It was the coldest October roundup anyone could remember. The temperature
hovered between zero and 10 above on Friday and Saturday nights at the 16th
annual Eastern Draft Horse-pulling showdown, and by Sunday afternoon even the
hardiest teamsters were frozen. They had traveled to North Swanzey, N.H. from
as far away as Michigan and Kentucky, and now between events they huddled over
coffeepots in their campers or around the heated pails of water used to
prevent the horses from being chilled. But neither Danny Reed, a blond,
34-year-old blacksmith from Raynham, Mass., nor Dick Wallingford, who runs a
logging business in West Forks, Maine, paid the weather any mind. Sunday night
their teams of draft horses would be pulling in the heavyweight, free-for-all
division to settle a rivalry that had simmered through a season of county
fairs and 4-H expositions from Maine to Ohio.
"All last year Dick beat me
and I had to be content with second," said Reed, thumbs hooked under the
straps of his Big Smith overalls. "Then he went out West and bought a new
horse that didn't pull as well with his Rock, and I started beating him. We've
both been waiting for the roundup for quite a while."
Wallingford, limping noticeably from a snowmobile accident last winter and
showing the strain of having hauled his team of horses 25,000 miles since May,
agreed, with traditional New England understatement. "It'd be very nice to
win," he said. Sunday was his 30th wedding anniversary.
Like the people who perpetuate it, the sport of horse pulling, or horse
drawing, in New England is uncluttered, stylized and immutable, an agrarian
drama conferring ritualistic status upon the beast that once provided men and
women with their livelihood. Even the wealthier owners who hire teamsters to
drive for them spring from the same roots as men like Danny Reed, and in the
arena it is impossible to distinguish the rich from the poor. The rules of the
sport are simple enough: a team of two powerful draft horses, either Belgians
or Percherons, hitched side by side, pulls a wooden sled (also called a boat)
piled high with oblong concrete blocks a distance of six feet. Each team has
five minutes to make three attempts at a given weight. When all teams
competing finish a round, more weight is added to the sled. The pair of horses
pulling the greatest weight wins, but a teamster's style, or the desire of the
team, is as important to devotees as a victory.
The crowds, overflowing the bleachers on both sides of the dirt pit, share
a lifestyle with the teamsters and handlers who compete. They are
weather-beaten men in overalls and heavy boots with hands the color and
texture of coarse-grade sandpaper, accompanied by sons who at nine and 10
already punctuate sentences with machine-gun bursts of saliva, deadly accurate
to 15 feet, and wives who still cook heaping pots of beef stew for noontime
meals, far from the world of peach halves and cottage cheese. In hushed tones
they talk knowledgeably of the massive horses who stand quietly in pairs at
one end of the arena, decked out in ornamented harnesses and ponderous collars
that distribute the impact of the weight. Grouped around the horses, the
teamsters, helpers and assorted hangers-on eye each other's teams, spit
tobacco juice in the dirt and wait for the competition to begin. Horse pulling
is in their blood, as stock-car racing is in the blood of the rural South, and
men like Danny Reed and Dick Wallingford are their Donnie Allisons and Richard
Pettys.
In the old days they came out of the forests of northern Maine with their
teams of horses, out of the heavily wooded mountains in Vermont and New
Hampshire where, in the days before Ski-Doos and ski lodges, only the loggers
went. They were frost-bitten, powerful men in heavy woolen Malone pants, plaid
shirts and suspenders, with wads of chewing tobacco in their cheeks and limbs
twisted from old logging accidents; hard-drinking gypsy loggers, French
Canadian and Yankee farmers, brutal backwoods laborers and road builders, all
of them horsemen in their own way. Not racehorse men or ropers or bareback
men, but men who worked teams of 2,400-pound draft horses up and down the
logging trails in 20°-below snow and knee-deep springtime mud, or back and
forth across rock-infested fields, or through the stands of sugar maples, the
horses pulling sleds loaded down with sap buckets. Several times a year they
came to drink and fight and talk horses and trade horses and compete in the
horse-drawing contests, their teams pulling extraordinary weights across dirt
arenas at local fairs throughout New England. And then, as now, they loved
those giant beasts who would pull their hearts out for men who knew how to
handle them.
Frank Lambert, from Bethel, Vt., at 73 the oldest teamster at this roundup,
remembers the way it used to be. "I been drawin' hosses for 53 years," he
said, turning up the collar of his lumber jacket against the wind, "and of
course it's changed some. There's more money boys in it now. Used to be we'd
all get together with the hosses we used for loggin' 'n have us a hoss draw.
