A Memoir of Horse Pulling

We thought we would have a swim and Jack quickly shed his clothes and I followed him into the small shallow pond covered with pale green algae, the water nearly strangled with weeds. We were perhaps seven and within the logic peculiar to young boys and pigs, muddy water is better than a hot August afternoon sun. When we got out we tried to scrape the scum and slime from our bodies which had begun to itch. Jack caught a watersnake and slapped its head against a fencepost; the snake's writhing ceased in his grasp and he dropped it. We looked over to the small pasture's woodlot fifty yards or so away; half emerged from a grove of tag-alder trees was an enormous bronze horse, the back of him invisible in the shade and the full sun falling on his great head and neck and flaxen mane. Jack said that is my dad's new horse and it will pull at the fair. It was so much grander than either part of my grandfather's team, which were lightweights and used only for farm work. I stood there and Jack walked along the fence toward the woodlot saying I'll show him to you. He struck the horse on the flank with a stick and yelled and the horse exploded from the trees running along the fence in my direction so I ducked under the fence. I could feel the hooves pounding in the ground and he galloped past me splashing through the edge of the pond so huge and close and tossing his head and mane and neighing. Then twenty yards or so farther on the horse stopped and fed calmly in the grass.

 

I would like to avoid any sense of “nostalgia"—the word has the attractiveness of a viral infection to my generation; those who wander about the age of thirty and having reached maturity during the Eisenhower lassitude feel lost within the energetic radicalism of the young, with their apparent willingness to change life-styles on a monthly basis or even more frequently. “Nostalgia” seems to involve the savoring of something permanently lost: the way Doc Blanchard ran, Big Daddy Lipscomb necktied, James Dean talked and drove a Porsche, Ben Hogan endured, or Ali jabbed. I value my memory and find it as fascinating as life in the present; they mix together, coexist, live a comfortable life, confuse each other, and finally, have a sweet and permanent marriage.

Until the age of fourteen I lived in what now seems the nineteenth century in a small county seat of 1500 people in northern Michigan. My father, Winfield Sprague Harrison, was the government agricultural agent dispensing advice to farmers in a hopelessly unfertile countryside of jackpine, scrub oak, cedar swamps, and fields where gravel, sand and marl lurked altogether too close to the surface. The area was short on topsoil and money, but long on its efforts at the time to aid our boys who were fighting World War II by saving squashed tin cans, tinfoil, bread wrappers, picking milk-weed pods for life preservers, and holding frequent blackouts and air-raid warnings in case the enemy should choose to attack us, though I suspect that it was agreed upon that we were a less than primary target. There was the usual plugged cannon on the courthouse lawn.

My father ran the annual county fair with Francis Godbold, the 4-H (Head, Heart, Health, Hands) director. My father loved his work, having come from many generations of unprosperous farmers; he had worked his way through what was then Michigan Agricultural College and considered farming an applied science and his job that of a missionary who spread the good news of effective farming methods. The fair was always held in late August on three invariably hot and dusty days. There were produce and crafts tents with vegetables stacked neatly, and canning, needlework and sewing with ribbons attached to the winning exhibits. And long sessions of milk cow, beef cattle, calf, pig, sheep, and even chicken judging took place. I took little interest in these; there was a small midway with games of chance and a few rides, a ferris wheel and merry-go-round, plus at least one implausibly frightening whirl and puke sort of machine. And a freak show where one paid an extra dime to see a hermaphrodite, an experience I might add that didn't mar my young psyche. We only argued whether or not “it” could do “it” to himself or herself. Farm children then, before artificial insemination, had a built-in sex education in the barnyard. But before noon each day I would have spent my miserably small allowance and would walk around looking for lost tickets on the ground, envying those who were drinking cold pop, and then I would find and pester my father for more change though he was busy judging everything imaginable, making sure the fair went smoothly. I looked forward only to the 4-H talent show in the evening though I was without any talent and anyway would have been too cowardly to enter. But a little girl I was fond of would sing “Candy Kisses,” someone would play the musical saw, four older girls would imitate the Andrews Sisters, a young man with greasy hair would strum his guitar to the latest Grand Old Opry hit, and then a small boy would attempt “Flight of the Bumblebee” on the accordion.

