Auroraadvocate.com - The Way It Was: Life-long love of horses continues

by John Straka

Correspondent

I've been asked, "What happened when cars began replacing horses? Were there any car/horse accidents?"

Well, I don't remember that being a problem. It seems there are more such accidents now in Amish country than there were in the city where I grew up.

I was born in 1917 and I have some pretty good memories of the years from the time when cars and trucks replaced horses -- about 1925 to 1945.

Those years are also the years from the beginning of the Great Depression to after World War II.

During the Depression, no one had any money to spend on cars and during the war, no cars were built because all the factories were making tanks and trucks for the war.

So there were far fewer cars on the road then than there are now.

Also, those early cars didn't go as fast as modern cars. A horse-drawn wagon delivering ice, milk or bakery on a street where lots of people were walking and lots of children were playing moved at just about the same speed as a Model T or Model A Ford.

The change didn't happen overnight. New car drivers learned to drive on roads shared not only with horses, but also by people and by children playing in the streets.

I remember one incident when a horse-drawn milk wagon overturned. The horse broke loose and headed back to the barn, trailing leather harness and chains.

THERE WERE sparks flying from the horse's shoes, the chains and even parts of the wagon dragging on the brick pavement. The horse was terrified and looked like a scary monster to a young man like me.

I remember the time my dad asked a friend to plow the empty field next to ours for a garden.

The man had a riding horse, not a plow horse, and when the horse felt like it was trapped, or tied down by the plow, it tried to break free and did a lot of jumping around. We ended up plowing the field by hand with shovels.

One time I was in a small town east of Cleveland when a young man, probably Amish, was guiding his horse-drawn vehicle through a business district intersection.

The horse must have been confused by traffic, so the man got out of his vehicle, walked up to the horse's head, talked to it, calmed it down and led it out of the intersection.

Before television and computers, leisure time activities for young people included parties, games, dances, roller skating and horseback riding.

There used to be riding stables nearby, where one could rent a horse for an hour and ride it in a park or on some kind of trail.

Since one paid for an hour's ride, it made sense to go out -- away from the stable -- for half an hour and turn around to head back to the stable for the second half hour.

It seldom worked out that way because the horse knew when it was headed away or toward its stable and on the return part of the ride it would be much more in a hurry than on the first part.

A horse that seemed to be old and tired would suddenly be full of pep and the return trip would take far less than a half hour.

ON ONE of my horseback riding experiences, I saw a rider mount his horse and urge it toward the trail, but the horse would move a few steps and stop.

The rider complained to the stable attendant, who asked the rider to get down. Immediately, the horse perked up, apparently because it knew what was going to happen next.

The attendant jumped into the saddle, yanked on the reins and headed the horse at a full gallop down the gravel driveway and back.

By then, the horse was panting and the attendant told the rider the horse would give him no more trouble. Mounted police often patrolled Garfield Park.

I remember being there for some event, maybe a ball game, and being attracted by a patrolman's horse. Little kids would approach and talk to the officer about his horse and the horse and rider attracted lots of attention.

While I was watching, a young man in a Navy uniform approached the officer, spoke to him briefly, and surprised me when the officer dismounted and turned the reins over to the sailor.

The sailor road the horse around a bit and then placed the back of his hand on the horse's spine, just behind the saddle. The horse responded by kicking up his rear legs.

Since then, I wondered who the sailor was. What did he say to the officer? Why would a mounted policeman turn his horse over to a sailor, and why did the horse kick? Why?