Two black scouts on foot
Lead up two pointers
Their handlers, mounted,
Follow
Two mounted judges
Watch the scene
“Ready, boys?”
Handlers nod, scouts let ‘em go Read more
Opening Cast Off
Blog
Maud and Bird
They were my father’s last draft team
Mares black and bay
Grade Belgians 15.5 hands
Maud Lead Bird Off
I remember sitting on his lap
As he sat on the steel bucket seat
Of the mowing machine
Their lines in my small hands Read more
Wendell Berry
The death of Wendell Berry
Is the end of a long life-he was 92
Well lived more so than most any
Brings sadness but joy too
For he suffered no decline or disability
Died in his sleep in his home
With family surrounding
Read more
Labor Day in the Blue Ridge
In the Blue Ridge
Where I’ze raised
At Iver Johnson 20 Gauge
Four things came together:
Football practice
Squerill season
Chinquapins ripening
Chiggers Read more
Unknown Hole
Bob Cain and Booty Blevins
Was up in North Dakota
Their twentieth summer
Working bird dogs
They’d come up from South Georgia
Where they was based at
Where they lived in a single wide
When not on the circuit or training on prairie
Bob was the handler
Booty the scout
But in truth they was both
Bird dog Gypsies Read more
A Boy and a Derby
Ben Reach had a place reserved for the lad in his heart. He had promised the father to look out for the boy.
The father was Wally Steel, an all-age field trial trainer-handler based in Lee County who had died in his prime from lung cancer, cursed by his cigarette-smoking habit. At that time the boy, Sammy Steel, had been eighteen and apprenticing under his father, following the trial circuit fall to spring, training in North Dakota July to mid-September.
After Wally’s death Sammy had been trying to carry on with his string. Wally’s owners liked Sammy but were unsure he had what it took to make it. The four owners would give him a chance for a season with the dogs they had with Wally at his death, but placed no new prospects with him. Sammy had partnered up to travel in one rig with a contemporary of his father, Dan Eanes, also based in Lee County. Read more
Boyhood on a Mountain Farm
Bluegrass and clover
Blanket steep Appalachian hills and valleys
Greening in spring
Feeding cattle and sheep
They graze gain and bear calves and lambs
On our least-sloping land we plow harrow and plant
Alfalfa for hay
Then pray for rain
Read more
Me and Horses
My history with horses is checkered. I stopped riding at field trials soon after waking up riding in Ray Warren’s pickup truck one Thanksgiving weekend, not knowing where or why I was there or who Ray was (or who I was).
I had fallen off a runaway borrowed horse at the Quail Championship Invitational at Paducah, Kentucky where I was reporting. Ray was taking me to an emergency room. Fortunately, I suffered only a mild concussion that day. The spot where I dishonorably dismounted is marked by a sign, “Tom Word’s Oak.”
Read more
The Lucky Trade
Truck tires were still rationed and mostly unavailable. The War was over in Europe but not yet in the Pacific.
The first breakaway was at seven tomorrow morning at Pinehurst. Jess and Booty figured they could just make it if they drove all night. They did not know if they had a dog in the first brace but with six entered of a draw of about thirty Jess figured there was a pretty good chance they did. Read more
A Haunting Story
This story has haunted me many years. I do not recall where I first read or heard it. I do not know whether it is true or fiction or who wrote it.
They lived in a small frame house, unpainted, close beside the railroad track. They were black. The father was a feed-mill hand in the nearest town. He unloaded sacks of unground grain from farmers’ mule-drawn wagons and trucks, loaded sacks of ground and mixed feed back on them, and did whatever else the mill owner asked him to do. He walked along the track to and from work six days a week, three miles each way. Neither the father nor the mother could read or write but the son could. He was a diligent student. Read more