16-year-old Helena Muffly wrote exactly 100 years ago today:
Saturday, August 5, 1911: Am still driving my swift steeds, but it isn’t for very long. One thing I am glad of is that it isn’t dusty a bit, but will soon be.
Her middle-aged granddaughter’s comments 100 years later:
Grandma was probably leading horses that were hitched to a roller that leveled plowed earth in preparation for planting winter wheat seeds.
Grandma mentioned that she was learning to drive horses in the August 2 diary entry (see that posting for a photo of a horse-drawn roller).
I think that Grandma was being sarcastic when she called the horses “swift steeds.” In the previous diary entry she said that the horses were not fun to drive because they were old and slow.
A Hundred Years Ago 