March 15, 2010
 
MANN TALK: Where Have the Horse Flies Gone?
 
By Perry Mann
 
Once, while sitting on my camp deck looking into the West for rain clouds, I noticed a horse fly on the railing, causing me to wonder what it was doing there and what kind of an existence it and its kin have had since the disappearance of nearly all the horses from these parts.
 
What do they live on now that horses are gone from here and are concentrated in Lexington, Ky., and other horse capitals, where horse flies can expect little hospitality and much hostility? The sight of the fly did to me what smelling an apple or hearing a melody often does: it transported me to previous days and to the memories when the horse was at the top of the farmyard hierarchy.
 
Once upon a time horse flies had no trouble in this country finding a horse on which to engage in its parasitic practice. No farm was without horses. Horses did the heavy pulling; and always while they were so engaged, horse flies took the opportunity to alight at a point where neither the head nor the tail of the horse could disturb them. But the horses didn’t take the landing of a horse fly on their back with equanimity.
 
The horses endured, more or less, quietly gnats in their ears and three-cornered flies taking a bite; but a horse fly was a fly of another size. And they pranced about a bit and did what they could to disturb the fly before it needled in and sucked its fill. Often when I saw that a horse fly had settled in on the back of a horse and had become absorbed in its sanguinary theft, I would slap it flat, feeling with the horse the relief.
 
The day on the farm, particularly in spring and summer, began with the rounding up of the horses and the harnessing them, for the horses pulled the plow, the disc, the harrow, the mowing machine, the rake, the sled, the wagon, the buggy and just about everything that was too heavy for man to pull or move. To most farmers in this country in the Twenties and Thirties, horse power from horses was the only power except humans’ backs and bones. There were few tractors, for there wasn’t enough money to buy them. And my grandfather’s farm was so steep and rocky, he couldn’t have used one if he had had one.
 
I learned at an early age to chase the horses to the barn, where they entered the barn door always in the same order and always went to the same stall, just as people take the same place at the dinner table. I learned how to bridle them, harness them, hitch them to a sled that was runnered with hewn white oak secured with hickory pegs, and to drive them to the fields in spring to turn the ground.
 
I recall clearly the first time I went alone to a far field with horses and plow to turn three acres for corn. I was just twelve. The land was one piece of the few pieces on the farm that were not rocky so the plowing was relative easy---no rocks to kick the plow out of the ground and jerk the horses and me about. I can recall the burnished blade cutting into the ground and laying it back, covering the field’s growth, exposing the damp earth and occasionally turning up a mouse’s nest, thereby ruining some best laid plans. At the end of the furrow, I could look back with satisfaction at the uniform rows of shining earth and, when all the field was turned, view a sea of upended soil, the first step toward an October of corn shocks and pumpkins.
 
At noon, I would unhitch the horses and mount one of them, hold the bridle of the other and head for home for dinner. The horses knew that dinnertime was at hand and they had the same renewed energy at the prospect of water and food that I did. So off they went with me astride at a slow run to the pond for water. The pond was just below a spring and lay among trees. The place was cool on the hottest days. The horses would wade into the pond, triggering the jumps of a dozen frogs and causing sucking sounds as they pulled hooves from mud and a slurping sound as they drank. The dragon flies were everywhere, so delicate and so aeronautically agile. The frogs’ heads would surface and survey the situation. But the horses were not long there and in a few minutes pulled out and headed for the barn and dinner, which consisted of a half dozen or so ears of corn apiece.
 
With the horses watered and fed, I headed for the house and the table. The noontime meal was not lunch. It was a full course of dishes. Biscuits and churned butter with transparent applesauce in spring were a daily treat. Wilted lettuce and onions another. Cured ham and canned sausage were available. Fried potatoes, canned beans, canned corn and tomatoes, pickles, jellies and jam were regulars at noon. Later in the summer when the garden came in the noon table had on it every item touted in the seed catalogs. Meals in those days were the major returns and satisfactions from the work and the sweat of brows.
 
On the backside of my grandfather’s bib overalls there was a worn ring at the waist, the result of reins tied behind his back when he plowed between rows of corn with a cultivating plow. His hands had to hold the plow handles so the reins were tied together and slipped over his head and shoulders to his waist. With the reins and the commands gee and haw, he maneuvered the horse and plow between row after row.
 
He taught me to cultivate with the horse. It was a frustrating job. The weather was always hot, the gnats were always swarming in my face, sweat bees stung at the slightest provocation and the horse often had a mind of his own. Often the land was steep and rocky, adding to the difficulty of keeping the plow between rows. And, of course, the horse flies were ever present tormenting the horse and making the job even harder.
 
Usually, at the end of the row, there were trees. The horse, when he approached the trees, would hurry up, for he got relief from the gnats and flies and heat upon entering the brush and shade of the limbs and so did I. Turning around and heading back in the next row was a slow and exasperating process. My will to leave the shade and begin another row was weak and the horse’s will to stay in the shade was strong. Thus, there was always the end-of-the-row crisis. However, it was better to cultivate than to hoe, for cultivating had an end but hoeing was interminable.
 
Then there was the mowing machine. I delighted in mowing the meadow with it. I always imaged that I was seated in a chariot warring against a sea of enemies that were cut down methodically. Grass quivered when the blade hit it and fell flat, a whole army annihilated in short order. Next was the high-seated rake. It was light and, compared to the mowing machine, it was a racer. The horses could almost trot as the machine made the rounds and the windrows grew until the field looked like some modern hairdos: rows of hair and bare scalp in between.
 
Those days, the people, the machines and the horses are gone. The people lie moldering in family cemeteries, the machine are rusting or supporting mail boxes or resting in museums, and the horses for farming are confined to hippies, eccentrics and sentimentalists. Man has had to adapt to sidewalks instead of walking cow paths, to air-conditioning instead of shade trees, to super markets instead of gardens, to automobiles instead of buggies and to tractors instead of horses. The adaptation hasn’t been easy and much has been lost in the evolution from an agrarian to a cyber civilization.
 
Watching that horse fly on the railing, I reflected on its fate. Here was a creature fashioned by nature to live from blood of horses and not a horse was within miles. It was forlorn. It was one of many species left behind by the motor and computer age.
 
I felt a certain empathy for the horse fly and wondered how it lived. It can’t get blood from a tractor, so it must reduce itself to getting blood from less princely animals than the horse, losing thereby its dignity and standing. Its fate was not unlike that of the knights of yore, who were reduced to playing chess rather than conquering castles, raiding its riches and carrying away its maidens.
 
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Perry Mann is a former teacher, a lawyer, a former prosecuting attorney of Summers County and a columnist for Huntington News Network. He lives in Hinton, WV.