Whiting's Horse Sense

by Gayle Faulkner-Kosalko August 2024

Although some have derided Whiting as being a “one horse town,” that couldn’t be further from the truth. At the turn of the 20th Century, there were a number of businesses all relying on horses, not just one. From George Bajer in 1907 whose Practical Horseshoeing ad, added “If your horse is going lame, bring him in and we’ll fix him up for you. Give us a trial.” Or you could take your equine to Jim Hays who had his blacksmith shop between Clark Street and Short Street (Short Street disappeared a short time later when the Community Center was built.)

Besides making and shoeing horses, blacksmiths served their community well. Working with iron and steel, “smithies” could make and design wrought iron fences, cooking utensils, knives, or artwork. Back in 1903, Paul Bunta advertised that he could make any kind of tool to order that you wanted.

Probably the most famous of our blacksmiths was John Ciesar whose progeny went on to making their money from horsepower, not horses. In the 20th Century, Ciesar’s was a huge car dealership on Indianapolis Blvd. Being a smart businessman, Ciesar made sure that one of his advertising wagons was in the early 4th of July parades. It evidently paid to advertise.

If you saw a photo of Robert Atchison’s business which sold coal, wood, brick, sand and gravel, you’d see a dozen men with their carts and horses, all waiting to buy Atchison’s product as builders and construction workers in early Whiting Robertsdale.

Horses were used as work horses for all sorts of businesses - the Whiting Laundry, grocery stores, and even body deliveries in the first funeral parlor businesses. Many a store carried feed for the horses, saddles and other horsey paraphernalia that people used on a daily basis.

Even the owner of one of the first flower shops in Whiting would daily drive his horse and wagon all the way to the Chicago market to buy fresh flowers for his shop.

Dairies used drivers and milk wagons pulled by horses to make their deliveries around town. Yet it seems that if there was a horse related accident, it was in the dairy business.

It was reported in 1902 that a runaway horse on Indiana Boulevard (Indianapolis Blvd. today) collided with Brown’s milk wagon “upsetting the driver and burying him beneath two gallons of milk.”

In another instance reported by the Whiting newspaper “Thursday morning a horse attached to one of Lansing Eaton’s milk wagons ran away and collided with a telegraph pole. The wagon was badly wrecked.” No comment was written about the horse’s condition…

Then there was the horse of Mr. Gordon who had a grocery shop. Feeling frisky, the horse managed to smash up two wagons and dump his merchandise in an alley.

“Some school boys pelted the animal with snow balls and the horse, considering that the weather was cool enough, began to prick up its ears and lift its feet and soon gained a rapid pace down John Street. After the horse was warmed up, the wagon wrecked and the goods spilt out, it surrendered itself very tamely.”

So Mr. Gordon brought out a new wagon to go and pick up all the items the horse had dropped along the way and hitched the same horse to this new wagon. Evidently it brought back fun memories to the horse who, as soon as Gordon stepped into his shop, immediately “remembering its former frisky exercise thought it would be fun to repeat the action.”

The horse succeeded in wrecking the second wagon, completely smashing one wheel. The paper reported that both wagons were now in the shop and undergoing repairs while the horse is doing service with another wagon. (1898)

One can see why a particular dairy business wanted to get this info into an article…

“R. P Cowden, the milkman, drives very good horses and they are trained well too. It is a pleasure to watch them go by themselves from one customer to another while he delivers the milk.”

I’m sure these milk sellers lost no tears over their spilt milk but probably weren’t crazy about having to buy new milk wagons. But there were certainly enough blacksmiths around to do the repairs.

It must have been a special time when working horses were a common sight throughout town. But it must have been even more entertaining when equines like the one owned by Gordon, enjoyed just “horsing around.”