The Hay Ride

By J. Bryan Wasson

It was in the fall of 1949. I was a senior at Abilene (Texas) High School. I lived with my parents on a farm in the Potosi community, south of Abilene. The youth group of Potosi Baptist Church wanted to have a hay ride. Someone in the group said, "My father has a wagon, but nothing to pull it with, but a tractor or a pickup.
They wanted the wagon to be pulled by a real live team of equines, not a piece of machinery like a tractor or a pickup truck.

I volunteered to locate a team to pull the wagon. That proved to be much easier said than done. Getting the team together over the next three or four weeks, however, proved to be more fun than the actual hay ride.

There were four or five sets of harness hanging in our barn. There were collars, hames, traces, back bands, belly bands, breeching, everything that was needed. The problem was that the harness was old, unused for many years, dry, brittle and could have soaked up gallons of neets foot oil. The major problem, however, was that there was no team that this harness could be used on.

I had a good saddle horse, a sorrel mare that I called Lady. I knew that Lady would not pull a wagon, because I had already hitched her up to a Georgia stock plow, and that proved to be a disaster. She had run away with the plow, tearing down fences, chicken houses, and mesquite brush. I thought that I would never catch the mare. It was a miracle that she was not injured.

After a week or so, I located a man in the area who had a big brown gelding that he used as a saddle horse. He told me that the horse would also work, single or double. I now had half of a team to pull the wagon.

The man told me I could keep the horse as long as I wanted to so I took the horse home. I was feeding the horse so I decided to ride him often during the time I had him in my possession.

The second half of the team was more difficult to locate. One friend, a few miles up the road had a mule grazing in his pasture. The mule had been retired for many years. This mule was the only draft animal he had left after he switched from horse power (mule power in this case) to tractor power on his farm. He did not want to take his old mule out of retirement to pull a hay ride wagon loaded with a bunch of loud high school kids. His feelings about his old mule were understandable.

Harry Holt was an area farmer and rancher who was well known for his farm and ranch radio and TV shows. Harry Holt continues to do a farm and ranch radio and TV shows in Abilene. Harry Holt had a farm between Potosi and Abilene. I had often seen a small brown Jack grazing in the pasture at this farm; I drove over there and talked to the man who ran the farm for Harry Holt. The little Jack did not weigh over 600 pounds, but the farm manager said that he could be ridden and worked well in harness, single or double. I had the other half of my team. A strange looking team it would be, however, made up of a big brown horse and a little brown donkey. Hey, it was a matched team that is, if color is the only matter to consider in creating a matched team.

I hauled the jack home in a trailer and put him in the pasture with his team mate and my mare, Lady. In the back of my mind I thought it would be nice if this visit from the jack resulted in a mule foal. She was not, however, in this cool part of the year, in season. There would be no mule foal.

It was difficult to alter a set of harness to fit the little brown jack. A lot of padding was required in the collar. I spent a few days working on the harness and a few more days of "dry runs" with this strange looking team pulling the wagon.

One day I decided to ride the jack. I rode sitting on his hips, in the manner in which donkeys are ridden in many foreign countries today. I rode a few miles and stopped to visit with a friend, Joe Bynum for a while, then continued my ride home. The jack exploded. From my rear seat position, I don’t think I ever went higher in the air or hit the ground harder. Present day bull riders refer to this type of buck off as being bucked off from the "back door" or "a back door dismount."

The night of the long planned hayride arrived at last. The weather changed from cool to cold and then to very cold. It was what we call a "Texas blue norther.’’ Someone in the Panhandle of Texas had "left the north gate open."

I hitched up the team, but then had some last minute problems with the old, worn out and over sized harness for the little jack. The cold north wind was not helping the situation any.

The best that I can remember is that I rode in the pickup truck that pulled the hay ride wagon that night.

01-25-02, JBW