My Introduction To Wealth Redistribution [Reader Post]

Johnny and I often ended up with very little to do in the early spring; the ice was breaking up and the rivers weren’t ready for beaver hunting, the bears were coming out of their dens but the creeks and rivers were too dangerous with fast water and rotten ice to travel in the bush, so we often would load a tent into Johnny’s old 47 Studebaker and head to town to see if we could make some money riding problem horses or just taking the meanness out of someone’s colt.

We went down to the stockyards and saw a couple of expensive semi-rigs that advertised a world champion Percheron hitch.  One of the rigs hauled the horses and the other rig hauled the wagon and all the equipment and feed.  Like cats, curiosity got the best of us.

In the blacksmith shop we found the owner and driver of the four horse hitch.  He was a big man and obviously wealthy to put together these horses and wagons to go show around the North America.  The leather alone must have cost a fortune, and the freighting wagon decked out like a beer wagon was an antique; I’m sure his outfit was worth enough to but a nice ranch in those days.

Johnny was a natural for getting together with horsemen and today he was asking the draft horse man a bunch of questions.  The two made quite a pair: Johnny weighed a little over a hundred pounds, with long black silky hair, the draft horse man weighed well over 300 pounds, stood six foot five and had short red hair.  The two of them were instant friends and were talking away.

I was impressed with the big horses and was looking them over closely.  There was a stallion with broken feet and no shoes, two mares, and a gelding: they must have weighed at least 1800 a piece and looked like they had never missed a dinner in their life.  In other words, they looked a little soft and lacked the muscle tone of hard working ranch draft horses; but they had nice feet with an excellent set of shoes on each one.

All of a sudden, the big man puts a fifth of Tennessee Whiskey on the table with a hundred dollar bill; “A hundred dollars and a fifth of sippin whiskey to the man who can nail four shoes on the stallion.”

Just as quick, Johnny picks up the whiskey and says, “Don’t worry, we can shoe that damned stallion,”  just before he walked out of the blacksmith shop.

I was wondering if Johnny had a friend he wasn’t telling me about, while the big man was looking at me with a smug grin with his head cocked to the side.

It would only be a minute or two before Johnny was in his 47 Studebaker and be worthless to the world now that he had the bottle of Tennessee Whiskey to nurse on like an orphan calf.  The truck was a funny deal, it was Johnny’s truck, but like many Indians in that day and age, Johnny was lucky to start a chain saw and keep it running, let alone drive a truck.  My dad always kept that old truck up for Johnny and I was the original designated driver, despite the fact that I didn’t have a driver’s license, but was already operating everything from a D10 dozer to a semi-tractor trailer.  It was a rare show of benevolence that was uncharacteristic of my dad.  I’ve often suspected that Johnny was related to my mother and my dad favored Johnny because of the closeness of blood; however, that is a mystery that will never be solved, since I am the only one left alive from that little group.

Also, I’m pretty sure my dad wanted me to take Johnny places to help him recover, temporarily at least, from his strange dietary habits that would have killed most White Men.  That was fine with me, any chance a country boy has to go to big cities like Fort St John, Hudson’s Hope, Chetwynd, Pouce Coupe, or Dawson Creek you can bet he will be lunging in the traces to get there.  The only problem was Johnny might get drunk or lock belt buckles with one or more Indian women; they seemed to think he was the sexiest man alive, even if they were three and a half times bigger than him.  Johnny seemed to consider it a moral obligation and a divine mission from the creator to make himself available to as many women as possible; consequently, I spent a lot of time alone in those big cities, drinking coffee in a truck stop, waiting on Johnny to either exhaust himself or sober up.

But on this day, I was supposed to shoe a draft horse stallion; a horse that surely had a problem or the man wouldn’t be offering the unheard of price of $100 dollars and a fifth of American Whiskey.  Oscar the blacksmith was a friend of mine and would be okay with me using his tools to shoe this monster, even though it was Sunday and Oscar was observing the sabbath with a few shots of liquor and the resolve not to pull his ox or anyone else’s out of the ditch, not that he would want to shoe this monster.

