Usually we post these longer family essays on our auxiliary archives blog, http://www.thesprickfamilypapers.blogspot.com/. But to mark this Christmas weekend, we'll put an especially nice one on this more frequently accessed blog. It was written some years back by Uncle Joe. Though it's not about Christmas, specifically, it evokes the spirit of gratitude, acceptance and relishing of the cards one has been dealt that we've come to associate with our finest forebears. Merry Christmas, everyone!
THE OLD GRAY MARE
By ELMER "JOE" SPRICK
Auction! Four miles north of Theilman, Minn., off County Road 4, Saturday, Sept. 27, 1941. Owner, Claus Sprick.
Among the nine head of horses listed for sale on that 1941 auction bill was a 12-year-old gray mare. I was 14 that fall, and that auction day marked a turning point in my life. It, and our family's subsequent move from our farm near West Albany, Minn., into the small town of Lake City, Minn., meant I would have the opportunity to attend high school, a privilege that not all of my older siblings had received.
Although it should have been one of the happiest days of my life, it was a sad one, too, because it meant giving up the small team of riding and work horses that I had g
rown up with.
Babe was listed on the auction bill as a gray mare, but she was almost white except for her legs, which were dark gray, almost black. She was born out on the open range of the Dakotas in the 1930s. A brand was burned into her left front shoulder, a cross covered by an inverted V.
The yearling range horses were rounded up and shipped east, where horse traders sold them to farmers for use as draft horses. It was during the Depression, and many farmers could not afford the price of a good Percheron draft horse. Very few farmers had tractors.
My father, Claus Sprick, purchased three of the range horses, all ye
arlings. Babe was the first; two young stallions were purchased a year later. It wasn't until nearly 40 years later that one of my older brothers admitted to doing some matchmaking that had resulted in Babe's foal.
I played with that foal, Topsy, almost from the day she was born. By the time she was a yearling, I could ride her around the farmyard without a halter or bridle.
When Topsy was 2, my older brother tried to train her with a saddle and bridle. Topsy promptly threw him off, and he never tried to ride her again. To my knowledge, no one else did, either. She was a one-person horse.
When Topsy was 3, she was harnessed and trained to work alongside her mother, Babe. I drove them as a team, doing a variety of chores on the farm when I was 12. The summer of my 13th birthday, my dad let me take the
team with the crew on the threshing ring.
Every horse has its own personality, but the range horses, or broncos as we called them, all had something in common: They were tough! They would work all day alongside the big Percherons pulling a binder or hay wagon and loader. At night, after our evening meal, we would ride them to round up the milk cows. Given a choice, the broncos didn't walk, they ran. The moment your foot reached the stirrup or you got a leg over a bareback, the horse was on the run.
The old harnesses worn by the team of Babe and Topsy were patched and riveted time and time again. Any time there was an unexpected noise and the team was not tied securely, the horses would take off running. It was usually me who they escaped from until I became older and strong enough to hold them.
One day they ran away from my dad. He had them hitched to a stoneboat loaded with a large box that he was filling with freshly dug potatoes. By the time the team reached the barn and stopped running, there were potatoes scattered for a distance of over o
ne-quarter mile.
Recently, I dug out the receipts from the farm auction. They had been buried in an old cardboard box for 54 years. The team of Babe and Topsy sold for $120.
Today I have the means to buy the team back, something I always dreamed of doing. But Babe would be 66 years old! She has long since gone to greener pastures.
The farm auction grossed $5,625.41, enough to purchase an old two-bedroom house at 201 N. Washington St. in Lake City and install a modern bathroom in it. That house would be shared by my folks and three of us Sprick kids who were still in school.
Although I have never again owned a horse, I still like to ride occasionally. There is still a bit of cowboy in some of us that cannot be displaced by a new set of wheels.