The women'd make the ribbons 'n we'd bring along two, three gallons o'
mountain dew. Had us a hell of a good time. So many folks started showin' up
we began to charge admission and use the money for prizes. It was all a game,
but now some of these fellas pay over $10,000 for a hoss. They're out for
blood. Over in New York State they threw two guys out of the association for
druggin' their hosses." A few years back Lambert, on his death bed, asked his
wife to buy a pair of draft horses so he could look out his bedroom window and
see them standing in the pasture. He was so sick she bought them with the
understanding that the seller would buy them back when Lambert died, but the
sight of those horses inspired Lambert to recover and the following season he
was back driving his team.
Other things have changed besides the cost of horses since the days when
Frank Lambert started pulling. Friday night, for example, under a crescent
moon on the dirt track outside the arena, the horses pulled in a dynamometer
free-for-all event. The dynamometer, favored in Midwest horse pulling and
called "the machine," is a Rube Goldberg contraption of chains, hooks, weights
and pulleys mounted on the back of a flatbed truck. When the horses pull on a
hook below the rear bumper the weights in the truck bed rise on a steel shaft,
allowing a hydraulic valve to open in the transfer case, in turn allowing the
vehicle to roll. The horses have to pull the truck 27˝ feet. In New England,
horse pullers greet this pandering to the industrial revolution with about as
much enthusiasm as they first showed toward the oil refinery Aristotle Onassis
proposed for their coastline. But, as Percy Culver, president of the Eastern
Draft Horse Association and organizer of this year's roundup, said, "We wanted
the boys from out West to be happy, so we brought in the machine." Twenty
teams pulled, with Danny Reed grabbing first place from the highly considered
Stimer brothers of Jackson, Mich. Dick Wallingford, saving his team for
Sunday's showdown, did not enter.
After his victory in the machine pull, Danny Reed and his wife Vicki
partied with some other horse pullers and then, despite the near-zero
temperature, slept in the hay in the rear of Reed's wooden-sided horse
trailer. In the morning neither Reed nor Colonel, his dark gray Belgian lead
horse, was moving too well. Colonel, in fact, lay stretched out in his stall
like a beached whale, now and then lifting his head to see who was around.
"Colonel was crazy when I first got him," said Reed. "It took me two years to
train him so he'd have confidence in me and want to pull. I worked him real
slow, telling him he was doing right even when he wasn't. Then one day he got
me so mad I had to whip him with the reins. He's been fine ever since." Reed's
other horse, Diamond, a 17-year-old Percheron, was considered over the hill,
since prime pulling age for draft horses is between eight and 12, but Diamond
has turned out to be the George Blanda of horse pulling, teaming up with
Colonel for many clutch victories.
"A good team is 90% desire," said Reed, "and I worked both of mine real
easy at home so they'd keep their heart. Colonel always wants to lead, and I
had to be careful not to let Diamond lose his confidence. I'd shorten up on
Colonel's bit and let Diamond get out in front just a hair. I've been resting
them for three weeks before the roundup. They were gettin' tired from so much
pullin'."
In a nearby barn Dick Wallingford was feeding Rock, his 12-year-old Belgian
gelding that weighs 2,200 pounds and stands 19 hands high at the withers.
Wallingford, 49, who has been drawing horses since 1942, considers Rock to
be the strongest horse he has ever seen. During the roundup another horse
puller offered $15,000 for him, but Wallingford was not selling the prize
horse he purchased from an Amish farmer in Illinois. Plenty of trading does
go on at every horse pull, though, because one teamster is always convinced
he can do better than another with the same horse. In a sense horse pulling
shares certain characteristics of contemporary marital customs.
Neither
Danny Reed nor Dick Wallingford entered Saturday's event, an arcane pull
native to parts of Maine called "two pound of rock," in which horses pull
double their own weight as far as they can in five minutes. "I hate distance
pulling," said Danny Reed. "It wears a horse's heart out, and 1 don't care
for that machine, either. Six foot on a sled's real horse pulling."
So all day Saturday and far into the night groups of men and women
gathered to pass the bottle, families ate steaming chicken in the 4-H food
barn and teen-agers necked wherever they could. Through all the cold and
wind and mud of the Cheshire Fairgrounds people talked, lived and breathed
horse pulling, speculating on the outcome of Sunday's pull.
First there would be the lightweight 3,000-pound class—total weight of a
team not exceeding 3,000 pounds—with Nate Black, Arthur Durgin and his
brother Ronnie, the Trundy Brothers and Novae Bergeron among those entered.
And then the heavyweights, with Reed, Wallingford, Harold Brigham, Charlie
Wimler and old Frank Lambert, all names that sparked the kind of controversy
that John Newcombe vs. Jimmy Connors does among tennis fans.
Saturday night Danny Reed's luck suddenly turned sour. Colonel, after
acting funny all day, developed large boils on his legs and neck, a reaction
to paint from the walls of his stall at the fairgrounds. Heartbroken, the
little blacksmith packed up and left the roundup, arriving home at 3 a.m. He
treated Colonel himself until six and then took the horse to the vet, who
told Danny he could pull with him. "At first I thought the hell with it,"
Reed said, "but the vet assured me Colonel would be O.K." Back into the
horse truck went Danny and his wife, and at 2 p.m. Sunday they were again in
North Swanzey.
