Gettin' to School 12-29-17

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GETTIN' TO SCHOOL 12-29-17

We lived some five miles from the nearest paved road, and when it came time for me to enter first grade, I had to catch the school bus there. My step father would hitch Old Sam to a 2 wheel wagon to take me there and wait for the bus. The Wagon was a 'short hauler' with a wide seat in front and a sort of pickup body in back. We would pile in around 6.30 in the morning as the bus met the road down there around seven. They would be waiting for me again around 4 o'clock to go home and do the milking. On a farm or a ranch the 'critters' all get taken care of before us. To this day my dog gets his dinner before I do.

I enrolled a year late and started first grade when I was seven because I had been sick the previous fall, so the following year I was past eight years old and that was the end of the wagon for me. From then on, I would ride Old Sam down to meet the bus and turn him into the friends pasture to graze all day and ride him home after school. In winter months it got dark so early that the road would be dim under the overhanging trees on the way home.

Sam was a workhorse, it was all he knew, and when he pulled a plow or wagon, he was trained to stop about every hundred yards and wait. He paused now and whickered like a man making a raspberry sound. No amount of urging him could get him moving again, without reins.

"Cum on you ol' horse!" I hollered and kicked with my feet. Sometimes he would turn his head and look at me with a "you want me to do what?" look. Meanwhile in the gathering darkness, the woods were coming to life. "Who.. who.." an owl in a tree gave me a start, and Old Sam started walking again.

Now there was reason to be wary. Just a year before I had been set upon by a bobcat by the creek and I threw rocks and Bingo ran it off. A bobcat was half the size of a mountain lion and could kill a calf or goat or a dog. Bingo was a Beagle but the hound in him made him fearless and we had been lucky.. a rabid one would have not retreated so easily. I saw black bears cross the road many times and once or twice a young 'timber wolf cross'.. that's a wolf who has a dog as one parent.

Every hundred yards or so, Old Sam would stop and blow raspberries and I would holler again "Cum on Sam!  Lets get home and eat!" I  kicked him again with my feet. It was not as long as I thought.. Sam took big steps, and cutting through pastures we could make it home in about 40 minutes. I slid off him in the yard and scratched his ears, and he would lean his head against me and smell for apples. Sam was just a big baby and once we were acquainted he would follow me around like a dog. "You got a dog and a half!" said my step father joking and we would grin.

You got to understand that 'great horses' (that's what they call the large breeds) act smarter than smaller horses, almost as smart as a mule. They were more fight rather than flight like an average horse. A young bull got loose and came at Old Sam once, and he reared and thumped that bull right on the face a good one with both front feet and knocked that bull to the ground in one blow! He pranced around menacingly while that bull got up and trotted away. In Medieval times Percherons did not just carry, they were taught to fight armored soldiers and would crush them on the ground with their huge iron shod feet. Sam was shod and I suspect that bull had a migraine headache for more than a week.

Another time we were coming home from school and another bobcat circled us menacingly. It knew we were big, and I suppose it thought we were one big critter, like primitive people thought men on horses were in olden days. it made a mistake and circled and went for one of Sam's back legs. and you wouldn't believe a big horse could be that quick. One back foot lashed out and struck that cat and sent it a good ten feet where it lay dazed for some seconds before limping off into the brush.

With Bingo and Old Sam I was never scared of anything, nor was I afraid of the dark like other kids, or of thunderstorms. "That's just God's fireworks", my mother would say. "it's the sparks of ghost horses shoes on the black clouds, I read that somewhere ", said Uncle Ray with a twinkle, "probably ancestors of Old Sam!" and I grinned.

© Copyright 2018 by Daniel Blankley. All rights reserved.

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