Making Hay With The Ball Team, 1947
By
Serena K. “Miss Violet” Dandridge (1876-1954)
Serena
K. Dandridge, also called "Miss Violet" was with her cousin, Nina
Mitchell, one of the most beloved people to have ever lived in Shepherdstown.
Stories still abound of their generosity and eccentricities. They lived in
Rosebrake, on the edge of Shepherdstown, maintained by material wealth from a
family with deep, beneficent roots in Flushing, New York. Ms. Dandridge, the daughter of Caroline
"Danske" Dandridge and Adam Stephen Dandridge, painted in water color
with one of her paintings once purchased by the Louvre's Jeu de Paume in
Paris. She, with Jake Monroe, milked
cows daily for many years, delivering free milk to about fifty families of
modest means. She had her own Sunday
school classes for a group of African-American children. She wore jodphers and
herded sheep that were each named after a President. She wrote an essay
entitled “Sheep I Have Known.” Environmentalists savor the true story from the
1930s of Ms. Dandridge's fight to protect cedars. Leon Washington, alive today,
kept the household running amid the busy lives of "Miss Nina" and
"Miss Violet."- ED.
“Making hay is intensely
exciting. I have a reproduction of John
Stuart Currey's painting, ‘The Line Storm,’ the original of which hangs in the
Corcoran Art Gallery. It shows the
terribly heavy tall hangs of hay, so easy to topple over, coming in across the
hills to the far away barn. All the
haymakers are perched on top for dear life.
The puny looking horses, that seem so small compared to that fearful
mass and weight, actually trying to gallop, with the great storm and its
lightning almost over them, and coming fast.
It hangs on the wall here in my cabin, and thrills me, for I have been
through what it expresses so often.
“This
year of many spring rains to see that abounding crop of alfalfa that must be
dealt with, is one of the exciting adventures of my life. Where I had tried so long, and often so
futilely to keep the sheep from eating it, the growth is more solid and free
from weeds than where they did not pasture it so much.
“The
horses, beloved wild things, are old nineteen-years at least, still untamed,
with glorious working spirit, and beautiful in the proud way they throw their
strong legs and arch their necks.
“The
Deering mower is of an uncertain age, more than double that of the horses. It was left here by the tall, young tenant
who raised Mack and May, and it had belonged to his father many years before he
used it. I hope Mr. Deering realizes,
wherever, he may be, what a wonderful implement the ‘old Deering’ is. It is much easier on the horse's necks than
the new McCormick I have in Shepherdstown, but the beautiful stuff I have to
cut is tall and thick, with ‘dog fennel’ in it as high as the horse's backs.
“Thirty-five
acres of this first cutting of alfalfa, here and at home, getting taller by the
day, can only be called an adventure weighted with excitement.
“The
old shepherd is a fine mower, but his eyes are dim, so the job devolves on
me. He hitches up the horses, after we
catch them, appealing, often in vain, to their better natures to come in and
submit to the harnesses. He ‘opens the
field’ and starts me off. I oil that
Deering as, I venture to say, a mower has seldom been oiled before. After every round of the great field the
horses expect me to stop and oil knife and pitment rod and gears while they
rest and sample the crop. They always stop
at the same corner, where I keep my grease can, moving it up as the swathes
fall and the hours go by. Our work is
very much enlivened by ground hog holes in which the horses have a reasonable
objection to stepping. Of course the
holes are hidden by the growing hay, and they are a never failing subject of
conversation between mower and horses.
The intelligent animals understand every word I say. We avoid the ground hog holes together,
leaving strips of unmowed hay at each.
“It
is difficult to describe the beauty of the purple blooming alfalfa, with its
daisies and tall flowering weeds, as it goes down so irreversibly before the
knife. The orderly rows are behind me
and to my left. At the right and in
front, the beauty stretches, ready to fall, drink up the sun's light and heat,
and take on its use as food for horses and sheep.
“Such
a variety of colored alfalfa I never saw before. The flowers range from pale lavender, almost white, through all
shades of purple, to rich dark crimson.
