Monday, November 17, 2008

Horse collars

This posting will have no meaning except for the very few people who work with horses and mules or William Faulkner fans.
I finally ran across a man who could identify the little horseshoe shaped hooks that hold the trace chains to the hames on the horse collars.
I was visiting an eighty something year old man (Barney McMahan) back in McNairy County Tennessee. He was showing me his car shed/workshop. We went upstairs to look around. I saw his old horse collar with the hames attached to them. On the hames were the hooks. I asked him if they had a name. In a blink he said. Loggerheads. I knew it but I couldn't find anyone from the generation before me to verify it.
Thanks Barney
Now when you read "Barn Burning" by Faulkner you will know what he is talking about when Snopes adjusts the loggerhead on the hame/collar.

Is this trivial or what?

1 comment:

Lori said...

Finally. And wasn't there something from "A Day No Pigs Would Die" that we questioned? I don't remember, but it was a similar doodad...maybe even loggerheads. Anyway, thanks for sharing such important facts.