Depression-era life on the farm

One of the first things my father did after moving into his newly purchased property in Colebrook was to buy a horse and cow. Now even in 1931 there were laws governing the transportation of domestic animals, especially across state lines. For some reason, perhaps because there weren’t any available, or more likely because the purchase price was too high, he didn’t buy anything in Colebrook, but instead went north into Sandisfield.

The Sandisfield town line is less than 2 miles away, but it is in another state, so it became a little more complicated. I don’t think horses needed a Coggins test in those days, but cows had to be vaccinated against tuberculosis. Once vaccinated, a small aluminum tag was placed in the cow’s ear. The cow my father bought had such a tag, but Connecticut required that a local vet inoculate all cattle coming into the state. This was two years after the crash of Wall Street and the country, especially this area, was in a deep depression with many people having no money.

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I have on occasion talked to young people about these hard times with no money at all and found that the concept never really sank in. After telling about the complete lack of cash, they will almost invariably say something along the lines of “Well, you certainly could buy a loaf of bread.�

No, you couldn’t. No money means just that — no money! The rules had to be bent; the result of my father’s purchase was that he “sneaked� the cow and horse down into Colebrook in the dead of night via the long-abandoned Prock Hill Road, through North Colebrook and up on Beech Hill, where they eventually lived out their allotted years on this earth.

Immediately it became apparent that he had a problem: The horse refused to respond to commands. Tests proved that he wasn’t deaf, but he might as well have been. In desperation, my father began asking around about what the problem might be. Remember, my folks had only just recently bought their place on Beech Hill, and as far as the locals knew, were just another couple from New York, so that didn’t leave them much room to maneuver, if you know what I mean.

Eventually, someone suggested that he get hold of Izzy Jasmin, as he was considered to be the best man in town when it came to horses.

The Jasmins had been in town since 1897, when Isidore the first purchased the Sage farm (now the home of Jasmin descendents Jon and Sherri Gray at 23 Sandy Brook Road). Isidore and his wife, Apoline, had come as adults from the Normandy section of France, where calvados is made. Isidore had this recipe in his head, and the Sage farm had an apple orchard containing the exact mixture needed for the product he intended to produce.

When the four children came along, French was the only language spoken in the home. As a matter of fact, Felix, the eldest boy, repeated the first grade in the Rock School because his English was so imperfect. By the time their youngest son, also named Isidore, came along, the family had become bilingual.

Izzy responded to my father’s call for help with the truculent horse, and the first thing he asked was where my father had purchased him, and from whom. At the mention of the former owner, Izzy’s face lit up, “Oh! I know what your problem is — this horse only understands French!� He barked out a command — the horse instantly responded. Izzy told my father that it would be a lot quicker to teach him the French words needed to work the horse than it would be for him to try and teach the horse English.

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And that’s what he did. For quite a while my father could be heard in the fields and in the woods calling out “Commence!� or “Halt!� plus the terms for “Come around,� “back,� etc.

By the time I was old enough to remember that horse, he had become proficient in English. He had a mind of his own, however, he would allow me to ride him bareback around the farm, but when he got tired of that, would walk under a big maple tree with a low branch, and scrape me off. It only took me twice to know enough to grab on to that branch and hold on until he had cleared the area, then drop to the ground.

His name was Major, and he was the gentlest horse you could ask for. When little children were around, they were perfectly safe walking around his feet and underneath him. Before he lifted a foot, his head would drop down and he would survey the situation. If it wasn’t safe for him to move, he wouldn’t.

This was the horse that was so good at extricating cars from the mud and mire of the springtime roads. Once he was hitched up, he would look over his shoulder at the car, and he wouldn’t put one pound of effort on the traces until the driver engaged the clutch and made the wheels spin. Only then did he lean into his harness, and out the car would come.

His former owner had been a lumberman and had employed him as a “snaking horse,� or “snaker,� meaning he was able to bring logs out of the forest to the place where they were to be piled. No horse of average intelligence could do this job: It required him to be taken where the trees were being felled, then to take those logs, one at a time, back to where they were to be piled. At that point there would be another man or two who would unhitch the log, hook the traces up onto the harness, give him a slap on the rear end, and he would walk all by himself back to the men up in the woods. This could be a considerable distance, but the horse would keep it up all day, always avoiding situations where the log might get hung up on trunks of trees, stumps or stones. There is no doubt that such horses have a high degree of intelligence and reasoning power.

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 During the Depression years, it was not uncommon to have men who usually would have been working at some gainful employment hanging around the house or barnyard. One summer afternoon my father and two of his brothers-in-law were sitting around our living room, which made up two-thirds of the floor area of our once one-room schoolhouse. This place, which was soon to be replaced by a new house built by my father, was at that time no more than a shack, akin to what would more likely have been seen in the southern Appalachians.

Beech Hill Road, which passed by the front yard, seldom had more than two to three vehicles pass over it in the course of a week. If you heard something coming, it would usually prompt a quick peek out the window to see who was lost this time.

My uncle’s house was diagonally across the road, about 100 yards distant. A third brother was over at that house, and all of a sudden the three men in our house heard a knock at the front door. Nobody ever knocked at a door in those days — at most you opened the door and yelled out that the house was being invaded, or some such nonsense to let the residents know they had company.

These three unkempt, unshaven mountain types (who happened to be cleaning rifles) thought it was the other brother, being funny, so one of them yanked open the door, rifle at the ready, and yelled out “Whadda ya want?�

There was a total stranger standing there! He had somehow driven up without them hearing him, and he stood there transfixed, then very slowly began backing across the lawn to his car. Our side was so rattled that they never had the presence of mind to say something to the poor fellow. He never came around again!

Bob Grigg is the town historian in Colebrook.