Dear Dede,

My uncle Olaf and my father were the ones in their family who were in the horse business. Most everyone, in the early days of the 20th century, was horse savvy. Horses were still the common source of local transportation and farm power. The wild horses of the great plains were free to be captured and moved to a ready market, like the small farmers of northern Minnesota.

My dad never called himself a horse wrangler, but he, with others, would drive a herd of these mustangs, which he had shipped from Montana, from town to town in Minnesota until they were all sold. Summers of this work paid for his University year. He often joked that he was probably responsible for more cheap horseflesh in northern Minnesota than anyone else! Indian horses, or broncos as they were commonly called, were often bred to Percheron or Belgian stallions to create a serviceable draft horse.

The story of Dan is that he was born at a time when it was necessary to rescue him from the herd, so my father gave the colt to his eight year old nephew Sylfest in Ada. Dan, even in his old age - he lived to 24 yrs - was spoiled. He had been worked very little at farm work in his lifetime. He was not used to motor vehicles so he would spook at a car. And he'd been taught a lot of bad habits - like galloping into the barn! I can't say I rode him that much, he could be a problem. My experience with horses was really with the draft horses, the working teams on the Ada farm and Leo's place in the woods. This was as a teen, when I was big enough to throw a harness on a horse properly.

There was a horse consciousness then, before automobiles took over the country, a knowledge of breed and quality that was far more common than it is today. My father, because of his early occupation with horses, would often compare people to an equine type. "A spavined old mare," or an "unbroken scrub," would be metaphors for people. Ruth and I both lived, as children, in cities where horse drawn wagons like the iceman's and the milkman's were common. Horse manure was a part of everyday life; that's why street sweepers were so important. Horse apples was the common term and when you rode a bike, you rode around these piles! By the middle 1930s custom and laws had motorized most services; and the horse in the city disappeared.