“Some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again.”
- C. S. Lewis
What better way to start a blog than to see a picture of a pretty, young lady hard at work with an important task. This, by the way, is my little granddaughter so seriously intent on her work.
I'm still processing in my mind the convention I just attended. People we meet there might just be the most important reason for going. At one evening banquet I sat with a couple from California whom I found to be very interesting. As the meal wore on I mentioned that I was interested in the history of horse procurement in the Midwest by buyers who looked to supply military needs in Europe during the first world war. On the battlefields, horses and mules suffered the same fates as infantrymen, i.e. wounding, gassing, injury, and killing. Even though my grandfather never talked much of his experiences in the Meuse-Argonne, he did mention to one of my cousins how he hated to hear the screams of the wounded horses in the night. These were horses that couldn't be put out of their misery with a simple gun to the head. They were horses trapped in "no-man's land" between the two opposing forces where no man dared to tread. Their fate was to suffer until finally succumbing to their wounds.
The man listened attentively, and then said it was something he too was interested in. His father had purchased these same horses for the remount depot in Montana. It was a story he'd always intended telling, but now at 88 years of age with only 10% vision remaining due to macular degeneration, he no longer could.
He wants me to tell it and gave me sources of information to find the nuts and bolts of that period of history. Then, on Sunday, I received a telephone call from him with more words of encouragement. Now to start gathering facts and figures.
My interest developed when I'd read about a famous bucking horse from this region named Tipperary. He was so wild that buyers wouldn't take him, and men quick to take advantage, started entering him in rodeos. A book named Tipperary had earlier been given to me by the stepmother of the past Governor Schafer, Sheila Schafer.
I hope I have time remaining to finish everything!
