Family Tales--Grand Uncle Harry and How He Got His Peg Leg

   The only thing that my mom and grandma (dad’s mom) ever agreed on was that Uncle Harry (my Grand Uncle) was a ‘pirate.’  I don’t mean to imply that he was a real pirate…then again…He was born in the mid-west in the early 1880’s and was the middle child.  I have a picture of him and my grand-dad, the oldest, and Uncle Billy the youngest.  Uncle Billy is looking very studious and Uncle Harry looks like he needs a smack up-side the head, which he probably received and why he ran away to sea in his early teens.  He loved being a sailor, and would occasionally come home between voyages, raise a bit of hell, and then go on another voyage.  I have two mementos from Uncle Harry.  They were kept in the family and came eventually to dad and then to me.  One is a wooden sea-chest.  It’s rather small, beautifully handmade and the other is a piece of ivory (source unknown) with scrimshaw cut into it.  Dad was especially proud of the fact that Uncle Harry carried two knives in each boot and I surmise that he regaled my dad with sailing talk and perhaps that is partially why my dad joined the navy two weeks before his high school graduation day.  Uncle Harry was regarded as the black sheep of the family and he enjoyed it.  

   At that time the family still lived in the Midwest and like all small town, rural peoples of the time, many members had a few acres and kept a few horses and cows no matter what their town profession.  Now, Uncle Harry may have been a sailor, but he liked to ride.  I don’t know whose horse it was…could have been my grandpa’s, or someone else’s; but someone in the family owned a mean, wild horse.  That horse hated Uncle Harry and the feeling was mutual.  Uncle Harry, on one of those days when things like this happen was rather drunk and he decided that his goal that day was to ride that horse.  The horse always allowed itself to be saddled and appeared quite docile.  Uncle Harry climbed into the saddle and started to ride around the pasture.  It began to buck and Uncle Harry lost control.  The animal got the bit in its mouth and headed for the pasture fence. The fence was not wooden but barbed wire.  If you have ever been to a Western museum, you will see samples of barbed wire.  Some of it looks more like torture devices of wire and spikes rather than what we are used to seeing in modern times. That horse began to run along the fence.  The wire cut into Uncle Harry’s leg.  Uncle Harry swore that as soon as the horse knew what was happening, he kept running on purpose.  The leg was almost completely severed by the time Uncle Harry was able to get the animal away from the fence long enough for him to fall off.  In an era before antibiotics--off came the leg.  Uncle Harry willed himself to hobble out to the pasture (just a day or two later) on crutches; carrying his gun.  No more horse. 

   Artificial limbs being what they were, it was hard to find one that fit and which let the amputee walk relatively pain-free; but Uncle Harry found a solution.  My grandfather was a barber and as such had access to those barber poles that you see in old pictures and movies.  They were strong, well made, not too heavy, and when whittled down by an expert like Uncle Harry, they became the perfect sized peg leg.  He lived a long time, my Uncle Harry, peg leg and all; but he never got to go to sea again.  He’s probably still cussing out that horse.