Time gone by

These photos were taken long before I even thought about a camera, and at least the top two maybe before I was born. But I am not sure about that. The top is our horse, Old Bob, and that is our dad. Neal nor I know who is on the horse...not any of us kids. And if you look close you see a little girl standing behind Bob. I have no idea who that is either. Bob looks like he is either getting ready to go to work, or coming in from working...notice the collar, etc.

I did not think I had a picture of Bob, but my nephew reminded me of this one. And I had it...but I did not have the one I wanted and of all the photos I took once I got a camera, I cannot find one picture with him in it.

The photos below are taken looking down the hollow from our old home place....all the fields you see plowed up were probably all the work of Bob...as Neal mentioned in his blog, Bob probably kept us from starving. And though these fields don't look very big, it is still a lot of work for one old work horse.
I am sure my brothers could tell you much more about it than me. Each year the ground would be turned over with a plow, which a friend did that had a team of horses, followed by Bob pulling the disc harrow, and maybe pulling a drag over it after that. I barely remember the drag...I don't even have a clear picture in my mind. So I hope Neal or George will pipe in here and explain it. I guess you would call it an implement to pull over the ground to level it out more and maybe to help get rid of the bigger clods of dirt....

I know this picture I am painting is about as clear as mud, but still maybe you will feel some of the same feelings I have when I look at these old photos. It is a time gone by that will never be again. And especially for us that know this place, it does not even look like the same place today. It seemed so big back then, and now when we go up there, we wonder how they raised all the food that they did there.

Plus there was tobacco to raise and field corn for the animals, and probably corn to raise to for cornmeal. I don't know if we raised hogs when we lived up there, but I think we did. When we moved to the new house...we raised and butchered 4 hogs every year...or at least most years. But I will save talking about that for another day.

It is later....I wrote the above this morn and I have just got off the phone with my brother. We were reminiscing. He reminded me a bit back about how Old Bob did not like to be spit on...I don't know if anyone ever actually did. But he got mad if you just made the sound like you were spitting. You ask how do you know he got mad? Make no mistake--he had body language. His ears went back and you could tell as plain as day. I can remember seeing him get mad at someone, but don't remember who or what for. The funny thing about it, I told Neal I never had him get mad at me...I think he would have bit someone had he thought he could get by with it when he was mad. But I tended to spoil him what little I could. He was done getting age on him by the time I got very old. I can remember riding on him a few times when I was very little to get from the old place to our new house and I can remember my older brother plowing the garden a time or two with him...but basically I remember him being retired for the most part since I was old enough to start remembering much.