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Books About Life on a Farm Written Especially for People Who Like to Read! "Highly recommended reading." The Midwest Book Review Reviews & Readers' Comments |
LeAnn R. Ralph Rural Route 2 Author E6689 970th Ave. Colfax, WI 54730 (715) 308-6336 |
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by LeAnn R. Ralph (Note: For those of you who are not of Scandinavian descent, Ole is pronounced to rhyme with "holy.") Pete and Ole, the last team of work horses my father owned during the 1940's, had been gone from our Wisconsin farm for almost 10 years by the time I was born in 1958. When I was a kid, though, I heard many stories about Pete and Ole, and I always wondered how they acquired their names. Then I learned the team had been named after comic strip characters that appeared in a Norwegian newspaper popular among immigrants in this area. Dad was not a Norwegian immigrant - but Mom's parents and aunts and uncles were, and Dad always claimed a lot of Norwegian had rubbed off on him, even though my father's father was an immigrant from Scotland, and his mother came from Germany. I guess there was just something about the two horses which reminded Dad of the comic strip characters, though, and that's how they came to be called Pete and Ole. I was utterly and completely enthralled by the fact horses had once lived on our small dairy farm. When I was a child, I desperately wanted a horse of my own. Eager to hear any and all horse stories, I always prodded my father for details about the pair. I discovered the best time to ask Dad questions about the horses - or to get to him to talk about anything at all - often was when he came into the house for his morning or afternoon coffee break. "Well," Dad said patiently as he reached for another oatmeal cookie to go with his afternoon coffee, "they were just horses. Not the heavy draft horse type, but capable enough." "Pete came from out West, right Dad?" I asked. "Yup," Dad replied. "He had brand on his hip." Now, the fact that Pete had a brand was really exciting information. A brand! I loved to watch Westerns on television, so I knew all about brands - how the markings were burned into the hide or a horse or cow so the ranch owners knew which animal belonged where if they got mixed up on the open range. "What did the brand look like?" I asked breathlessly, always hoping for a Circle Bar D, or Double B, or something equally exotic, even though I knew that wasn't the case. "Nothing special," Dad replied. "Just a little squiggly mark on his hip." "Were Pete and Ole the same size?" "Oh, no," Dad replied. "Pete was taller than Ole. Skinnier, too, and kind of nervous. Ole - well, Ole was fat and slow." Dad smiled briefly, a far-away look in his blue eyes as he thought about the horses. "What color were they?" I prompted. "Brown," Dad said, something unreadable in his bright blue eyes. I sighed with exasperation. "Dad! There's lots of brown. What KIND of brown?" "Well, I guess you could say they were sorrels," he explained. I knew sorrel coloring in a horse meant the hair was a kind of reddish brown, and that the mane and tail usually matched the body. "Hooking them together was a problem, too," Dad said, dunking his cookie in the coffee. "Pete was always raring to go. But not Ole." "What happened when you told them to giddy-up" I questioned, leaning forward in my eagerness to not miss a single word. "Pete would leap forward, pulling for all he was worth," Dad explained when he'd finished chewing his bite of cookie. "Not Ole, though. He'd hang back in the harness and let Pete do all the work. Ole just went along for the walk." "Couldn't you ever make Ole work harder?" "Not usually," Dad said dryly. "I tried, of course. But the more I yelled at Ole, the more nervous Pete got. After a while, I learned it was better to just let them work at their own pace." "What else do you remember, Dad, about Pete and Ole?" I asked, always wanting to hear more about the horses. Dad grinned and reached for another cookie. "When I worked at the canning factory," he said, "I didn't have time during the week to use the horses." "Why were you working at the canning factory?" As long as I had known Dad, he'd been a farmer. I had a hard time picturing him at work in a factory. "We needed the money," Dad said, "and that was the best way for us to have a steady income." "What about Pete and Ole?" I persisted. "Well, all week long while I was at the factory, they'd stand around, eating. Getting fat. Doing nothing. On the weekends, I'd walk out to the pasture to see 'em. And there they'd be. All over me. Nuzzling my arm. Nudging my cap." Dad chuckled. I smiled, too. "Unless I happened to be carrying their halters," he added. "Then what happened?" I asked, even though I knew the rest of the story. "They'd take one look at me - and run!" Dad recalled. "Tails in the air. Kicking up clods of dirt. They'd gallop around and around the pasture." "How'd you ever catch them?" I asked, knowing the answer to that question, too. "Oh, once they had their run out, they'd settle down," Dad explained. "Then they'd let me catch them and we could get some work done." Dad rubbed his ear contemplatively. "You know, sometimes I thought it seemed like Pete and Ole missed me when I was gone all week because they'd follow around me around like puppies. I guess it was a different story, though, when I had their halters." He smiled ruefully, that far-away look coming into his blue eyes once again. And then, of course, Dad said, there was the time my brother and sister took Pete and Ole out for a ride and headed along the woods toward the back of the farm. My brother, who was the oldest, rode Pete because he was more of a handful. My sister rode Ole, content in the knowledge he was fat and slow and easy-going. She knew Ole wouldn't give her any trouble. The ride went well for Loretta and Ole, Dad recalled, until a tree stood directly in their path. "Ole was much too lazy to go around the tree, so he walked right under it," Dad said, which caused my sister to be knocked to the ground by a low-hanging branch. "How come she didn't duck?" I asked. "Don't know," Dad said. "I wasn't there to see it happen. Maybe the branch was too low." I asked Loretta once about what it was like to ride the work horses and if she had been frightened when Ole walked under the tree. She blinked a couple times, her mouth twisting back and forth as she considered her answer. "I've never ridden a horse since then," she declared, "And I have not wanted to, either, for that matter!" Being horse crazy myself, I couldn't understand my sister's attitude. If Pete and Ole had still been around before I got my pony, I'd have ridden them every day. Maybe even twice on Sunday. |
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