The New Saddle and Bicycle

 When Douglas was about fourteen and I was about eleven, for a winters project, we ran a trap line and trapped muskrats in the creek.  We had good success with our new venture and caught a lot of muskrats and occasionally we would find a mink in one of the traps.  I don’t think either one of us kept track of how many we caught, but by spring we had a nice pile of pelts.  Every afternoon after school we would walk home along the creek and check our traps.  We would carry what we caught along with us.
 
When we arrived at home, we would skin what we had caught.  We had to be very careful and not cut a hole in the skin with our knives, as that lowered the value of the pelt.  The pelt had to be taken off the animal in one piece.  Then we would take the pelt and stretch it fur side in, down over a heavy wire frame that Dad had made for us.  Dad made us several of these frames, as sometimes we would catch several muskrats.  The skins had to dry for a week or more, then we had a place in the garage where we could store them.

In the spring a peddler came around and bought all the pelts we had.  Daddy supervised the
sale so I’m sure that it was a fair deal, that we got as much money that way as if we had hauled them to town and sold them.  When the deal was complete, we had enough money that Doug could order the saddle that he wanted and I was able to order the bicycle that I was hoping for.

Montgomery Ward’s was the catalogue that we used to do the ordering.  The pages were well worn by the saddles and bicycles.  After the order was made, then came the long wait for the articles to arrive.  About two weeks later our prized possessions arrived with the mail carrier, it was indeed a happy day.  That night we took the saddle to the corral with us when we went to milk.  After the milking was complete, we tied old Speck (a brockle faced milk cow) up to the corral fence and put the saddle on her.  Doug said, “Now I’ll ride old Speck as he got in the saddle”.  He was doing a great job of riding, when all at once Doug and the saddle both left the cow.  We looked at the saddle to see what the problem was, one of the three inch rigging leathers had broken.  The next trip we made to Burley, we took the saddle to Hoggan’s Leather shop and had the saddle repaired.  Doug never did ride old Speck.

My Hawthorne bicycle was red with white trim.  It had a speedometer on it so that I could tell how many miles I had ridden and how fast I was going.  The speedometer was marked in increments up to thirty-five miles per hour.  One day I rode down to the school house and was on my way home, when a brilliant idea hit me.  If I were to ride it up the Grouse Creek mountain, I could really come down fast.  As I started up the mountain, I soon realized that the road was too steep to peddle.  I pushed the bike about a mile and a half up the mountain, then got on the bike and coasted down.  Coming down was much easier than going up.  I really got going fast, in fact, I got going so fast that it broke the speedometer and it never worked again.

As I got older, I have thought about what a stupid thing that was to do.  I could have easily killed myself.  The bike was well used for many years as was Doug’s saddle.  Our trapping adventure that winter gave us enjoyment for many years.