Horse Trading

Lloyd Walls (LeRoy s father) holding Dixie, Prince, Shorty and a yearling mule colt in 1940. 

Photo by

  
Margaret Walls  

Written by 
LeRoy Walls 
CEO 

Paula’s dad and my father-in-law, Paul Grisham, grew up working in and later operating the Elk Creek general store a few miles outside Cabool. There was lots of trading that went on among the men who gathered in the wagon yard or inside around the wood stove during the winter.

Sometimes “shady” horse traders would come through with horses to trade. Some would file down the teeth to make the horse look younger, cover blemishes and grey hair with shoe polish or give the horse drugs to calm down a mean spirit or to mask a limp. This type of direct cheating and lying was not the norm.

Direct lying in a trade was considered an unforgivable sin at the Elk Creek general store. Just about every horse has some defect in structure or habit so a good trader would try to keep the conversation away from the weak points so these were never mentioned. The trading was much like a game and the one who successfully traded a horse that had faults without directly lying was considered to be a clever trader.

Over the years Paul observed plenty of horse trading at the Elk Creek general store. One trade conversation that he recalls went like this when a veteran horse trader showed a good-looking team of horses to a young farmer.

The young farmer asked, “Will that team pull?”

“It would do your heart good to see that team pull,” replied the old horse trader.

A week later after the sale was made when they were at the store again, the young farmer was upset and told the horse trader, “You wasn’t straight ` with me on that team.” (Which was his polite way of calling him a liar.) “That team wouldn’t pull a lick!”

The old horse trader calmly replied, “Hold on now—I never said they’d pull. I just said it would do your heart good to see that team pull. And now more than ever, I believe that it would!”

As you can see—horse trading double talk could develop into a real art form. Horse trading in those days seemed to have its own special philosophy and system of justice. What was considered fair play in horse trading would not have been considered fair in other transactions.

Perhaps they needed the “Buyer Beware!” signs that are placed on today’s used cars, which remind buyers that they are buying As Is with No Returns. This forewarning might have kept an innocent horse buyer when trading with an “un-straight” jackass from ending up with a mule.

12/31/1999