Shoeing a draft horse isn’t too bad if they are handled well, but way too many people are scared of them and treat them as if they were fire breathing dragons, thus once a horse realizes that people are intimidated, he will take advantage of the situation and become a tyrant.  I was worried that this horse had already won many battles and was looking for another victory.

I walked over to the shoeing box and picked up a light driving hammer, the one you use to drive nails through the hoof wall to keep the shoe laced on.  I picked up a front leg and tapped the hoof in several locations and the horse just stood there.  Hmm, this could be some easy money.  I put on Oscar’s shoeing apron and picked up the shoeing box with all the hoof tools in it and walked over to the horse; just then, he fired a hind foot at me and missed my knee by a fraction, when he drew the leg forward to fire again the hoof and fetlock were tangled in the apron and he pulled me to my knees and started moving sideways to step on me, I rolled away just before his big hoof slammed into the wood floor in an effort to crush me.

At this point, I realized why the hose was barefoot.  Suddenly, I had an epiphany, I took off the leather apron and walked over to the hoof and started trimming it to accept a shoe.  I trimmed all four feet with no problem and walked over to the fire and built four shoes that were pretty near as large as a dinner plate.  I turned heel caulks and welded a modest size toe caulk on each shoe.  The irst shoe was cool enough to handle by the time I finished the last shoe.  I picked the near side front hoof and placed it between my knees and started driving the first nail.

This was the moment of truth; without a leather apron, this black bastard could jerk his hoof from between my legs at the speed of light and rip a #8 City Head nail through my thigh and cripple me before I could feel him moving; but luck was with me and the big bugger didn’t move as I drove ten nails in each hoof, just as long as I didn’t put on that blacksmith’s apron.

I was clinching the last hoof, when Johnny walked or perhaps I should say staggered into the shop with a old pair of oversize wool trousers smoldering halfway up one thigh, the result of falling asleep while sleeping, half of the one trouser leg was burned away and Johnny was swaying while trying to get my attention.  “Skook…, er Skook, can I use that bucket of water?”

Everyone was enjoying the show in a patronizing way, including me.  “What do you need the water for Johnny?” I answered his rhetorical question with another rhetorical question and dropped the last hoof.

“Well…. the truck’s on fire.”

Six guys jumped up and ran outside, the smoke was pouring out of the truck, hoses and buckets were soon pouring a hundred gallons into the cab of the old Studebaker.

After the quasi-volunteer firemen finished, I thanked them for saving the truck and they went back inside.  Johnny and I surveyed the damage and surmised that the seat, steering wheel, interior door handles and door panel would need to be replaced.  We drove to the junkyard and luckily he had all the parts we needed, they were priced right, $100 dollars.

So our trip to town had a balance sheet that read like this, Johnny drank a fifth of good whiskey, I nailed shoes on a horse that could have killed me and made a hundred dollars, back when you could get a horse shod for ten dollars.  Johnny fell asleep in the truck with a cigarette and burned up several pieces in the interior.  The replacement parts cost one hundred dollars and I had the money.

Johnny thought it was a perfect day and thought everything turned out perfect, I wasn’t convinced.  Now I realize, that Johnny’s irresponsible behavior and me doing the work, assuming a degree of risk, and forfeiting my income to keep the situation afloat, is a perfect example of Obama’s Wealth Redistribution.

In this micro-economy, everyone did well except for me; Johnny enjoyed a great bottle of sippin whiskey, the horse owner learned the secret of shoeing his stallion, and the junkyard owner made money on a truck he probably paid twenty dollars for, and me, I got nothing but a feeling of being angry at Johnny.

Even the horse had nice shoes that would help his sore hooves feel better and a new respect for humans and the way they could figure him out rather than working him over with a shoeing rasp or hammer while wearing a shoeing apron.

The problem is this type of economy will begin to fall apart.  Johnny or the type of person that he represents, has no incentive to alter his behavior, but the guy who did the work and took the chances has all the incentive to change the way he works in the future and thus protects his money from Wealth Redistribution.  Of course, this means that his income will be hidden by working under the table and no matter how much he loves his friend, he just doesn’t make enough money to subsidize irresponsible behavior.