There Is Just As Much Horse Sense As Ever, But The Horses Have Most Of It.

Newspapers from really small towns can still be quite delightful, which is why I still subscribe to the Leelanau Enterprise where all the news is parochial, all sports regional and all politics local. They still have space for human interest stories and local history, unvarnished and largely unretouched by politically correct sensibilities. Stories such as this from a local book, “A Port Oneida Collection: Images, Oral History, Maps,”  which chronicles the history of the Charles and Hattie Olsen Farm. The excerpt continues from an earlier installment and picks up with a 1978 letter from the Olsen’s daughter, Virginia, to one of her granddaughters. It’s titled simply and matter-of-factly, Stroke doesn’t stop work on Olsen Farm.

The Charles & Hattie Olsen Farm, 1948. Most of these buildings are now, unfortunately, gone. However, you can visit the site any time; see the house, barn, and root cellar; and imagine the rest of what is shown in this photo and described in the text of this chapter. Photo courtesy of Preserve Historic Sleeping Bear Online Archive

The stories are told plain and straight forward, like your own grandmother or grandfather would have unemotionally related the joys and sorrows of a hard life. But beyond the matter-of-fact historical telling of her parents’ declining health there is this small gem, a daughter’s memory of her father – who had suffered several strokes – and his horses.

One of the very oddest things was when he was able, we would push his wheelchair to the back fence and his horses could be down in the pasture and without calling them, they would come up to the fence and nuzzle his hand as long as he was out. The horses, Babe and Nell, did other things that were quite remarkable. Several times in later years, especially while hauling out manure, Dad wouldn’t notice his foot under the wheel, the horses would always look and wait till he moved his feet before they would go. Another time he had a slight stoke and fell under one of the horses’ feet. That horse stood on three feet till a neighbor found him and freed Dad. So many times they saved his life that when he died, Orvald kept them and fed them till they died.

 

"There is just as much horse sense as ever, but the horses have most of it."

For your mental health I recommend reading only really small town newspapers these days; everything else will leave you wondering if mankind really does deserve animals.

If you have gained the trust of a horse, you have won a friend for life.