by H. H. "Hub" Brown

As I mentioned once before, the best present we over got wasn't at Christmas time and wasn't ever really ours. It was the use of Hugo, the little Shetland pony. One Saturday the folks and the hired man had gone to Tunkhannock to take the owner of the farm, cream, butter and eggs as was the custom. They had taken Elsie, the baby, but had left Jady and Bob in charge of Sally who was two years younger than me. Hugo was in of his calm and patient moods that day and seemed to be willing to go along with whatever the boys wanted to do. They had rounded up some old leather straps and some webbing and conjured a sort of a harness and hitched Hugo to the kids farm wagon and put Sally in for a passenger. He even seemed to enjoy being led or driven around by the boys. As a rule, Jady would have nothing to do with the pony after being laughed at the first time he had ridden him. But that day he helped Bob, and they were still at it when the folks got home. Dad and the hired man were quite impressed with what a nice job the boys had done and decided they would make him a real harness next day. But that didn't suit Hugo one bit. He figured, I guess, that he had donated half a day to the cause of childish entertainment and that was enough.

Bob told me that in their wish to get that wagon on the road, they neglected to provide any holdback straps. This meant that when Bob stopped the pony, the wagon would run up and bump him in the rear. The only bit they had that would fit such a small mouth was a jointed, twisted wire bit which he some how managed to get between his teeth before they even got to the road. When Bob got to the dirt road, he stopped the pony, the wagon ran up on the pony's hind legs and that did it. He took off like a flash of lightning, dumped Bob off in the dirt and started spreading wagon parts along the road.

There never was any trouble tracking Hugo on a dirt road for he had much smaller feet than any other horse in the neighborhood. We all started out following his tracks and picking up the wagon parts. When he got to where most traffic turned to the right, he continued straight ahead and when the road turned to the right again, he went straight ahead which led him up a road in the woods and into some thick thorn brush. His lines became tangled in the thorn brush and this stopped him. He had some small nicks and cuts but nothing serious.

When we came to the farm where our old neighbors had lived there was a new family who had moved in from down Scranton way. Anyone who has ever visited Scranton remembers a certain way they talk there. Even people from the old country, when they learned English, they would speak with that same accent. So when we came to their place and Dad asked if they had seen a small horse bo by, the man said, "We saw some thing to by that looked like a Schamall Dag."