Horse Incidents

Whoopee! Yahoo! Get along little dogy! According to an article in the Salt Lake Tribune on Aug 30, a  horse got spooked while pulling a carriage loaded with a family of seven from Idaho Falls in downtown Salt Lake City. When it stopped, the driver got out and tried to calm the horse, named Jim, down, but away he went again dragging the driver and the carriage along until  the driver freed himself and jumped clear, receiving minor injuries. Next to try and stop the horse was a policeman on a bicycle. WHOOPS! He had an entanglement with the carriage and the bicycle was totaled, leaving him with minor injuries. HAYA! HAYA! Old Jim reached top speed with his tourists hanging on for dear life until CRASH! The carriage collided with a parked car, totaling the carriage! The tourists were unhurt but shookup a little.

Why, shucks, it was just like the old west when a stagecoach gets pulled away by spooked horses! A similar incident happened in New York City some months ago. I guess the horses and the city traffic don't make an ideal pairing.

Speaking of horses, it reminds me of the time when I was about 10 years old helping my cousin out at the pea factory. His job was to stack the pea vines when they come out of the chute. My job was to lead the horse around the top of the stack of vines while my brother and cousin unloaded the cart. The day was going fine until the horse stepped on my foot and my foot and leg and the horse's hoof sunk into the vines about a foot or more. And as I laid in the vines under the weight of the horse and looking up at him, I hoped he didn't pull his hoof off and continue trampling me. My cousin, though, got the horse to back up without any further damage and I pulled my leg out of the hole, and we continued working without any more incidents. I wanted to ride the horse, but the cousin wouldn't allow it.

That was a great, fun summer. We were between houses, staying with my aunt and family in a small town in the Salt Lake valley having moved into the valley in 1941  from a real small town in the Uintah Basin. On the way to the valley, the trailer with all our possessions caught fire and before we could put the fire out, most of it burned up. Since I was so young, I couldn't do much to help put the fire out besides be in the way, and we didn't have any fire suppression eqiupment anyway except a couple of buckets in the trailer.  The fire got started this way. My cousin, Dude, had volunteered to move us, so he showed up with the trailer pulled by his car, and after loading everything on to the trailer, we took off. I don't know how we all crammed into the car, but there were my older sister, my younger sister, about four years old, my mother and father, my brother a couple years older than me, and an older brother, oh, yes, also Dude, the driver. There was a lot of lap-sitting in that old sardine can, I think it was a Plymouth or a Ford, maybe. But, anyway, Dude had his window down as we were going up Indian Canyon, and he was smoking a Camel cigarette (or was it a Chesterfield?). Of course, he tossed the butt out the window and it landed on the trailer and WHOOPEE, we could have had a good hot dog roast right there on the side of the road if we'd had some hot dogs! The traffic on the highway was slim, in fact, we were probably the only car on the road that day due to gas rationing, etc., so nobody with a fire hose came along.

The remainder of the summer for me was just great as a ten-year-old. No, by gum, I was only nine for most of the summer and had never worn low-cut shoes or anything but overalls yet. During the summer we (my brother and I) were usually barefoot until we moved into the Salt Lake suburbs and had to wear shoes of some type. Shucks!