL STORM

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.