The swallows, three kinds this year, skim around my head and the horse's
heads and the mower, and are a part of haymaking. They seem to take an interest in it, and add to the
pleasure. Also it is too cool as yet
for pine files and hardheads from the woods, in fact, it is quite cool and
breezy in the sun.
“This
year my helpers were part of the Shepherdstown colored baseball team, only once
defeated so far, they told me, and then it took the Washington War Hawks to
beat them.
“While
driving up in the morning, all seven of us packed in the car, we commented on
what a fine-sounding team of haymakers we were.
“Shortstop
and second base were represented by the Holmes brothers, Cunnie and
Bunnie. Probably Oliver Wendall, and
not the Chief Justice, or more likely, one of their grandfathers has the honor
of having them named for him.
“Third
base and center field were well covered by two Washingtons, home-run hitters,
both. Jake Monroe, one of their best
pitchers, was responsible for bringing his friends.
“And
I congratulated William Strother and myself - I suppose we are the managers -
on our F.F.V. (First Families of Virginia – ED) - sounding names.
“The
team spirit was strong, and the fragrant hay, unspoiled by a drop of rain, is
piling up and filling the great mow in the hay barracks beside the sheep house.
“One
day, when the sun was too much for the old gentleman, and I made him rest in
the cool cabin. The younger set were ambitious, and put on too heavy a
load. It is painfully exciting watching
a load go in, but I was getting accustomed to it. Three were on top. I had
just complimented second base and center field on what good loading they had
been doing before I noticed that the hay was too heavy in front at the
right. The rest of us followed behind
in the car, watching it ride.
“The
whole wooden rim of the old front wheel must have broken out and come off
before they made the turn to cross the little bridge over the fish-pond
spillway. That is where the great load
crashed, burying the riders.
Jake
tells me that he went down between the horses under their hind hooves. The car was too far away for us to speak the
assuring word that makes the wild horses stand like a rock in an
emergency. The wagon was suddenly free,
the terrible strain gone. No hand was
on the reins. Terror settled down on
Mack and May. They began to trot, and then
to run at a wild gallop with the great twenty-foot wagon and ladders bounding
after them. Over the hills, where we
had so often chased them, obeying the impulse to be free from this fear, this
uncertainty. Never in all their long
lives had the dear things run off before.
Now they were going, and nothing could stop them. Soon the wagon was on the tongue and the
front wheels, but around and around, over the hills they raced. I walked up in the center of their great
orbit, calling to them and trying to quiet them. Soon, to my comfort, Jake showed up, shouldering the burden, like
the man he is.
"’They'll
stop pretty soon,’ he said, ‘when they get tired,’ and he cut across to the far
fence, and headed them off.
“Sure
enough, when they saw him, their driver and friend, they stopped and let him
lead them back to the mountain of hay that covered the bridge. It was to have been the last load that
night. William came out, and we
comforted the trembling, soaking horses.
We took the harness off them, and went home, per force, by the south
road to the farm that crosses the Opequon at Sulphur Springs Bridge, as the hay
blocked the bridge over the marshy run.
“On
the way home our kind neighbor, who is ‘putting out corn’ in my Saw Mill
bottoms, suggested that we use his truck to get in the rest of the hay. And the next day we made six loads with the
ancient sturdy vehicles snorting, dripping, smoking, steaming, but hauling hay
with all its might.
“Now
blessed I felt to have my players, snowed under, as you might say, and covered
up with hay, and almost defeated, but rallying magnificently in the ninth
inning, and going on to victory. A plucky team.
“But
what shall I say of the horses! The
well beloved, trebly dear. Hurt and
grieved at their failure after such effort after trying so more than hard to do
the work of the farm.
Unsatisfactorily! Breaking up
the wagon! Now May pulls the hayfork
alone, while I horse-rake the field with Mack, and they do not pull in the
load, but that snorting thing we have does.
How they stared at it! And as I
left yesterday Mack hung his head and drooped in a way that hurt my heart. Today he ate corn from my hand, a thing he
has seldom done before.
“Do
our failures draw us nearer to those we love?”