The Horse Trader
In honor of Paul Corbin's 100th birthday TODAY, we are re-posting one of his more popular blog posts. This story was originally published on Dec. 30, 2007.
By 1924, when I was 10 years old, Dad had upgraded his farm equipment to the point that he now owned a disk, which would cut a swath six feet wide every time he crossed the field, and it would cut about four inches deep. He also bought a one-row cultivator, and and he and his brother, Cash Corbin, went together and bought a two-row corn planter.
This planter not only planted two rows on each pass across the field, it had a marker that showed just how far apart to plant the next two rows. By stretching a wire all the way across the field which had nodes or knots on it at three feet intervals, the corn could be checked. As this wire passed through a devise on the planter, these nodes pulled a fork, which opened a door in the planter shoe, thereby dropping two grains of corn every three feet. This wire was attached to a stake in the ground and was moved over the width of two rows every time the planter came to the end of the rows. By using this method of planting, the corn could be cultivated north and south as well as east and west. The marker on this planter also created a job for me.
There were still several stumps in the field, and when this marker was allowed to come in contact with one of these stumps, or even a solid root, the marker pole could be broken, so a rope about 6 feet long was tied to the marker, and I would hold on to this rope. When the marker came to a stump, it was my job to lift it over the stump.
Besides doing this job on our farm, I also worked for Uncle Cash. He paid me 50 cents a day, which I thought was pretty good pay, since all I had to do was hold on to the rope and let it pull me across the field. However, if the ground had not been worked very well, the clods did get a bit rough on my bare feet.
Even though dad had upgraded his farm equipment, we were still using the wagon and team of horses for transportation. Most of the roads meandered along the banks of the sloughs and rivers, as that was usually the highest and driest ground, and very few of these roads were suitable for anything other than travel by the wagon. If a section of the road became impassable, no one bothered to repair it. They just moved over to either side and started a new road.
Since horses and mules furnished all the power for farming and were used for transporting people and materials, they were a valuable piece of property. This being the case, there were lots of "horse traders" plying their trade, and one source of these horses was the western plains, where wild horses were captured and shipped by rail to the farmlands. These horse traders were shrewd operators and would use every ploy imaginable in order to convince the farmer that these horses were broken and ready to use on the farm.
They would singe the hair on the shoulders of these horses to make it appear that that they had been used as draft animals. They would shear or shave a line along the side of the animal to show where the hair had been worn off by the "trace-chain" while pulling a load.
One day a trader came by our place with about a dozen horses, all tied together with halters, and since our old gray mare was really getting old, dad bought one of these animals. He bought a black mare, and we called her "Black Molly." I don't know what Dad paid for Molly, but whatever he paid, he paid too much. She was just as wild as the west from whence she came.
At this time, I knew of four cars in our part of the country and to meet one of these cars with Molly hitched to the wagon was sheer panic. The only way to prevent a run-away was to pull off the road, stop the team, go their heads and hold the reins. Dad would pull off his coat and put it over Molly's head, so she couldn't see the car.
Molly didn't stay long on the farm. The next trader to come by led her away. The second trader may very well have been the first trader or his accomplice. These traders made a practice of following up on their customers, not to make sure that they were satisfied, but to find those were not satisfied. The dissatisfied customer was usually willing to get rid of the original purchase for half the price he had paid. This way, the trader would take the horse on down the road and sell it again at the regular price. Black Molly probably made the trader more money than some of his better animals.
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- -- Posted by Dexterite1 on Fri, Nov 28, 2014, at 5:47 AM
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