But the main event, the most exciting spectacle to the adults, was the heavyweight horse pulling contest. The small grandstand would fill early in the afternoon with farmers and their wives talking and shading their eyes with the mimeographed programs. Out in the infield and across the track from the grandstand, a dozen teams or so would be standing, their owners since mid-morning having gone through the involved process of unloading them from trucks and putting on the harness and “working them out” a bit. I was always in the infield and watched the action with no great interest. Horses were simply as common as dogs or hogs to me. I was perpetually wary of the fabled cocked hoof which all my friends knew could kill in an instant, just as they knew men and sheep could breed sheep-humans. Someone had always heard of a recent rumor of a case where a child or man had been kicked through the side of a barn by a giant, angry hoof, “killed dead,” as we used to say. The teamsters would be talking to their horses, straightening and adjusting the harness, chewing tobacco which would bulge one cheek and distort their faces. Later I learned they took snuff or chewed tobacco because it was cheap and nobody ever smoked in a barn, the largest of tinder boxes; smoking in a barn was a taboo on the level of incest. The teams would finally be marched out and people would clap for their favorites. The teams in turn would attempt to pull a loaded stoneboat a certain number of feet. A man with a clipboard would mark their progress, weight would be added and contestants eliminated until what I thought was hours and hours later a champion would be proclaimed. All the people in the hot grandstand would rise and applaud madly and the winning farmer would beam and blush and accept his trophy and the horses would stand there sweating and bored, waiting for the reward of feed and water.

These are first memories, hazy, probably inaccurate. It is lucky though for the world of books that those preadolescents perhaps genetically disposed to be writers don't keep journals. Think of the sheer, mimsy glut of sensitivity that would flood the market. But after the inevitable rejection of everything my parents seemed to value, an alienation lasting a decade, I came back to horse pulling contests; I go to them, few as there are, whenever I get a chance. I stand in the infield and take my clumsy pictures, talk to the farmers, the teamsters, and the beasts still look huge and magnificent; in reverse of the usual childhood memory they have become grander with time rather than diminished.

 

I was talking about the sport the other day to Leonard Erickson who lives down the road from me in Leelanau County, a fruit-growing area in northern Michigan. The county is a peninsula jutting out into Lake Michigan and the immediate presence of a large body of water tempers the climate and makes cherry growing possible. Aside from being a gentleman, a cattle dealer and fruit farmer, Erickson was for years a competitor and has a knowledge of horse pulling lore not a little less than fabulous. The sport for the “insider” has intricacies that remind one of fly-fishing or grouse hunting, subtle and arcane strategies, and superstitions that would fail any vaguely scientific test. There are cruelties, too, that reflect badly on a very small minority of practitioners.

The Belgian, with origins back before William the Conqueror's warhorses, that day's equivalent of the Sherman tank, is the strongest and most popular breed in heavyweight pulling contests. (I dwell on the heavyweights for the same reason I preferred watching Marciano to Basilio. The Percheron is the most frequent breed in the “lightweights,” the cutoff point being a combined weight per team of 3200 pounds.) But the largest team does not necessarily win; conditioning is the main factor and natural strength, daily workouts, how well the horses pull together as a team are tremendously important. A well-trained team often beats a stronger and heavier one—in fact I have seen a disciplined pair of 4275 pounds beat an ill-prepared, fat team of 5200 pounds. As with dogs there is a great variation of size with the breed. At present there is an attempt being made to breed “more light” Belgian pullers, to sacrifice a bit of their compactness for a rangier horse. Pulling horses are nearly always geldings or mares for obvious reasons. One scarcely can tell a sexed-up bull elephant to “calm down” if there's a female in heat in the area. It is difficult for the neophyte to comprehend the strength of these animals. It has been accurately estimated that a team of championship quality can pull the equal of a rolling load of 110 tons, a deadweight stone boat of around 10,000 pounds, or a seven-bottom plow for a limited distance.

A device called a “hydrometer” mounted on a truck is used in major contests for absolute accuracy. The hydrometer though is unpopular at many county fairs. The audience enjoys the visual drama of the pig iron being gradually added as the contest continues. Usually there are many arguments and much stalling, false passes are made at the hitch, but all of this constitutes a tactic to allow the bottom of the boat to cool, thus reducing the friction of heat caused by the previous contestant. Most teams are keyed to start pulling by the sound of the clank of the hitch when the hook drops in rather than by the shout of the teamster. Two assistants carry the ends of the eveners as the team swings up to the boat, the teamster seats himself holding the reins tightly; then with the clank or shout their flanks lower and the horses strain forward against the weight, tearing out clots of earth with their hooves. When the twenty-seven-and-a-half-foot distance is reached a whistle is blown. Until then the audience refrains from clapping as the horses associate applause with success and will stop short of the distance. Anything short of a full run is measured to determine positioning among the teams.

