I walked two different teams of oxen in several Fabius parades. That’s Woody and Riley, my Durham team. It was our first parade, and the only parade I did on crutches. 

A few years earlier Pompey‘s Bicentennial parade had featured a team of paper-mache  oxen which garnered several  news stories describing how early settlers arrived from New England with wagons pulled by oxen. Tom Herlihy and Kim Henry, of the Apulia Fire Department, were on our Fabius parade committee and had been planning for my oxen to be in the parade. In a friendly rivalry they were determined to outdo Pompey with real oxen.

After I broke my ankle, I had given up any plans for the parade, until Tommy and Kim came by one day.  I was sitting in my dooryard, with my leg elevated, in a fair amount of pain. Tommy said it looked like it hurt a lot. Then said it also looked like it was going to be hard walking the boys in the parade. Apparently there wasn’t a possibility of NOT doing it.

There weren’t any other oxen teamsters in town who could lead them. Plus, Woody and Riley were trained to my voice. They would not have accepted someone else taking them through town amid noise and throngs of people.

We practiced a few times at the farm in the weeks before the Bicentennial.  I tried leading Woody and Riley in a wheelchair but they laughed at me.  They didn’t like the crutches much either. Holding the crutches meant my hands were not free to carry my Goad Stick. That’s a hickory stick which teamsters use to point directions and tap the oxen to keep them in sync while working. Woody and Riley were confused by the lack of the Goad Stick. But they loved it whenever we yoked up and did anything at all, and I could tell they wanted to be good sports even if they didn’t understand my crutches. So we tried a couple novel techniques. When I used rubber bands and electrical tape to hang the Goad Stick from my right wrist, Woody and Riley seemed satisfied that we were ready for work.

I was determined to show how well-trained oxen respond to commands. So, on parade day we marched down Main Street and at the reviewing stand I said “Whoa” and they stopped.  I walked ahead 6 feet, waved the Goad Stick, called them up, and we  continued smartly on down the street. It was a successful parade and the next morning Woody and Riley were on the front page of the paper.