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Grandpap’s Way with Horses

In the early 1950’s I had been working at St. Thomas Church. During a lunch break with other contractors, an elderly gentleman came by, sat alongside me and began telling me horse stories from his childhood. His name was John Coe. John was then in his sixties and I was seventeen. John told me in a spirited voice that when he was just a pup at the age of fourteen, he worked for Charlie, an old man on a farm near New Windsor. Early one morning in the late part of winter it was cold and dark, and low clouds massed the sky. They hooked the horses to the corn wagon and began filling it up with corn to haul into town. They had to shovel the corn out of the corncrib hard and fast to beat an upcoming ice storm.

The farm sat deep in the bottom of the valley. Their sheer driveway was sunken well below grade level between two abrupt walled banks equally high on both sides. The natural grade rolled smooth as the driveway stabilized into open fields on top of the hill. The fencerows were barricaded with dry honeysuckle that appeared to sparkle as if each strand were set in tightly bound glass from the freezing rain. The old man was in front driving a flashy hitch of beautiful Percherons. At the same time, John Coe was riding in the rear of the wagon, sliding around on top of rolling ears of corn.

The old man had a great big, long black snake whip. He knew that when the horses approached the struggling part of the hill, they couldn’t stop where they usually did. He stood up in the wagon and cracked the whip above the heads of the six-horse hitch; all six of those horses dropped to their bellies to draw that wagon up the harsh grade to the state road.

That day the state road carried little traffic for such a good road. Along the grove, tree limbs hung heavy with the burden of ice. Old Charlie was a bit of a show-off driving his team through town when all the other teams were at a standstill. You couldn’t help but hear the chains jingling and the clamor of his high-stepping team and watch their snowshoes pound the road and spark the cement at a lively gait. The sweaty team was happy to be on the easy side of gravity. As they passed John Strine’s general store, people walked to the edge of the porch to get a better look. As stable as a “drag-sled,” old Charlie stood up and took a little bow as he wheeled his horses into the narrow alley to the back end of the feed mill. On the sharp turn the wagon screeched and rumbled from under the heavy load.