Illustration by Rosemary CoatesBack in the late 1950s, Deirdre and her friend Sarah, both just nineteen, came to America. The pair had left Britain, where post-war ration books were still in use. Sarah was to train horses and riders for Jamie Kreuz at Bryn Mawr Farms outside Philadelphia. Deirdre was to work for the Insurance Company of North America in Philadelphia and help Sarah on weekends. What follows is Part VI of their adventures. Find the first five in the Horse and Hound drop-down menu, under Humor.
Dinkum was a hideous black horse with a foul temper. He acquired his stable name, Stinkum, right from the start. Billy, who mucked out for us, warned us about him as soon as we set foot in the barn.
“Never put him wid another haarse,” advised Billy. “He sure will kill him wid his feet and teeth.”
“He’s bad news when he’s at home,” Jamie added, “and he is even more trouble in the winter. He hates the cold so much, his temper gets worse.”
Stinkum was so vicious when “at home” that you entered his stall with a pitch fork, yelling obscenities, and snarling brutishly. We had all tried ‘true tendresse.’ Just when you’d think you had tamed him, he’d have you pinned against the stall and you’d be in the doctor’s having your breasts stitched up. This, as we English girls were soon to learn, was an expensive business!
Winter Clipping
Of all our American experiences to that point, Sarah and I had never seen so much clipping done around the clock as we saw at Bryn Mawr Farms. With plus or minus seventy-five horses to clip, a late evening shift of stable help was put on, just for clipping. This late shift, needless to say, took to drinking, tussling, and claptrap as the night wore on.
There were some sackable offences noted the following morning. A request for a trace-high clip where the hair is removed from the belly, elbows and thighs found that everything except the belly, elbows, and thighs had been enthusiastically removed. An instruction for a blanket clip would find they had indeed used a blanket to line up the clip, but the blanket had been too big and they had clipped out the legs down to the feathers which they had left on—the horse resembling a marathon runner in ski boots. While hogging the mane of a third horse, the lad, unable to resist a bit of horse play, had shaved his own head as well.
We sacked the lot of them and taught Billy how to clip and pull manes and tails.
A Shopping Trip
In winter the horses were shod with borium for extra grip and this great American invention enabled us to cope with the daily ice skating sessions called “exercise.” Never in our lives had we experienced the cold of our first American winter. Temperatures went to zero Fahrenheit, and horses could not be cantered or their lungs would freeze up.
No traffic was able to travel the roads with the snow banked in sheer walls on either side, so without transport we soon ran out of food. There was nothing for it but to ride the horses to the store for supplies. Stinkum and Humphrey were chosen to go as Stinkum was in dire need of exercise and Humphrey with his even temperament might stop Stinkum from having hysterics.
Jamie and I found two string bags to carry the food in, and we skated off on these two fools. At the store we filled the string bags with two dozen eggs. It was nearing Christmas and we wanted to make eggnog. We tied the bags to our saddles and set off home. All went well until Humphrey and Stinkum decided they had been on good behavior for long enough. Stinkum started to niggle at Humphrey, which finished with Stinkum slithering out of control into Humphrey—the two string bags of eggs acting as a buffer between them. All the eggs burst open and immediately froze into congealed dribbles looking for all the world like the rising sun!
“Do look at that stupid egg mess,” laughed Sarah, when we took the string bags into the apartment. We cursed Humphrey and Stinkum who were to blame for the ‘egg’ mixture. There was no need to beat the eggs; it had been done for us.
Posted December 16, 22016