A mystery from history is illuminated

Uncle Joe wrote this morning to illuminate the horse photo in the entry below this one. It was indeed taken at the 1941 auction of the Sprick farm. Joe wrote: "The horse was Babe, a bronco mare we all rode like the wind. (I would be very surprised if your mother didn't tell you a story or two about her days as a cowgirl). Grandpa Sprick bought some branded yearlings that had been rounded up in the Dakotas during the Depression. They were small for draft horses, but cheap. Unknown to my dad, Ed and LeRoy decided to have one of the young studs breed Babe before the vet neutered them. Babe's colt became a teammate (the colt is just ahead of her on the auction photo). That was my team because they were small. I rode both of them and broke the colt when it was a yearling. I could ride it without bridle or saddle. Brother Ed used to tell me, 'You are going to kill yourself doing that.' The only thing I miss about the farm is Babe and the woods. The woods are still there, but all the ditches are full of junk. "Incidentally, that horrible-looking fish [in the pickled-sucker recipe in another blog entry] is a hognose sucker, the kind we throw back, but it does get the viewer's attention." Above is a lovely essay he wrote about the 1941 farm auction. (Click on it to make it readable.)