Lost in Time

I wonder if anyone now alive remembers a man we as children knew only as Harry Horsecollar. He would walk down the road near my grandmother's house. He worked on a nearby farm, one of those hardscrabble properties common in the 1940's when the idea of a self-sufficient lifestyle was still ingrained in the older population. He would plod by the house, always alone, looking like a tired old man to us visiting kids. He never spoke to us kids: not many did in the days of children being "not heard," but he would wave a hand to the adults if they were outside. We thought of him as ancient, but I suppose he could have been only in his 40's. No mention was ever made of his having a family. His life was consumed by work, so that served as his identity to others back in those days of private lives. The story was, though, that his horse had died and Harry would put his dead horse's collar around his own neck and pull the plow . When he had to work the further fields, past my grandmother's house, he would still have the collar around his neck, having left the plow in the field for the next day's work. I never heard him spoken of in any other context, Harry Horsecollar was probably never aware of his moniker, and if he had been I don't imagine it would have affected his life to any degree at all.