Months after an 18-wheeler tanker truck catapulted New Hampshire resident Bob Skelding and pieces of his homemade, horse-drawn carriage several hundred feet along the side of Highway 45 South, Skelding is ready to try again.
Bob Skelding, 49, of Deerfield, N.H., will be taking a new horse-drawn carriage to the roads Friday as he makes a 150-mile trek from Bentonville, Ill., to Odon, Ill.
“It will probably take me about two weeks to get down to Odon for Horse Progress Days,” Skelding said Wednesday morning. “Progress Days is a big festival they have each year where they basically show off the latest and greatest in horse technology and things like that.”
From Odon, Skelding will pilot his wagon “whichever way the wind blows,” he said.
“I don”t have any plans. I don”t have any idea where I”m going or how long I will be gone this time,” Skelding laughed. “I am just going to go wherever I feel like going and just do my own thing.”
The genesis of Skelding”s second trip will come about four months after a wreck near Shuqualak ended what had been a more than 1,700-mile journey from New Hampshire to Mississippi. Following the accident, Skelding”s homemade recreational vehicle, which contained a kitchen, air conditioning, a bed and several other amenities, was decimated and two of his four horses, Deedee and Dolly, lay dead.
Skelding suffered several serious injuries, including a broken neck vertebrae, several broken ribs, a broken shoulder and a broken collar bone. He recovered at Rush Memorial Hospital in Meridian for about a month before he moved to North Carolina to plan his second journey.
Although the other two horses pulling the wagon, Doc and Joyce, sustained relatively minor injuries and have since made a full recovery, Skelding has retired them from wagon-pulling service, he said.
“Dr. (William) Calvert down in DeKalb really did a fantastic job healing Doc and Joyce”s injuries,” Skelding said. “They are now living the good life and just doing some light farm work. I”ve decided to go with an entirely new team for this second trip.”
Because Skelding”s new wagon is about half the weight of his old one, the cross-country traveler is bringing only two horses on his second journey.
“My new horses are named Bob and Bill, and I got them from Jim Brown in New York,” Skelding added. “The new carriage has a lot of the same amenities that the old one did, but it is a lot smaller, space-wise.”
Skelding “purchased” the new wagon from North Carolina resident and fellow horse-drawn vehicle traveler, Bernie Harberts.
“He just had it sitting in his barn when he heard about my accident,” Skelding said. “So he sold it to me for the reasonable price of one biscuit from Bojangles (restaurant). At least it was a good biscuit.
“I took the wagon and modified it to what I needed for my trip,” Skelding said. “I actually just finished painting it, so it”s complete and ready to go on Friday.”
Although Skelding said the memory of his accident on Highway 45 South will remain with him the rest of his life, he quickly pointed out he would not worry about a similar incident during his second trip.
“Oh heck, if I worried about getting hit again, I might as well worry about getting run over by a car every time I cross the street,” Skelding said. “It didn”t matter what I had on that last wagon. The driver of that truck had his eyes off the road during that second he moved to pass the other truck.
“That”s why he hit me. It wasn”t because I didn”t have enough reflectors and lights on my wagon,” Skelding added. “It could have just as easily been a school bus or anything else, so I”m just glad it wasn”t worse than it was.”
Because Skelding blamed the truck driver”s lack of attention for causing the wreck, he said he put about the same amount of safety equipment on his new trailer as the old one.
“The new wagon is pretty much like the old one was with the reflectors and the lights,” Skelding said. “No amount of stuff on the old wagon could have stopped that wreck from happening. It was just a result of the situation.
“The support from my family and friends has just been fantastic,” Skelding added. “Lots of folks from Mississippi and across the country have given me their support. Without all of the support I have gotten from everyone, none of this would have been possible.”
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