Photo above: Alverna Sprick rode Babe in the 1930s on the Sprick family farm. Photos further above, from top: Babe at the auction; the auction bill; Ed and Joe Sprick in the field; Elmer, Florence, Alverna and Katie with Babe.
Usually we post these longer family essays on our auxiliary archives blog, http://www.thesprickfamilypapers.blogspot.com/. But to mark this Christmas weekend, we'll put an especially nice one on this more frequently accessed blog. It was written some years back by Uncle Joe. Though it's not about Christmas, specifically, it evokes the spirit of gratitude, acceptance and relishing of the cards one has been dealt that we've come to associate with our finest forebears. Merry Christmas, everyone!
THE OLD GRAY MARE
By ELMER "JOE" SPRICK
Auction! Four miles north of Theilman, Minn., off County Road 4, Saturday, Sept. 27, 1941. Owner, Claus Sprick.
Among the nine head of horses listed for sale on that 1941 auction bill was a 12-year-old gray mare. I was 14 that fall, and that auction day marked a turning point in my life. It, and our family's subsequent move from our farm near West Albany, Minn., into the small town of Lake City, Minn., meant I would have the opportunity to attend high school, a privilege that not all of my older siblings had received.
Although it should have been one of the happiest days of my life, it was a sad one, too, because it meant giving up the small team of riding and work horses that I had g
rown up with.
Babe was listed on the auction bill as a gray mare, but she was almost white except for her legs, which were dark gray, almost black. She was born out on the open range of the Dakotas in the 1930s. A brand was burned into her left front shoulder, a cross covered by an inverted V.
The yearling range horses were rounded up and shipped east, where horse traders sold them to farmers for use as draft horses. It was during the Depression, and many farmers could not afford the price of a good Percheron draft horse. Very few farmers had tractors.
My father, Claus Sprick, purchased three of the range horses, all yearlings. Babe was the first; two young stallions were purchased a year later. It wasn't until nearly 40 years later that one of my older brothers admitted to doing some matchmaking that had resulted in Babe's foal.
I played with that foal, Topsy, almost from the day she was born. By the time she was a yearling, I could ride her around the farmyard without a halter or bridle.
When Topsy was 2, my older brother tried to train her with a saddle and bridle. Topsy promptly threw him off, and he never tried to ride her again. To my knowledge, no one else did, either. She was a one-person horse.
When Topsy was 3, she was harnessed and trained to work alongside her mother, Babe. I drove them as a team, doing a variety of chores on the farm when I was 12. The summer of my 13th birthday, my dad let me take the
team with the crew on the threshing ring.
Every horse has its own personality, but the range horses, or broncos as we called them, all had something in common: They were tough! They would work all day alongside the big Percherons pulling a binder or hay wagon and loader. At night, after our evening meal, we would ride them to round up the milk cows. Given a choice, the broncos didn't walk, they ran. The moment your foot reached the stirrup or you got a leg over a bareback, the horse was on the run.
The old harnesses worn by the team of Babe and Topsy were patched and riveted time and time again. Any time there was an unexpected noise and the team was not tied securely, the horses would take off running. It was usually me who they escaped from until I became older and strong enough to hold them.
One day they ran away from my dad. He had them hitched to a stoneboat loaded with a large box that he was filling with freshly dug potatoes. By the time the team reached the barn and stopped running, there were potatoes scattered for a distance of over o
ne-quarter mile.
Recently, I dug out the receipts from the farm auction. They had been buried in an old cardboard box for 54 years. The team of Babe and Topsy sold for $120.
Today I have the means to buy the team back, something I always dreamed of doing. But Babe would be 66 years old! She has long since gone to greener pastures.
The farm auction grossed $5,625.41, enough to purchase an old two-bedroom house at 201 N. Washington St. in Lake City and install a modern bathroom in it. That house would be shared by my folks and three of us Sprick kids who were still in school.
Although I have never again owned a horse, I still like to ride occasionally. There is still a bit of cowboy in some of us that cannot be displaced by a new set of wheels.
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