The Way Things Were

 Now that my mind is in grazing mode, and thus a blank space, bits from the past just sometimes float into the vacuum. I realize there is no one else still alive who would be able to recall the circumstances of  these old times. Such as they were:

      My aunt is talking to her sister, my mother. I am very young, not part of the conversation of course, just a listener.  My aunt's neighbor is a farmer, who for all his life plowed his fields with a team of horses.  Then the farmer, bowing to modern times, bought a tractor. He had no further need for his horses. They require more care and feeding than does the tractor. My aunt, living in a rented house in sight of his, observes him digging a hole in one of his fields. It takes some days of digging. He brings out the horses, leads one of the old animals to the edge of the hole, and shoots it. The horse falls into the hole. The farmer leads the second horse to the edge of the hole, but the placid old animal must know what has happened, and struggles, rearing and neighing. All to no avail though; it eventually suffers the same fate as its partner.