Along for the ride

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 30/11/2024 (370 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

In 2022 Terry Doerksen and his wife Patty took an ox-drawn Red River cart from Winnipeg to St. Paul, Minn., along the Red River Trail. Last year, they dusted off the cart for a rumble down the Old Dawson Road. Readers of the Free Press followed along on these journeys, but it seems there are still a few stories to be told.

As a 20-year-old travelling my way through Pennsylvania, I figured hitching a ride on a horse and buggy might get me a nomination for the Hitchhikers’ Hall of Fame. Sadly, not a single Amish farmer showed interest in picking up this young vagrant.

When the shoe was on the other foot and I was the guy with an animal-powered ride, I recalled what would have delighted a younger Terry. I often saw my face in a youngster, who, after a hesitant nod of permission from a parent, would clamber onto my cart and ride high above the road in silent wonder.

Of all the hitchhikers to ride with me, I had the most fun with the Miller family. All nine of them walked down the Red River Trail in central Minnesota to see us — the males wearing rubber boots and the females all barefoot.

I had only let one or two other people drive Zik (my ox) before that point, but when it was Philip Miller’s turn to ride, I offered him the reins. I figured if I could trust anyone with my animal, it would be an Amish farmer.

As his hands took easy control of the cart, he told me he had always wanted to drive an ox. And I got to make his dream come true! As we talked, the conversation moved from animals and harnessing to deeper things. We were both surprised to realize that, despite the different trappings of our faiths, we shared a common spiritual bedrock and a bond stronger than blood. I love that.

My oldest guest cart rider was my mother, Mary Doerksen — a committed partner in my journeys from the very start. My mother is no ordinary woman. What 92-year-old would voluntarily climb into the box of a rickety old sleigh while I was training Zik, settle into a lawn chair perched there and put her life in the hands of an unskilled driver trying to control an unbroken ox?

As we were lapping the icy farmyard, Zik broke into a gallop. I decided to go with it — why drive when you can fly? Dennis, my ox-training Jedi, watched his Padawan from the farmhouse and thought, “There’s only one way this can end. A one-sleigh pile up.” Mom hung on and smiled. God’s mercy exceeded my stupidity and I managed to pull Zik up short of T-boning the baler.

After helping her down, Mom told me about an even scarier sleigh ride she took when she was a young girl.

Grandpa had the whole family in the enclosed kibbit schleda and they were heading the mile-and-a-half to his brother Isaac’s place.

Almost there, the team was trotting happily up the long driveway when the sleigh slid off the glazed path and into the soft snow of the ditch. Before Grandpa could react, the sleigh had flipped onto its side with a Twister game of tangled limbs inside.

The horses panicked and were pulling harder than ever on the flopping schleda, with Grandpa holding desperately onto the reins. Through the open window he yelled for his brother with all the volume he could muster: “Eeeezak! Eeeezak!”

Isaac heard the cry for help and ran up to calm the horses. That allowed the spaghetti-ball of humanity inside the sleigh to unravel itself and jostle its way out the door, now facing skyward. When no one appeared to have received anything worse than a few bumps, they all could finally exhale and have a laugh about the adventure.

It is only after hitting the ditch a couple times myself with a panicky ox and cart during training, that have I been able to fully appreciate the desperateness of the situation for Grandpa. And also the courage of my mother for, once again, putting herself at the mercy of a spirited animal.

Evolution of the ride

When Grandpa was born in 1899, neither cars nor airplanes had been invented. Electric lights and the telephone were wonders rumoured to exist somewhere, but certainly not in the village of Blumenort.

By the time Grandpa died 90 years later, man had travelled to the moon many years past, and his own grandchildren owned computers and cellphones. I’m often amazed at the changes that occurred in that one lifetime.

There was one form of mechanized transportation in Grandpa’s corner of the world: the railway. When I made my first hitchhiking trip as a 15-year-old, from my home in Alberta to Blumenort, I sat down with Grandpa and told him about my adventure. Then he confided in me a story he hadn’t even told his kids.

Grandpa’s own hitchhiking tale involved hiding in the grass near the Giroux station, and then jumping onto the ladder of the moving train as it started to pick up steam. Teenage Peter Plett quickly climbed to the top of the boxcar where he hung on in the face of the wind and the sparks and smoke, experiencing speed like he had never known before.

But for the most part back then, the best a speed junkie could do was own a good team of horses. And Grandpa always took pride in his team of Queen and Blue. Besides being fast, they were smart.

There was the time Grandpa was returning to the farm with a wagon and team during a spring flood. As he approached a creek all he could see by moonlight was a sea of water. He knew if he missed the bridge it meant almost certain death for himself and his horses. But how could he guide his team if he couldn’t see the bridge, never mind the road?

So with a prayer for help to his heavenly Father, he let the reins go slack. It was up to the horses to find their way across. They were making progress down the unseen road when suddenly both horses plunged down. (“Not one hair on their backs stayed dry!” Grandpa emphasized to me.) The bridge had been washed out! The horses swam for their lives, but before they were swept away, their hooves found the road on the far side. Imagine Grandpa’s relief as the team pulled the floating wagon out of that sea.

Another nautical adventure was almost as terrifying. Grandpa approached the Red River with his buggy and team after visiting the in-laws in Rosenort. The only crossing was by the ferry at St. Agathe (“Sanda-gat” as Grandpa pronounced it). But the ferry was tied up firmly to shore. Recent rains had swollen the river and the current had become too treacherous to attempt a crossing.

Grandpa was desperate to get his family home and tried to convince the French-speaking ferryman to make one more trip against his better judgment. Was it with a little monetary motivation that the skipper finally gave in?

In any case, Grandpa drove the buggy onto the ferry and they gingerly set out across the Red. The river piled against the side of the craft, threatening to tear it apart, and the guide rope strained to hold a force it was never designed for. But the rope held and the lives of all on board were spared a watery grave.

It was a bit sad for Grandpa, moving from the era of horses to join the rest of the world with their noisy, mindless machines. But the adventures didn’t stop.

There was the winter he was backing off the yard and onto the road with his latest “horseless carriage,” when a policeman flagged him over and asked why he hadn’t stopped before pulling the motorized vehicle onto the road.

Grandpa: “Cuz derre vas no car coming.” Policeman: “How did you know? Your windows are so iced up you couldn’t have seen them.” Grandpa: “I see verrry good.” Policeman: “OK, look in your mirror and tell me how many fingers I’m holding up.” Grandpa: “You hold up no fingers.” Policeman: “You can go.”

Grandpa told me he had thought about it and he could understand how traffic could function in Blumenort and even in Steinbach without a lot of accidents. But how that number of vehicles could safely move right next to each other as traffic flowed through Winnipeg only made sense by the hand of God. Maybe he was right.

Albert Einstein, representing the pinnacle of human genius, once said, “There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.” I’d say Grandpa Plett was in pretty elite company.

In 1989, Grandpa took his last ride on Earth in a long, black hearse. But that was only his body. His spirit had hitchhiked a ride on a sweet chariot with swift horses, bearing him to meet face-to-face the one who, unseen, had travelled beside him along every mile of his earthly journey.

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