A Horseshoe for Luck in 2019

On the home farm, it was not difficult to find a horseshoe. After all, we farmed with horses until our first tractor arrived in 1945. Horseshoes are important for protecting horses’ feet, especially when they regularly walk on hard surfaces. But horseshoes had power beyond the practical application. Pa, along with everyone else, believed that a horseshoe meant good luck. Sort of in the same category as finding a four-leaf clover.

The horseshoe as a good luck piece goes back several hundreds of years. Some early Europeans believed that iron had magical powers, and had the ability to drive away evil. And many people had great reverence for the blacksmith, who was believed to have a lucky trade because he worked with both iron and fire.

Pa did not hang a horseshoe over the doorway into our farm house. He didn’t go that far in his belief about this bent piece of iron as a good luck charm. But many people did, and still do. There was some argument as to whether the horseshoe should be hung with the heels up, forming a “U.” Others argued that to be effective, the heels should hang heels down.

When hung with the heels up, all of your luck is kept from running out of the shoe. But if you hung it heels down, good luck would flow to everyone who walked under it. Seems to me, if you want to cover your good luck bases, you would have two horsehoes, one pointed up and the other pointed down. I must confess, that the horseshoe pictured here hangs on a nail in my garage, sort of pointed sideways.

THE OLD TIMER SAYS: Much good luck to all in 2019.

UPCOMING EVENTS

Happy New Year.
PURCHASING BOOKS AND DVDs:

How about an Apps book for the New Year? Order your signed Apps books and DVDs from the Patterson Memorial Library in Wild Rose, a fundraiser for them. Phone: 920-622-3835 for prices and ordering.
Patterson Memorial Library
500 Division Street
Wild Rose, WI 54984
barnard@wildroselibrary.
www.wildroselibrary.org

Popular recent Books:

Once a Professor
Old Farm
Farm Country Cookbook
Cold as Thunder (a novel)
Simple Things: Lessons From the Family Farm.
Whispers and Shadows
Never Curse the Rain