My one-horse open sleigh
By Marv Kohlbeck
Columnist
When I hear the song “Jingle Bells” and the phrase “one-horse open sleigh,” it often reminds me of a personal experience I had as a teenager back in the 1940s.
During those years I spent a lot of time working on my maternal grandmother’s farm, even though she had sold it to a businessman who operated a supper club in Francis Creek. The new owner granted lifetime living rights on the farm to my grandmother and her son, who dealt with epileptic seizures.
Uncle Pauly never married, did not own a car, and seldom left the farmstead. He loved farming and did a good job of managing the dairy herd, hogs, work horses, and overall farming operation, but it was felt that it would be best if there was someone with him in case he would have a sudden seizure.
Being brought up in a family of eight children and liking the agriculture connection with Uncle Pauly, I was willing and expendable to help out on Grandma’s farm quite often. I was too young to have neither a driver’s license nor a car.
Larry, the new farm owner, thought it would be great if Uncle Pauly and I would hitch the plow horse to the farm’s “one-horse open sleigh” and visit his place of business for a Christmas day dinner and give sleigh rides. We too liked the idea.
The eight-mile trip with a plow horse pulling the sleigh was more than we bargained for as it took more time than anticipated, and the weather had turned extremely cold. We did not have the luxury of having AAA or a computer to give us the time limit or travel route. The cold, blustery, wintry trip over and back took the better part of a day. Luckily, we bundled up real well with layers of clothing, gloves, and stocking caps and draped a bearskin blanket over our knees to keep our legs warm. Of course the horse had to do all the work and even worked up a sweat. We did blanket her while we enjoyed a scrumptious dinner.
Even though the horse and sleigh attracted a lot of attention on the road and around the village, we did not have much time to give sleigh rides.
After we finished our meal, we had no choice but to make the slow journey back to the farm so we could do the evening chores of hand milking 18 cows. The journey home seemed like we were never going to get there.
The trip was a once-in-a-lifetime experience as we vowed never to do it again. To think that at one time this was the only mode of transportation and that even today we have cultures in our society that still rely on horse and bugg” transportation, I could never adapt to a lifestyle of such transportation even if the horses and wheels run and turn faster.
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