Memories from an 85-year-old

[L Verge]

A longtime friend of my family and a good supporter of the Surratt Society has recently published a book on "My First 85 Years." It's great!

This man's name is Cliff Jenkins; and yes, he is related to Mary Jenkins Surratt and his third-great-grandfather owned Jenkins Hill in D.C. where the U.S. Capitol now stands. When I was a child, the family had moved out of the city to a farm just south of the city's boundary. In addition to produce, they also had greenhouses and ran a floral business.

In the book, Cliff tells some great stories about the old days of horses and wagons. His grandfather ("Pop Jenkins") would sell his wares at the city's Center Market, where most of the vendors used horses and wagons. When more and more people started getting cars, the city began to install traffic lights -- and the horses got used to stopping for red lights and starting again for green lights. This came in handy when dealing with runaway teams because the horses would stop running when they saw a red light. He also recounts that some policemen were on bicycles and would grab the harness of runaways in an effort to slow them down.

He also talks about Pop having a milk route in the city before moving to the farm. He would go to the station to meet the milk trains, pick up a number of large cans of milk and deliver to his customers - stopping at each house to ladle out their order. The horse learned the route and which house to stop at. The horse went with them when they moved to the farm, and when produce was taken into the city some of the old milk routes would be crossed. That horse remembered the route and would stop at each of the old houses. The only way they could get him to budge again was to get out of the wagon and get back in.

On another outing to the city, a horse had to cross over a plank bridge that had a railroad track below it. The train came through as they were crossing, and the smoke came up through the cracks in the bridge and scared the horse so badly that he stopped so swiftly that the passengers in the wagon went flying over his back!

One last horse story: One day, Pop and his father (Cliff's great-grandfather) hitched their horses to a wagon and went out to cultivate the fields. When it was time for lunch, they decided to go to the nearby spring for water. Pop tied his horse (both had been used in the cultivating) to the back of the wagon and went to the spring. Their lunches were in the back of the wagon, and when they returned from the spring, they found that the horse had eaten their lunches.

When I run across some of these great stories from a century ago, I'll pass them along here.