Stories and Songs
Horace Seim passed away last week. We had just celebrated his 96th birthday in March. I called him neighbor, family, friend. I only had the past 20 or so years to know him, really just a drop in the bucket of such a long life. Horace was a cowboy, a storyteller, a musician, and a collector of local and family history. And one day he showed up on my doorstep.
“I hear you might be interested in history,” he said.
I was. Our friendship was perhaps unlikely. He was definitely old enough to be my grandparent. I was a young mom with my hands full of growing children. Even though at times it seemed he had a knack for arriving at inopportune moments, I always tried to wipe the mess off my hands and put the coffee on before he walked in the door. The children got pretty quick at scuttling the clutter when they saw his car coming up the hill.
And I took notes as he talked.
Horace was working on a project, and over time, brought me handwritten page after page documenting the open range days in northwestern South Dakota, where his grandparents came with their family in the 1890s. He asked if I would mind doing some “typin'” for him, and I willingly said I would.
Horace shared the stories that had been passed on to him from previous generations. Through him, people and places of a century ago became real to me, but in most of the stories he told, I found an element that left me with more questions. As the oldest person in the community, no one could argue his “facts” even if they seemed a bit far-fetched. Horace also had a strong propensity to pull your leg, so it was definitely a point of guessing where facts ended and fiction began.
The “typin'” eventually became his “book” –a project he was never quite satisfied with. He gathered all of the typed pages, plus some photocopies, between the covers of a different book whose contents were sacrificed to house his own, but he always had another bit he wanted to add. Now that my children are a little older, I was trying to retype the whole thing and get it printed for him, but I didn’t quite get that accomplished before he passed away.
Besides the notebooks and folders full of history, Horace often brought along an instrument when he came to visit. “I hear you play the fiddle,” he said. So did he –along with the guitar and the piano, and just about any instrument known to man. He showed me a fiddle he built, and another fiddle built by one of the old-time fiddle players of his own youth. Often, we played together.
He complained about his hands being arthritic, but that was forgotten when he started to play. Music flowed from his hands, no matter what instrument he touched. I had a hard time keeping up with him, but the memories of shared music will always be special.
Over time, as I asked more and more questions, Horace shared his own stories too. He told me about horses he loved, about how it felt to step in the old dusty horse manure in their little log barn with his bare feet –and how it felt for one of the saddle horses to step on those same bare feet. He told me about playing “Axelby Gang” with his siblings and cousins and the neighbor kids when he was a boy. He showed me where his grandfather kept a flock of chickens, and where the old well on the place was located. He described the day his little brother Nels was bitten by a snake, and how his parents had to go find a doctor. He shared memories of his dog, Rover, and described the locations of country schools he attended. He recalled a trip to Chicago with his parents to visit a doctor for help with his poor eyesight.
He described getting on a horse in the morning and riding all day –to wherever he ended up. By the time he started coming up to visit me, his car was his “horse” –but the meanderings were the same. He just went where he felt like going.
The two questions Horace asked me most often were: “Have you been doing any typin’ lately?” and “Have you been playing your fiddle lately?”
My usual answer was “not enough.” One can never write enough stories or play enough songs. Or spend enough time with horses –the third most common topic he would want to discuss. I’m so grateful for the stories Horace shared with me over the years, even if I will never know if they were completely believable. I will think of him when I pick up my fiddle, with fingers that will never be as swift as his. And I will remember his voice asking those questions as my reminder to keep on writing, playing music, and working with horses.
