BARNEY AND LUKE © Phil Ward, 2019

Granddad was always partial to horses, particularly to the draft horse teams the family farmed with when he was growing up. One of his favorites was a rangy pair of Percherons named Barney and Luke. An unmatched team, one a grey and one a black, Barney and Luke were willing workers who excelled at both farming and logging. Granddad always claimed that his older brother Everett (whom he gave credit for being the better teamster) could “pull anything loose on both ends” with old Barney and Luke.

As Granddad told it, during their teen years when summer harvest on the home place was finished, he and Everett often hired out to larger operations with Barney and Luke, to help finish up the grain threshing. An older neighbor, “Tex” Roberts, who occasionally did the same with his own team, had a fine looking pair of Belgians. According to Tex, his Belgians could “out-pull that Ward team without breaking a sweat.” This affront to Barney and Lukes’ abilities incensed Everett, especially as Tex could never find the time to make his team available for a head to head pulling match.

One August the Ward boys and their team and Tex and his were both working for a nearby outfit. Tex was driving water wagon for the steam thresher. He was filling it from the Lukiamute River when he hit an unseen hole in the riverbed and stuck the wagon fast. Try as they might his team was unable to pull it out and eventually Everett was sent with Barney and Luke to help.

When Everett arrived, Tex was standing on the riverbank, waiting, his team chest deep in water and the wagon sunk up to the floorboards. He brusquely instructed Everett to get Barney and Luke hitched up in front of his team, and to use the four horses together to pull the wagon free. Everett, however, after all the slights to Barney and Luke, was having none of that. Without batting an eye, he pronounced that if Tex wanted that wagon pulled out he was going to have to wade back in and unhitch his horses so Barney and Luke could show him what a real team could do. As you can imagine, Tex was not happy with this pronouncement, but after a bit of back and forth shouting he waded in and unhitched the Belgians.

With the unfettered confidence of youth, Everett backed his pair up to the wagon, slid off of Barney’s back down into the water and hitched up. From there he climbed into the wagon seat, glanced over at Tex with a grin and clucked to his team. Barney and Luke found their footing, strained briefly, and with a couple of lurches pulled the wagon out of the hole and onto the bank.

Later that night over dinner, Everett gleefully recounted the story of Barney and Lukes’ triumph to the family, oblivious to the color rising in his fathers’ face. “You darn kid”, he said, what would you have done if they hadn’t been able to pull that wagon out?” Slowly, and with some chagrin, Everett replied: “Well, I guess I never thought of that.”

“ I guess not” was the response.

Author: Phil Ward

Phil Ward is a 5th generation Oregonian who over the course of a 40 year professional career has served as a high school Agriculture Instructor, Executive Vice President of the Oregon Farm Bureau, Director of the Oregon Department of Agriculture and Oregon Department of Water Resources, and State Director of USDA’s Farm Service Agency. He lives with his wife Pam on a piece of the home farm south of Independence, near the Willamette River. View all posts by Phil Ward