In an age that equates excellence in sports with six-figure incomes,
private planes and fat endorsement checks, such dedication may seem
anachronistic, if not downright ridiculous. Top money at the roundup,
heavyweight division, was $115, plus a trophy and two pounds of naturally
aged Vermont cheddar cheese. On the other hand, Shorty Dyke will never have
to sell his house in Anson, Maine and uproot his wife and kids after being
traded to San Diego, and as yet no teamster has had to resort to
transcendental meditation for inner peace. Give him a chaw of Beechnut, a
nip of home brew and the company of his friends at a good horse draw and
things will work out fine. Never mind if the cost of feeding two horses and
driving 25,000 miles a season far outstrips anything he could earn, even
with a first place team. Horse pullers, after all, do more than promote and
cherish a sport. They fiercely protect and defend a way of life.
Late Sunday morning the bitter north wind picked up, the sky turned
heavily overcast and occasional flurries of snow whistled across the
fairgrounds. Percy Culver convened a meeting of the teamsters to decide
whether to pull inside the arena or out. "Cold enough for ya, Percy?" one
driver yelled. "Why, hell," Percy said, "ain't no colder'n it was wet last
week." Nonetheless, inside won hands down.
At 8 p.m. Sunday 18 heavyweight teams and their handlers gathered at one
end of the unheated arena, the crowd of about 2,000 blanketed and long-johned
fans made final bets among themselves and the long-awaited free-for-all
horse draw began. "O.K., boys," said Junior Edwards, the announcer, in a
voice that could peel the bark off a tree, "the starting weight is 5,000
pounds. Team No. 1 is J. D. Durgin and sons from Antrim, N. H., Ronnie
Durgin doin' the drivin'."
The teamster, reins in hand, a dead cigar in the corner of his mouth and
a hunting hat on his head, flanked by two tobacco-chewing attendants called
evener-men, marched the length of the arena behind the great horses prancing
with high-held tossing heads. As they approached the weight-laden sled the
men circled ceremoniously and slowly backed the wild-eyed beasts up to the
hitch. An iron bar with an eye in it, called a whiffle tree, secured to the
horses' traces by an evener-bar, was placed over the hook of the sled by one
of the evener-men while the teamster cajoled, commanded and muscled the
horses back and forth. This is a task on the order of threading a needle and
stopping a runaway freight train at the same time and, with more than two
tons of psyched-up horseflesh rearing and pawing the ground, disaster is
always imminent. Later in the evening Ronnie Durgin's brother, who won the
afternoon 3,000-pound pull, was flipped 30 feet across the dirt when an
evener-bar broke. Durgin flew one way, his plug of Redman flew another and
his horse went right over him. Durgin was lucky to escape with only a
shoulder separation.
They pulled for more than four hours, slowly eliminating one team and
then another until, at 12:45 a.m. Monday, the John Deere payloader placed
two 750-pound blocks atop the stack already on the sled to bring the weight
to 20,250 pounds. Four teams remained: Wallingford, Reed, Charlie Wimler
from Durham, Conn. and Magill & Kimball from West Burke, Vt. The crowd,
numbed by the cold, was silent and tense. Now the teamster's coordination
and the horses' ability to pull simultaneously were crucial. At the instant
of each hitch the teamster's command sent the horses surging forward against
the weight with a noise like eight interior linemen butting heads. For four
or five seconds they pulled, necks stretched parallel to the dirt, chests
and shoulder muscles bulging, mouths agape, legs digging for a hold in the
loosely packed earth, the teamster, down low between their hindquarters,
calling to them, "Now, Rock, yeah, Rock. Pull Rock, Rock, Rock," then
unhitching while another team approached. Both Wimler and Magill & Kimball
failed in three tries to move the weight six feet.
On Magill & Kimball's best effort—68 inches—the only noise in the arena was
the groan of the horses. The weight was raised to 21,250 pounds for Reed and
Wallingford. The payloader and six or seven hearty men adjusted the weight
on the sled as the two teamsters circled each other in the arena, keeping
their teams moving to avoid a chill. Then Danny Reed hitched Colonel and
Diamond to the sled and pulled the distance on his first try. Dick
Wallingford's team missed three times and the roundup was over.
"Ya did
good, Danny," Dick Wallingford said, as Reed passed him en route to the
trophy ceremony. Wallingford was disappointed but not disheartened. "I'll
have to get a better horse this winter to pull with Rock," he reflected.
Just then a wily old logger with no teeth and tobacco juice on his chin
approached. "Wanna buy my horse, Richard?" he said. "Watcha take for him?"
asked Wallingford. "Watcha gimme?" "I dunno," said Wallingford. "I ain't
seen him yet." Preparations for next year's showdown were under way.