new shoes, which were twisted and bent and calked, and [they] were put on the horse and they would last him for a matter of months.

It was heavy work you know.

Many times I’ve heard my father discussing this “give a horse a dig in the ribs.” He would get behind the horse with his back up toward the horse’s head, put on a leather apron, grab the horse’s foot and put it between his knees, and start working at the hoof, trimming the hoof that grew since the last time it was shod. And then the horse would sort of lean on him, you see. [My father] was down; he was sort of on his haunches — I mean, his legs bent a little bit, holding the horse’s hoof on this leather apron between his knees, because he would rip through a pair of pants in a short time. And he’d give the horse a dig in the ribs with his elbow and the horse would lift his weight.

Then there was another real trial and tribulation that came to a black- smith in those days, and that was bringing a young horse in to be shod for the first time. Usually they were brought up on farms among other horses as sort of pets. But whenever they got into the forge, they became a different kind of an animal entirely. I’ve seen my father pick up one of the back feet of the horse which hadn’t been shod before and the foal would give a kick and send him off back into the corner. And he’d come right back up and at it again.

As I remember it, there was never a horse that beat him. He figured that if he kept at the horse long enough, and treated the horse kindly, that the horse would eventually [stand] still for him.

Farm Family

Life at home on the farm in those years...had to be about the best way for a young fella to start his life off... The work on the farm, the busy time, lasted from, probably, mid-April to mid-October. The rest of the time was pretty easy. It was a matter of looking after cattle and probably splitting wood and sort of tidying things, but the work was pretty light.

We lived, seven of us, in the kitchen during those times. Father sat at the end of the stove and piled the dry maple into the stove. And my mother bustled around at cooking or daming or something. My grandmother sat in the comer spinning or knitting, either one. And we sat around the table and learned our lessons. At 10 or 11 o’clock, everyone went off upstairs to bed together and had a good sleep and woke up the next morning. Sometimes we slept in pretty cold temperatures upstairs. But neverthe— less, we lived through it. It was the same everywhere.

_________________.___————— 88 BELFAST PEOPLE