[J. W. Gally, The Lazy Board, Pacific Rural Press, 7 January 1888]

 

The Lazy Board.

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[Written for the Rural Press by Dr. J. W. Gally ]

            It is not needful at present that I should tell my exact age nor the precise place where I first saw daylight, but I may truthfully say that more than a half a century of years ago I was playing marbles up against that great American topographical and political fence known as "Mason and Dixon's Line." That was when I was a boy. Then there was no railroad there because George Stephenson, in England, had invented the locomotive railway about the year I was born, and it had not, in my earlier boyhood, crossed the mountains which divide the waters of the Potomac and Ohio rivers. In place of the railroad there was the National road, a fine solid wagon-road built by the Acts of Congress from tide-water at Baltimore to steamboat-water at Wheeling, on the Ohio. One of my earliest attractions was the jingle of the housen bells upon the six big Pennsylvania horses drawing each wain, or road-wagon, along this National road. Sometimes in the afternoon of a summer day there would be 10, 20 or 30 of these wains in procession, all with arches of different-sized and toned bells over the tops of the hames above the housen, and such a jingling and jangling as they kept up is not often heard nowadays. Each six-horsed bell team was managed by one man, and he rode upon the nigh horse at the wheel and drove with only one line. Upon this, " the saddle-horse," there either were no bells or else the bells were upon his breast so at to permit the driver—he called himself a " teamster "—room to handle his line and black-snake whip. Over the top of each arch of bells was a roof of black bear-skin which came down at each end of the bell-arch some six or eight inches, and these hanging ends were often decorated with tassels of silk or with gold-cord fringes. The harness, upon the wheel-horses particularly, was a marvel of strength, breadth and weight, the breeching being of heavy solid solo-leather, six to ten inches wide, and all other leathers in proportion; but no leather went behind any horse's tail, for a back of that came iron chains. The harness was "gears" in those olden days. The first time I ever heard the word, harness, was from a newly arrived gentleman from Northern New England, and he called it "haaness." When these wains arrived at what, in the older times was called the " tavern stand," they drove into the yard, which was usually paved with small broken stone —that is to say, macadamized—and supplied with gear poles scattered about. In this yard the teams were unhitched —not unharnessed —and the gears hung upon gear poles thrust through the wheel-spokes so as to catch under the wagon-bed or coupling pole; and the heavy leather housen acted as roof over the gears. Then when the horses were stripped, two of them were fed from an iron-bound trough suspended behind the wagon, and four of them from another larger ironbound trough, temporarily fastened by iron latches to the top of the tongue or pole. A sack of oats was emptied into this four-horse trough and each animal ate all he could eat — proportionally the two-horse trough was similarly filled. The old National road wagoner did not feed much hay, and what he did feed was fed from the ground or from canvas racks suspended below the troughs. The horses were blanketed, but not stabled, and were bedded with straw or sawdust. What the wagoner most thoroughly despised and profanely cursed was a wet winter, and, next to that, a rainy, late springtime; for in those seasons the pulverized limestone, ground to a surface of white dust on the road by the heavy wheels, became a coating of thin, gray slush that splashed over the four forward horses until they were half covered with it, and their tails hung down like icicles of mud. The wagon drawn by one of these teams was weighty; the wheels and " run gear " generally were of wood and iron, and very strong and heavy, the tires being six to eight inches wide and 1 1/2 inches thick, but the box, or wagon-bed, was the pride of the wainwright, or wagon-maker. It was framed up of the toughest wood, and ironed and bolted at all joints, then faced inside the framing with poplar boards; it scooped up in front and behind, and sagged in the middle, so that when the bows and canvas were put on it looked like nothing else that I can now think of. This box was from six to eight feet deep, and as long as you'd a mind to make it, and had an iron-bound, iron-fastened gate at each end, also two or three chains with "finger-hooks" to keep the box from spreading under heavy pressure from inside. From this old "National Road " the ancestors of the drivers of the prairie schooners of the Pacific Slope learned the art of heavy teaming, and improved on it; but it could not have been much improved on had it not been for the invention of the brake, or rub-lock. When I was a boy there was no such thing as a wagon brake. I never saw one until I was ten years old, though I saw all sorts of wagons and stage-coaches every day. The old-time wagoner had a curious collection of lock-chains, but everything was for locking the wheel, or wheels, solid. He had a simple lock-chain, then a slide-lock, a drag-lock and a scratch-lock. The first rub-lock I ever saw upon a wagon was a curiosity as compared with the wagon-brakes of to-day. It had a wooden block-beam and iron brake-rods and beams somewhat as they now are, but the hand-lever was between the hind wheel (above the hub) and the wagon-box, and upon the lever was a little chain that could be hooked, link by link, as the lever was pulled down, upon an iron pin in the block beam. At first the driver stopped his team and got down off his horse, to work this lever several times in going down a long slope; because at intervals there were slight embankments in the road to carry off the snow-water and frequent rains of that country. But there was soon invented what was called a " lazy-board," that is, a board which could be pulled out in front of the brake-beam, from under the wagon-box, far enough to give a man a place to sit. In this position the driver would let his team keep the road while he worked the brake. That style of brake lever held its place for many years before we got to—or tumbled to—the long brake rod and lever that enables the driver to keep his driving-seat and work the brake with hand or foot. I have cause to remember the lazy-board. One Saturday, in that season of the year which is called Indian summer, though wherefore " Indian " no man knoweth, I was taking a boy's holiday ride on horseback along the National road about four miles eastward of the city of Wheeling, and riding up a long grade I saw a big team coming toward me down grade, but seemingly going out of the road without a driver. Presently, before I reached it, the big wagon went over on its side in the ditch—on its right side, too. I had seen no driver and supposed there was none, but I notified the neighbors of the catastrophe and went on my way, and afterward found out that the neighbors discovered a dead man under that wagon. It was the driver. He was riding on the lazy board, when he fell asleep and the wagon tipped over on him.

            [When I began this writing some years ago, I seem to have intended it as the beginning chapter of a short romance, but I suppose I may think that man is safe under the wagon in the hands of the neighbors, and so let the writing go as a pretty good description of how wagon-brakes, as we now see them and use them, came to happen, and leave to some abler pen the other chapters of the romance of " The Lazy Board."]