MTFCA Forum

During my session at Mike Bender's today we went to O'Reilly for parts, and while we were out Mike took me to see this noted sculpture.

It's a remarkable piece of work. If you know your states and your history/geography, you can tell which flag isn't in the picture.

It's more than life-sized.

Splat!

Scared kitty.

Bronze as wood. There's a lot of detail. Wagon wood, ropes, shoe leather, all in bronze.

Hold 'er Newt, she'as a-rarin'!

Beautiful sculpture - looking at the year the car represents, you'd have thought horses would have gotten used to having them around by then.

...you'd have thought horses would have gotten used to having them around...

A feature of advanced maturity is that everything you hear reminds you of something else, and that comment reminds me of my aunt Mary Parker. Mary began teaching in 1916 when she was nineteen. It was common in those days for the teacher at a rural school to board with the family of a student. In this case Mary was teaching at Lone Star School and staying with the Clay Aumann family who lived a couple of miles from the school. Helen Aumann was the same age as my mom, born in 1910. This incident happened when Helen was in second grade, so that would be in the 1917-1918 school year. One morning Mary and Helen were on their way to school when an automobile passed their buggy and the horse look off chasing it. It was all Mary could do to get the critter under control without the buggy tipping over. It turned out that Clay Aumann had been racing cars with that horse. Decades later Mary shook her head and said, "I don't know why Clay gave us that horse to drive."

That is beautiful. Thanks for sharing.

Steve, thanks for that story from your family history. I much enjoyed that ! Also great to see this monumental bronze. (I love that grasshopper on the radiator !)

As for horses encountering horseless carriages for the first time, I agree that by '26, most probably there were few horses on the road that were not well accustomed to the infernal contraption. However, I was much amused to note that while our equines have been raised since infancy around motorized machines of all kinds, and take them all calmly in stride, when I brought Lizzie home, my first drive down the lane that runs along the west pasture terrorized all three of them to a degree I had never seen before ! Their affright was one-time thing, though - they accepted Lizzie as one of the family after they calmed down.

Rich, most Amish driving horses are pretty bullet proof around modern vehicles but when I go by in a T I have had several just about jump off the road trying to stay clear of it. Not sure if its the sound or that cute face like front end.