Once There Were Livery Stables

 Once There Were Livery Stables

More and more electric cars can be seen driving along the roads and streets. Their batteries need to be recharged, so charging stations have popped up. We’re not done with gasoline and diesel powered vehicles yet, so gas stations still occupy a prominent place. Take it another step back to the time when we depended on “oat burners” to provide real horsepower. They needed refilling with oats and hay, and farmers fed them in barns with homegrown fuel.

But in towns or cities a century or more ago not everyone had a barn, and therefore needed a place to board their horses. Some town folks just wanted to rent a horse for the day. Salesmen arriving in town on the railroad needed a horse and buggy to take their samples around as they called on customers. To serve these needs, most every town had at least one livery stable.

Livery stables might have offered different levels of service which included buggy and wheel repair, harness repair, horseshoeing, horse trading, and possibly more. More than that occurred within its walls, however. Bums, drunks, and down-and-outers begged off a sleeping place in the soft hay in the loft. Town loafers and gossips gathered to exchange news, chew and spit, and pass the bottle around. Smells unique to the stable floated on the air. I never worked with horses but Dad did and the smell of liniment still drifts through my memory. Manure and urine permeated and flies buzzed thickly and vermin scurried about the scene. If the stable owner was a bit lazy the manure piled high behind the barn.

Locally, disgust with animal waste products probably never reached levels voiced by city dwellers. In 1900 New York City experienced what is called “The Great Horse Manure Crisis.” Most of us have seen black and white pictures of that city’s streets. The number of horses working there tallied about 100,000 which, of course, produced huge amounts of manure. Along with the smells came flies, vermin, and soupy streets whenever it rained. The problem disappeared, though, when automobiles took over.

From personal experience I can attest to the way strong smells from large numbers of cattle hang in the air, both outside and inside buildings. In 1969 as a university student in Greeley, Colorado, the 100,000 head Monfort feed lot outside of town sat where the prevailing wind gifted the campus with their particular “smell of money.”

The J. T. Hickey stable in Sheldon is my point of reference. Situated at the west end of main street, it sat across the street from the Northern Pacific depot which made it handy for passengers to leave or return on the train. If the criteria for owning a stable involved relating to the animals, knowing how to shoe them, repairing wagons, wheels, and harness, then Hickey qualified.

My interest in his story developed when I read his obituary dated April 12, 1923. Its headline stated, “J. T. Hickey, Reno’s Freighter, Died Suddenly Last Friday.” In part the story said he “often related with much vividness the stirring times of encounters with the savage Indian tribes that roamed over the state.” A civilian contractor, he hired on as a mule skinner and accompanied Custer and the 7th Cavalry’s march to the Little Big Horn.

Students of the battle know that Custer divided the 7th into three groups that day, one led by him, one by Captain Benteen, and the other by Major Reno. To support his army in the field, 150 supply wagons plus a herd of beef accompanied it to provide the food, equipment, and feed for the horses and mules. History records how Custer wanted to move faster and ordered the mules unhitched from the wagons and trained to carry packs. The mules didn’t take kindly to their new role and expressed themselves with wild entertaining behavior for onlookers. It’s been said that mules were the only animal Noah did not load into the ark.

A grandson of Hickey wrote a brief biography of him which the family shared with me. His father wanted him to apprentice to the printing trade; instead he struck out for the West. He became a stagecoach driver for a time between Jamestown and Deadwood. Later he became a supply wagon teamster for the army. The family legend states Custer’s last note, the request for help and ammunition, was dropped by the officer who received it, and J. T. picked it up and later sent it on to Custer’s widow. I’d loved to have proved that but cannot substantiate it. Neither can I substantiate the following claim that he was called to Chicago to testify at the court martial of Major Reno for Reno’s battlefield failure. The story exists as part of the family lore.

Whatever the facts of his part at the battle were, I am convinced that he was well prepared to run a livery stable. Hickey and his wife were parents of five children. One of them married Martin Kaspari and relatives still live in the area, including the editor of the Ransom County Gazette.