Horse pulling can be an extremely expensive sport. The prize money is so pitifully small as to make the sport virtually amateur—top prizes rarely go over $250. A pulling team which will be in its prime for only about five years can cost anywhere from $400 to $20,000, the latter amount being the most I've ever heard paid for a team and this particular pair died a few months after the purchase from bloat. To this initial expense must be added the cost of hauling the team from contest to contest, the feeding of animals which eat four times as much as race horses, the not inconsiderable price of the custom harness required to pull the vast weights. It is simply a sport practiced out of love rather than for profit.

I have thoughts, usually dim and morose, about the mechanization of sport. One of the delights of a long trip into the Absarokas in Montana was the meeting of a Natty Bumppo sort of wilderness crank who openly admitted to the vandalizing of trail bikes because he hated the noise. He would stalk the riders until they left their bikes to climb or fish then smash the sparkplugs and carburetors with a rock. No matter how far into any mountain range we go we see jet contrails or are suspicious that we might step into a missile silo by mistake. In Michigan some sportsmen harry coyotes and fox from snowmobiles. Add to this the Alaskan amusement of shooting wolves from helicopters.

But even the sport of horse pulling owns some cruelty. A few teamsters use electric cattle prods to encourage greater effort in training. While it is true that shock collars are an approved though unpleasant method of working with bird dogs, I have heard of an incident where a difficult horse was shocked into prone limpid exhaustion by a no volt application of discipline. Though these animals are instinctively docile—they were used as workers so long the ugly streaks were bred out—there is an occasional exception. These “outlaws” are often prized as their willfulness makes them good pullers. Usually the sound of the whip cracking is enough just as a rolled up newspaper works with a dog. The sound helps “wind them up,” convinces them that if they don't want to pull they have to pull. Unfortunately the inspiration of an amphetamine dose is also detected once in a great while.

I suspect that the sport of horse pulling will disappear with inevitable slowness, probably in my own lifetime. I don't mean that the breeding of draft horses will be discontinued. There is a large auction held several times a year in Waverly, Iowa for regular draft horses. There are still limited functions for the animals: the Amish refusal of tractors, the pulling in of seine nets on the Pacific Northwest coast, parade and general entertainment uses. Two local competitors, Larry Reed and Charles Van Borst, use their pulling horses in the winter to skid logs out of the woods in their lumber businesses. But few people of my own generation are even aware that draft horses exist other than the grand Budweiser Clydesdales they see on the television commercials. The Busch family will continue to breed them because they are beautiful, and, the best reason of all, they exist. But the sport, I'm sure, will suffer a natural degeneration as organic to our time as the death of jousting was to the Middle Ages. One might even assume in a framework of radical or visionary ecology that there won't be enough food in the year 2000 to feed such appetites. I don't know. Things change so strangely, catch us in errant surprise. My first innocent deer hunt fifteen years ago has been replaced with sampling at checkpoints by the Department of Natural Resources for DDT in the fatty tissues of the destroyed animal. There is no sentimentality here. Our own sport must finally assume the selectiveness and regimentation of Europe's. England had 1,000,000 draft horses in 1930 and in 1960 there were 70,000. Of course the war. . . . But the contests—how do we keep what we love when so few of us seem to love them?

 

Meanwhile back at the fair, the audience grows older and sparser. A casual survey of the grandstand, admission to which is free, makes it appear as though a retirement colony is having a holiday or a geriatrics ward was emptied for the afternoon. Horse pulling cannot compete with “Dan's Hell Roaring Devil Driving Car Smashers,” the feature attraction of this year's fair.

I am forced now to think of my grandfather, John Severin Wahlgren, who traveled from Sweden to Illinois in the 1890s. After a number of years of saving he bought a farm “up in Michigan.” When they moved northwards on a milk train that took two days to travel 300 miles my grandmother rode in a coach with the children, and John rode in a cattle car with a team of draft horses he had bought near Galesburg. They got off in the middle of the night at a railroad siding and a friend took Hulda and the children home for the night. But John walked the horses the seven miles to the farm. I think of it as a late April night with time left for plowing; the moon was in its third quarter, the pace was slow and the reins held tightly, the road narrow and perhaps a bit muddy with rain and there was a heavy scent of grass and weeds and the sound of frogs and crickets, the sound of horses’ hooves muffled but heavy with fetlocks rising above the ground mist.

I have an old photo of my father, dead now as is my grandfather, leaning on the plow handles looking very jaunty with the reins over his bare shoulder and an old gangster-type fedora cocked on his head. He always helped with the plowing during the Depression when he was unemployed. The harness is stored in the chicken coop, moulding beyond repair. But I've often thought that if I ever get past the “renter” stage and own a small farm I'll buy a Belgian yearling just to look at and let grow quietly lazy and old.

1973