The Eighty-Dollar Champion - Elizabeth Letts [35]
Bakerstown, Pennsylvania, 1951
Harry and Johanna arrived at the Stirrup Hill Horse Farm, in Bakerstown, Pennsylvania, just north of Pittsburgh, in 1951. They had a place to live on the grounds of the stables—just a small apartment, but at least there were no cracks in the walls, and Harry was busy from morning to night working with the horses. A jack-of-all-trades at the stable, he was responsible for anything and everything: cleaning stalls and feeding the horses, riding the horses, looking after the riders who came to the stables for trail rides and lessons. He groomed horses to get them ready to ride, and he hot-walked them afterward, leading them in their halters and lead ropes to cool them down.
And now he had a regular paycheck: $35 a week. Even in the early 1950s, when the average American salary was about $3,500 dollars a year, Harry’s new wages were next to nothing, a pittance, especially for a growing family. The lean war years had taught Johanna to scrimp and save, and she applied herself to the task with vigor. She was determined to find a way to stretch those dollars as far as she could. Baby Joseph was only three weeks old when they arrived at their new home. Johanna clipped coupons from the newspaper, mended clothes and darned socks, and never let a penny go unaccounted for.
No matter how hard he worked, Harry still felt that his new life was one of ease—compared to the hardships of the war years, the things that he had endured, and the even harder things that he had seen others endure. To be paid to ride horses seemed like incredible good fortune. Harry worked from the crack of dawn, when he got up to muck the stalls, till after sunset, when he came in, bone-weary and smelling of horse sweat and saddle soap. But in spite of the work, and the meager pay, he had the feeling that, at last, he was doing what he was meant to.
Harry’s boss was happy with him; he was good at his job, a hard worker, and serious. Harry kept the stalls clean and banked up with fresh straw, and he groomed all of the horses, keeping their manes tidy and their coats buffed to a gloss. Harry even got to ride some of them. His boss had noticed that he had a gift—Harry could calm the nervous horses, handling even the most difficult ones without a problem.
Huge animals with lightning-fast reflexes, horses are built to take flight quickly. A startled horse will lash out with his hooves and attempt to bolt. In a battle of brute force, a horse will always win, outweighing a man by a power of ten, but men have devised many clever ways to control horses. A chain can be slipped under a horse’s chin, then around the bony prominence of its nose. A more extreme method is to work the chain tightly around the horse’s upper lip. Watch someone handle a horse who is hard to lead, groom, and tie, and you will normally see him stand at its side, holding tight to the lead shank, or chain, and giving the chain a series of sharp yanks.
Harry’s method was different. He stood in front of the horse with the lead rope slack and looked it straight in the eye. Most people lack the courage to stand directly in the path of a frightened horse, but Harry had the uncanny knack of seeming to speak to a skittish animal with the language of his movements. Harry would calmly hold up one hand. The horse would snort and snuffle, then finally drop its head, reaching its nose forward toward Harry’s outstretched palm.
Ja, Harry did a good job. But Johanna was worried. Thirty-five dollars a week was hardly enough to put food on the table, even with her thrifty ways. Joseph was one now, and she and Harry were delighted that a second baby was on the way. Harry and Johanna talked it over. Another ten dollars a week would make a world of difference to the young family.
Hat in hand, Harry approached his boss. “I’ve been here for a year,” he said. “I’ve worked hard, and I think you like what I do.”
Mr. Sterling nodded his assent. The young man was a hard worker and 100 percent reliable. And he was a family man, not off carousing like many of the young stable boys.