Bliss’s Tavern.
The wagons were of monstrous size, broad and high. Each horse had a ton of freight. No one was a regular teamster who drove less than four horses. But there were other carriers. A three-horse team called a “spike,” a two-horse team called a “podanger,” and a single horse with cart called a “gimlet,” were none of them in favor with tavern-keepers or other teamsters. Still, if the smaller teams got stuck in the mud or snow, the regulars would good-humoredly help them out. Whatever accident happened to a teamster or his wagon or horses, his fellow-craftsmen assisted him, while stage-drivers, drovers, or any other travelling citizens were never looked upon for help.
An old man who drove one of these teams in his youth says:—
“When these large teams were hooked to the wagons, the starting word was ‘whoo-up’; and the horses would at once place themselves in position. Then, ‘Order, whope, git.’ To turn to the left, ‘Whoa, whoa,’ softly; to the right, ‘Geer there.’ For a full stop, ‘Whoa who-oof,’ in louder voice, and all would come to a standstill. It was a fine sight to see six or eight good horses spread out, marching along in each other’s steps, and see how quick they were to mind the driver’s voice. Good drivers always spoke to their teams in a low voice, never shouted. The teamsters walked beside their teams, twenty miles a day the average. The reins were done up on each horse’s hames, allowing them to spread apart with ease, a check-rein from the bit over the hames to keep them where they belonged. You could never teach a horse anything that wasn’t checked up. The wagons weighed from eighteen hundred to twenty-two hundred pounds. Some wagons had an adjustable seat called a lazy-board.”
With winter snows the wagons were generally housed; hundreds, yes, thousands of sleighs, pods, and pungs took their place. The farmer no longer sent to town by wagon and teamster; he carried his farm produce to town himself, just as his grandfather had in the days of the cart and sled before the Revolution. Winter brought red-letter days to the New England farmer; summer and autumn were his time of increase, but winter was his time of trade and of glorious recreation.
Old Sleigh with Double Dashboard.
Friendly word was circulated from farm to farm, spread chiefly at the Sabbath nooning, that at stated date, at break of day the long ride to market would begin. Often twenty or thirty neighbors would start together on the road to town. The two-horse pung or single-horse pod, shod with steel shoes one inch thick, was closely packed with farm wealth—anything that a New England farm could produce that could be sold in a New England town. Frozen hogs, poultry, and venison; firkins of butter, casks of cheeses,—four to a cask,—bags of beans, peas, sheep-pelts, deer hides, skins of mink, fox, and fisher-cat that the boys had trapped, perhaps a splendid bearskin, nuts that the boys had gathered, shoe pegs that they had cut, yarn their sisters had spun, stockings and mittens they had knitted, homespun cloth and linen, a forest of splint brooms strapped on behind, birch brooms that the boys had whittled. So closely packed was the sleigh that the driver could not sit; he stood on a little semicircular step on the back of the sleigh, protected from the cutting mountain winds by the high sleigh back. At times he ran alongside to keep his blood briskly warm.