Thursday March 4 Working Breed

 

Ray Morrisey harnessing his team of Percherons

 

Two things in particular influenced the late Ray Morrisey, of Gatzke, Minnesota, through his lifetime those being his family and their long relationship with draft horses.

Horses pulled the two hay racks with all the family’s possessions on them from Ray Morrisey’s birthplace of Warren, Minnesota to Gatzke, Minnesota during The Depression. Ray’s dad drove the team as two foals gamboled along behind; he had to sleep with his teams and wagons in the stockyards in Middle River before making it to Gatzke late the next day.
 

Ray’s mother was a school teacher and an accomplished rider. She and her husband received a wedding gift of a Belgian-cross mare from her father. She broke the horse and trained it to do tricks, like rearing on its hindlegs. She entertained the school children and many others with their performances.
 

Her father, T.T. Thompson, used to buy and sell wild broncos from out west. He sold three carloads one year and never met a horse he couldn’t break or train. He wasn’t much at handling machinery in his later years, but the feel of a rein was ever natural in his hands.
 

One of Ray’s aunts had been around horses most of her life too. Later in her life, she suffered a stroke and never regained her zeal for life as she once experienced it. Thinking of some way to boost her spirit, someone remembered her love for horses. So she was taken to a stable, lifted her from her wheelchair and onto a saddle  -- and her expression said it all.
 

Ray’s dad never accepted the idea that Ray may not be able to handle any horse or any situation. As natural as it was for Ray’s dad to work with horses all his life, he expected Ray to do the same. It was just a fact of life. Although Ray did work with horses all through his childhood, it wasn’t until 1979 that he owned his own team. He had watched draft horses work his neighbors fields and the fields of his memories.

 The big old barn on the farm had stood empty for too long. His daughter’s saddle horses were the last animals to stand in its stalls. The place needed some life other than the sparrows nesting in the hayloft and mice burrowing in the hay, Ray had said, so he and his son, Tom, found a team of untrained Percherons and set about training them, themselves.
 

Six horse team plowing competition at Rollag, Minnesota

There was something significant about breaking these two animals to harness. The trainers were as green as the horses in many ways. Some things were gleaned from conversations with Walt Lunsetter, Orlin Ostby, Ray McMillin and Gary Simmons. They began to know the team so well by working them so regularly that nine years later, when they sold them to buy a heavier team, the transaction became a tearful event. Such are the bonds between man and beast sometimes.
 

Their team of purebred Percherons, black as coal at 17.1 hands, pull bobsleds in the wintertime and wagons when it’s not. Tom often gave rides behind the team from the Steak Knife 2 (Yo-Hawn's Bar & Grill) in Grygla, but Ray used the team around the farm hauling round bales from the field or family and friends on trail rides through the woods.

At eighteen hundred pounds each, Lad and Pat  command respect even from men as big as Ray and Tom. 

As heavy as Ray’s team is, neighbor Ray McMillin’s Percheron stud horse, “Rock,” was nothing short of awesome at 18.3 hands and twenty-three hundred pounds. 

In talking with Morrisey and McMillin a person got the idea that these men had real admiration and affection for these animals. Horses were lifelong experiences for both men.
 

When Ray was fourteen, he was a half mile from their farm cutting firewood. He used a team and bobsled to haul the wood cut in tree length, back to the farm where they’d use a neighbor’s tractor-powered saw rig to cob the wood up for the stove. Ray figured two trips a day to be a lot of work. His dad didn’t expect less.
 

“The team would stand with the bobsled on the trail near where I was cutting the trees,” Ray said. “I’d trim the tops and pull the trees to the bobsled to load it. I’d usually tie the lines or loosen a tug line so they’d stand still and not feel any tension from the sled. They were a team of grays and always pretty steady, but when I began to get close to them, that time, they started off by themselves.
 

“Down the trail they ran, bobsled skidding along behind. The neighbors happened to see the team break from the woods with no Raymond with them. They phoned my folks thinking the worst, that something had happened to me. But before mom could leave the house, they saw me run from the timber after the team and quickly phoned her again to tell her I was okay but having problems.
 

“We had thrown straw across the snow in the ditch and packed it into a crossing. It was frozen and hard, but to either side the snow was soft and deep between the shoulder of the road and the woods. The team had stayed on the trail all the way through the woods but shied away from something on the road and plunged into the deep snow of the ditch. They almost made it to the top of the other side even though they had plowed snow the full width of the sled. I had stacked my load so tight it had stayed intact but there lay the team and the bobsled looking hopelessly stuck.
 

“Being right along the road like that people driving by would slow down to look, or stop to comment that I had a real problem. They said I would have to unhook the team and unload the sled. It appeared that the horses couldn’t budge the sled but I thought I’d try it one more time and talk to them sweet.
 

“You know, they seemed to almost curl their front hooves down in front of them to grip whatever they could and pulled for all they had. The bobsled came out of the ditch with a happy Raymond alongside. Boy, was I proud of that team!”
 

It seems like Ray’s dad had his confidence in the right place all along.