BROOKINGS – Brookings author Chuck Cecil has released his newest book, “Grandpa’s Horses.”
Among the large-format book’s 130 pages are more than 270 old photographs.
Most of the pictures are of farmers and their teams working the land in Brookings and surrounding counties from the 1890s through the 1930s as motorized vehicles elbowed the work horses aside.
The book salutes those men and women and their horses, who toiled during South Dakota’s horse heyday. The 1920 census recorded 817,000 horses on South Dakota farms. That was the peak year. At that time South Dakota had a population at 640,000, many of them living and working on South Dakota’s 80,000 farms.
“Grandpa’s Horses” is printed on 11” by 7” quality paper to enhance photographic details, Cecil said. Some of the old pictures are part of the author’s extensive photo collection and others are from state and area museums and farm family collections.
The book represents one of the largest published and most complete accounting of South Dakota farmers and others working and playing with horses, Cecil said.
“Those men and women and their horses powered the area through the sometimes fruitful and sometimes difficult times, smoothing the rough edges and squaring up the corners.”
The book also includes vignettes and columns the author has written over the years about South Dakota horses and horse people, and other related stories he uncovered during his extensive research.
“Grandpa’s Horses” is dedicated to the late Trygve Trooien, Oak Lake Township farmer and rural life historian whose bequest after his death in 2015 included funds to help build the state’s only horse-drawn museum on the Brookings County Museum campus in Volga.
A page in the book includes a photograph of Trooien overseeing one of his threshing demonstrations. Cecil has assigned a portion of the sale of each book to the maintenance of the Volga museum named in Trooien’s honor.
“The book is a wonderful read with wonderful stories and pictures,’ said Jo Waldner of Brookings. She’s a member of the South Dakota Horse Council and was asked to review Cecil’s photo selection and manuscript prior to printing.
She said that paging through the book brought back her memories of working with horses as a young girl growing up in Jerauld County.
“Our state needs more books like this one,” she said.
The book describes the gradual transition from real horse-power to autos, trucks and tractors, and the problems created as the old and the new reluctantly co-existed during the 1920s and 1930s. One early suggestion proposed in the South Dakota Legislature was to assign cars and trucks the roadways and allow the horse-drawn to use the ditches, Cecil said.
Several pages tell of the unusual happenstances that occurred when men and horses worked together.
“Farming with horses was a dangerous occupation,” Cecil said.
By far the most common mishaps in the horse-era were injuries and death from horse kicks. Hardly a day went by in South Dakota that a farmer or a member of a farm family wasn’t severely injured, maimed or killed by a kick from a horse, he said.
The Great Depression and the Dust Bowl years of the 1930s ensured that the horse would continue to work on most South Dakota farms during that difficult time. Families couldn’t afford to trade them off for tractors, and many were so loyal to their teams that it was difficult for them to break the tradition, he said.
A remembrance written years ago by the late Rudy DeZeeuw of Elkton tells of that symbiotic relationship between farmer and his horses. A photograph of DeZeeuw and his team of Pete and Mack is on the book’s back cover. The front cover is a photograph of the late Homer Ponto cultivating corn on his farm near Lake Campbell.
A story in the book of threshing day on the farm written by the late Ethel McKeown of rural Bushnell details the many related chores associated with that annual fall neighborhood task that brought everyone together on that special day.
There are also photographs of horses from other areas of the state, including the two South Dakota natives who rode winning horses in the Kentucky Derby, photographs of horses at work in the Homestake Gold Mine, and a story of a former Scotland, S.D., man who left his auto dealership to train and show his famous dancing horses and his pet mule Pinky, who became one of the stars at the 1952 Democratic Convention in Chicago.
The book is available in Brookings at Allegra, Threads of Memories and Brookings Book Company. To accommodate those sheltering because of COVID-19, it can also be mailed by sending $25 plus $3 shipping to P.O. Box 872, Brookings, S.D. 57006.
