THE PASSING OF AN INSTITUTION

Today’s Boys are Missing Something Their Fathers Enjoyed

[The Welland Tribune and Telegraph, 15 November 1923]

              “Dad, what was a livery stable?”

             Maybe this question had never fallen upon your ears, but it is a very possible query these days from your small son; and it marks the passing of an institution, both equine and social, that may have played no small part in your own boyhood days if you are far enough along on life’s journey to rank as one of the old-timers.

             The livery stable is passing, if it has not already passed; which statement is corroborated by the last issue of the Welland city directory, in which but one such enterprise is listed.

             Gone is White’s, where once all the latest stories, slang and general news of the world were wont to be told and discussed-around the stove in the copy office when chill winter held Welland in his grasp, and in back-tilted chairs within the hospitable doors when summer’s heat lay heavy upon Main street.

             And there was more than one rendezvous of the sort in the then town, for, if memory serves alright, the Dexter House, the Mansion House (now gone, alas!), the Commercial Hotel and the present hostel where Harry Rice once reigned, all boasted similar appurtenances; where kindred spirits foregathered to “set and filloserphise.”

             And, when you were a small boy, you liked nothing better than to peer in upon those gatherings, getting a bit of their observations, perhaps, and maybe picking up a few choice cuss words, which, displayed at home, probably led to mother’s performing a drastic operation termed, ‘washing your mouth out with soap” following which, you retired to the woodshed, and longed for the day when you would have attained manhood and be free to rip it off with any of them.

             And in those “Days of Real Sport” the air was not contaminated with the odor of gasoline, which you get in passing the garage of today; you had a good stringent whiff of Sabean perfume from the livery, the like of which is not to be had now, and with the olfactory organ of the rising generation will never be pleasantly titillated.

             Picturing the livery stable of earlier years, James C. Young, writing in The New York Times, says:

             If it was a big stable there was a runway starting not far from the door, which went up to a second floor. It was the immemorial custom to have a row of stalls on each side of the main floor, all whitewashed and kept in order by Jerry and his cohorts. Sometimes the harness hung on nails at the ends of the stalls and there was always a little of straw, oats, and such like on the ground. The main floor in a fair sized stable would hold from thirty to forty horses and away back in the last corner was a box stall when the thump of hoofs and a great champing and snorting proclaimed that the stallion was at home. A brave boy once in a while would crawl up to the lattice work at the top of the stall and look over at the stallion, his fiery eyes shining in the dark. A few chickens ran about the door and got fat off the waste grain. Generally there were plenty of fresh eggs in the hay loft.

             But our livery stables are passing, if they have not already passed. The Colonel Taylors of yesterday are pretty old men now, such of them as still hold out against the encroaching automobile. Soon we will have no more livery stables unless something is done to uphold this most typical of institution. But just that much the boyhood of the race will be made poorer.