WHY I LOVE HORSES
When I see a horse, especially a bay-colored horse in a distant pasture, a lump comes to my throat and that day so long ago flashes vividly to my mind.
World War II had just started and we were living in a small oil-field community in Central Kansas where my father worked as a pumper for the Phillips Petroleum Company. Gasoline and oil was desperately needed to keep airplanes flying and tanks running to fight the war in Europe. To further assist the war effort the company asked all their employees to save gasoline by switching from trucks to horses, whenever possible.
My father found a bay horse for sale at a distant farm. I was allowed to ride the horse home while Father drove the car slowly behind us. I was in 'seventh heaven' with a horse to ride when ever I wanted to. How I would brag to all my friends. A horse sure would beat their bicycles for getting around on the prairie.
I wanted the horse to be mine and I called him 'Brownie'. We got along just fine, but he was always happiest when my father was around. Daddy could curry the horse's back and places I couldn't reach and pat him on the neck. They spent every day together riding the oil-field range, while I had to go to school.
The company even paid Daddy 'horse mileage' each month. One day my father was involved in a terrible accident several miles from home. His job that day was to move a test tank from one oil well to another, for a week of testing the oil production. The oil-field road trailed through a deep slash on the prairie and across a spring-fed creek that ran along the bottom. A rain storm had passed through the area a couple of days before leaving the deep wash muddier than usual.
My Father rode Brownie to the tank area and left him loose to graze, while he drove an old Fordson tractor to pull the tank. The tractor's front wheels were made with a four inch flat iron base with a two inch tall ridges in the middle and set close together. The large back wheels were studded with iron lugs, so Father wasn't worried about the driving in the mud. Slowly he drove down into the creek bed and started up the other side. The creek bank was steep and crooked as well as muddy. Suddenly the wooden steering wheel broke and my father fell behind the tractor. The fall stunned him and the driverless tractor started rolling backwards. The heavy rear wheel with the iron clogs went over his body, crushing him deep into the muddy gravel.
Then Daddy's guardian angel must have appeared because the tractor engine died just as those sharp front wheels reached my father. He was badly smashed up and broken and knew if he stayed there he would bleed to death before anyone would even start to worry about him! Brownie was his only hope. Would the horse come if called? Most horses wouldn't come near a bleeding man. The smell of fresh blood always seemed to spook animals.
Brownie wasn't far away as he had been slowly following the noisy machine carrying his owner. Lingering here and there to chop a bite of the lush Bluestem grass. Daddy knew he had to try, so he softly whistled a special call to his equine friend. Quickly Brownie flung up his head and gazed around for the man who called. My father realized he had to get up. Painfully he pulled himself erect just as the horse walked up to him. Somehow Daddy managed to pull himself up and hang side-ways over the saddle.
Brownie carefully started the long way home. First mounting the creek bank then slowly crossing several miles of prairie along the wandering oil-field road this faithful horse carried his master to safety. By the time Brownie borne him home Daddy was covered not only with mud but lots of blood. Could this be the horse that wouldn't let me near him with just a small, dead rabbit? Brownie walked right up on the wooden walk and porch, straight to the back door, ignoring the scary hollow sound the walk made when anything hit the wood.
Mother never learned to drive the car so she called the company boss, who soon had Daddy loaded in his vehicle for a speedy trip to the hospital. After a prolonged stay in the hospital that resulted in mended bones, Daddy finally returned home to his job and Brownie. That wonderful horse certainly earned his "horse mileage" and so much more, a thankful family's undying gratitude and all the sugar cubes the ration board would let us have.
PS my little sis added this:
And I always thought this happened after you were gone from home! Guess we remember these things as they pertained to ourselves. I didn't know that was how we came to have Brownie. I remember Daddy saying he was going to be really calm so he wouldn't scare us, not realizing how he looked! And I remember we were canning carrots.
My story with Brownie was riding behind Daddy around the lease one day, and he would tell me to duck when we were going to go under rod-lines, as we were riding down in a big ditch. One time I was gawking up at an airplane going overhead, and didn't pay attention to the caution to duck, and the rod-line hit me on the forehead, and knocked me right off Brownie's behind. Brownie immediately stopped and waited while Daddy jumped off to see about me, tho I wasn't hurt, just my pride. He was a special horse, for sure.