The Smell of the Soil

Chapter 15: The Team (What's your favorite animal story?) In the late 1940s, as I was beginning to unravel some of life's mysteries, I also learned that discovery's delights exposed subtle new questions to ponder. One of those enigmas involved King and Babe, our "work horses" as we called them. It was before Dad purchased our first used Farmall H tractor. Horses were still providing considerable horsepower in those days, but at the same time Dad's generation could envision when such beasts of burden would have no pull on the farm. I couldn't see that, and neither could my grandfather. I couldn't see that far ahead, and Grandpa Yeager didn't want to. For him horses would be pulling machinery until the end of time, and God only knew what havoc these tractors would bring to farming. Could a tractor run all day on a manger of hay and a few kind words? No. Could a tractor interact with a farmer, go when you asked it to go? No. Could a tractor pull a cultivator steadily down corn rows, and - without guidance - not stray from the field's symmetry? No. Could this iron machine, all by itself, straddle the rows of side-raked hay, causing this winding string of legume to pass beneath the wagon and magically up the hay loader? Of course not. Horses did all these things and more. Horses would give you a thank you whinny when you curried them. They would nod approvingly when you gave them an apple. They would put their cold noses on you when brought into a warm barn on a winter's night. And they could look you in the eye and convey all sorts of horse talk. Tractors are brainless. King and Babe, male and female, were said to be a "team" of horses. I knew the meaning of the word team. I had heard the word used often, because Dad was a pitcher on the Bellevue baseball team. When he wasn't pitching, he played first base. I knew from talks by the team manager that team meant working together. It took defense and offense, everyone doing their jobs for a team to succeed. I applied that same sense of "team'' to King and Babe, only to find out it didn't quite seem to fit. Babe, the evidence seemed clear, did most of the pulling. For one thing, King always lagged a step behind Babe. In retrospect, I don't think it was a matter of "ladies first". King simply passed along a bigger share of the load to his partner. This was not an intermittent thing, a lapse in King's concentration. It was standard operating procedure for him. He punched in late every day. If there were any doubts about this unfair working relationship, Dad would frequently let King know. "God-damn it King,'' he would say. "Pull in the harness.'' A flick of the rein would accompany the words. When the leather cracked on King's butt, he would make a new effort - albeit temporary - at reform. King was not ornery, not a trouble maker, just lazy, a welfare horse. Babe always pulled the hay fork, which was a solo job. King was parked under a shade tree where he snoozed and swatted flies at the same time. He showed no signs of guilt. Babe, with precision and without complaint, pulled the fork full of hay up to the barn gable, and then automatically eased off as the fork coasted to the proper loft. Guided by the rope's tension, she would always know to stop when the load reached the end of the track - lest it be pulled through the end of the barn. I had the job of "leading the horse,'' that is Babe, but she had the task memorized. She was a wonderful animal. She was grateful to be stroked on the nose. King was content to sleep under the tree. Strange couple. Babe, incidentally, had given birth to twin sorrels. While she was gray, her offspring were reddish-brown with white markings. I don't recall the sire. We named the twins Florrie and Flossie. They were cute and frisky when colts, but both grew up to become juvenile delinquents. There was some thought they would succeed King and Babe in the hitch, but it never came to be. Dad had no success "breaking'' them, that is getting them to accept the harness and pull a load willingly and by command. Now Florrie and Flossie were full of the same stuff that my Dad attributed to his younger brother, my Uncle Harold, that is, so-called "piss and vinegar''. Uncle Harold was at an age where he couldn't ignore a challenge. So, on one brisk winter's afternoon he showed up at our house and informed Dad he was going to undertake the domestication of Florrie and Flossie. He would hitch them up to the old sled, and let the two pull him through deep snow. That ought to take some of the spunk out of their dispositions, he offered. He got the pair hitched to the sled, and before you could say “Get-y-up”, they were off to the races. Across the field he went, hanging on for life and embarrassment. He was heading south, toward the main road, a path where winds had swept the deep snow away. So the twins had little resistance. They barreled for the fence along the main road. There was a good-sized drift along the fence, but all we could see that far away was Uncle Harold peeling off the sled. He had visions of becoming entangled in the fence himself, so he bailed out. The horses made a sharp turn just as they entered the deep snow, and took off west. Dad displayed unusual humor at his brother's plight. It turned out to be a funny episode in Uncle Harold's maturation. I don't remember how Dad and Uncle Harold rounded up the sorrels. But it sort of marked the beginning of the end of horses on our farm. When we acquired our tractor, I'll guess about 1950, King and Babe were literally put out to pasture. Dad had sold the no-good sorrels, but he had a difficult time sending King and Babe to the same place. They graced the farm for many years after. Babe had finally won retirement, a place King had been unofficially at for years. He was not a team player.