Horseshoes by John Potter Jr. I think everyone who is at least 60 years old has played horseshoes. When I was a kid, you could see horseshoe pegs on every playground and in most backyards. My first year out of the service was 1946. Our coal-mining town, Jobs, Ohio, had nothing left but a church and a small store. The big mines had played out many years before. The men got together and decided to put up a building so we would have a place to loaf. We put pegs outside for horseshoes. The only regulations about our game concerned the shoes and the distance between the pegs. We had no boxes or clay. When some of the fellas met at the "shanty," as we called it, a game of horseshoes would start. But it never failed; every once in awhile, somebody would say, "If you want to see good pitching, you ought to see Millie Mitchell and Ed James over at Murray City." I used to get tired of hearing that, although I didn't doubt it one bit that they were probably better than most of us. It just happened one evening that Willard "Wid" Sorrell and I walked over to Murray City to a little beer garden where all the young people hung out. To get there, we had to walk by the horseshoe court. We were kind of early, so we decided to stop for a while. The only people there were Ed and Millie, and they were waiting for anybody that came along to have a game. So, we thought, we had nothing to lose, and we could see just how good these fellows were. I think we surprised ourselves as much as we did them when we beat them. They were good, all right, but that game we were a little better. I suppose they wanted revenge, so they talked us into another game. We won that one, too. We were hot that night! Wid was hotter than I was, but I think the boxes and clay pits had a lot to do with it. We left after that, and I never remember hearing anybody brag on Ed and Millie again. By the way, they were probably 15 years older than us. We were happy that night. Our little town of Jobs had several horseshoe pitchers better than me. Most horseshoe pitching today is in tournaments. But I never heard of a tournament back then. Those were the Good Old Days.