Good morrow, dear readers! Happy Halloween.
I suppose it should surprise no one that the Amish did not celebrate Halloween, so I cannot give you a spooky Amish tale. But there were more than a few hair-raising moments in our 5 years in the community, nearly all of them associated with horses.
For the record, I am NOT afraid of horses. They are beautiful and majestic animals, and I loved nothing more than to give an apple and a good scratch on the neck to the two horses who lived in the pasture across the street from our home in the Amish community. One was a draft horse – huge, though still a baby – and the other was more appropriate for riding. (And yes, these geldings were used during harvest, too.)
Modern Amish communities have adapted to required driving by hiring an English neighbour as a driver, or some communities have a few members who learn to drive to fulfil this duty. Ours was the latter, and as an already licensed driver woman, I was in demand to drive the ladies shopping or to the doctor. Notwithstanding my skills behind a steering wheel, the longer we were there, the more pressure was put on me to learn to drive a buggy. (My husband is blind, so driving – car or horse – was my responsibility.)
However, by this time, you could not have paid me to learn to drive a team of horses. Not out of fear, but out of respect for their… autonomy, maybe? Horses are 1,000-pound thinking creatures who make what they feel are rational decisions without regard to the puny 200-lb human standing next to them. And that is an average horse; a draft horse weighs a literal ton.
Our house was but 30 feet from the road, giving us an unmistakable view to the behaviour of the community horses. (In fact, the community would at times stable horses across the street from us to accustom them to the sound of children. LOL) But I soon learned, even the best-behaved horses could and would be spooked by just about anything. Some of it was undoubtedly malicious – bored teenagers from the nearby small, rural town honking horns, screaming, and throwing things at the horses in the community – but sometimes it was over commonplace nothings. Once, our rooster crowed, spooking the passing buggy down the hill at a gallop. Another time, a carriage horse reared because of the rustling of a Walmart bag caught in the barbed-wire fence across the road. (Needless to say, we grabbed the bag as soon as the spooked horse passed.)
Nor was it only horses hooked to carriages which caused problems. Our third day in the community, a rabbit startled a four-horse plow team, causing them to run over a sixty-year-old woman. Another horse was led out to the woods and put down after he had kicked a child – breaking his arm – and three men – breaking the leg of one, ribs of another, and putting the third in the hospital with a hoof shaped indention in his skull. That horse’s – they always called him ‘demon horse’ – last straw was when he bit a child, breaking the lad’s collarbone and shoulder.
Two different horses carried their buggies off bridges rather than go near offal in the roadway – both resulting in life threatening injuries; riders were thrown; bitings and kickings, or near misses (by other than Demon Horse) were not unheard of. And these are but those we witnessed – the Amish grapevine was full of similar or worse incidents in other communities.
So, I stuck with my trusty steed, Ralphie, a red Plymouth Voyager; though he may have broken down on occasion, he never did anything I didn’t direct him to do, like diving headfirst into the creek rather than pass over the deposits of the horses before him.
Have a blessed day, dear readers!
PS Y’all might want to celebrate with me: I am back to writing for the first time since my fall in Feb. 2024!!!!
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