Written by Kate Farrell

(My third-cousin, Kate Farrell, regularly visited her grandfather, Louis Michael Fischer and grandmother, Elizabeth (née Mursener), at their house at 715 S. Main St. during summers in the late 1940s and early 1950s. In addition to breeding and racing horses, Louis also was in the liquor business, operating, among others, the Old Style Inn at 200 N. Chestnut Street. His mother, Marie Louise Benoit (later changed to Binno) was a Kewanee pioneer, arriving in Wethersfield in 1855 before the family moved to the Brandenburg area a decade later.)

My grandfather owned racehorses, not for the big time, and not even with a jockey, his sport was harness racing: horses pull a two-wheeled cart called a sulky, with a driver, he raced county fairs in the Midwest, started in the 20s, Grandmother said he would not give up his horses in the Great Depression, and sacrificed all else to keep them.

During the summer of 1950, my family visited our grandparents in Kewanee, Illinois, when I was eight years old, and my older brother ten. We found treasures in the attic, trophies of all the many wins, silver and gold plated, mounted horses and platters. There was one horse named for each grandchild, but the one horse who was the runaway champion was named for me, Katie F. We were eager to see her race.

At last, the day came, my brother and I rode with our grandparents to county fair in Princeton, Illinois, to see the harness racing and watch Katie F. In the white, wooden grandstand, we watched her race on the dusty, oval racing track, rounding the bend, one, two times and finally coming around on the home stretch. We were jumping up and down in the bleacher seats, banging loudly, yelling over and over, “Come on, Katie F.,” as she came nearer to the stands and the finish line—in the lead. And she won! We shrieked.

After the race, I wandered away from the family to the stables. I searched for my horse by her stable sign, painted in gold letters on bright green, Katie F. She leaned out of the half door and I came closer, awestruck, her shining, chestnut brown coat, powerful muscles of a standardbred, towered over me, I dared not touch her outstretched nose, but came closer, she seemed to look right at me, and I heard her say without a sound, “You do that.” I knew she meant for me to be like her, to win my race, she was my totem, my namesake.

After all these years, the only object that survived my grandfather’s horseracing was that one wooden, stable sign: Katie F. It has traveled from place to place, held by different family members, Katie F. is our legend.

Epilogue

In September 1959, when I was 17 years old, I rode the Silver Zephyr train from Oakland to Chicago that went right through Kewanee. I was on my way to my freshman year in college at Rosary College in River Forest, a Dominican liberal arts college for women, small but elite. I detrained in Kewanee for a week’s stay with Grandmother Fischer at her cottage on 715 S. Main Street.

While there, Madeline Moore came by to drive us out to her farm where the famous Fischer standardbreds were put out to pasture, including Katie F. I saw her out in a field with the other horses, a prize breeder after her racing days. Housed in Madeline and Joe Moore’s farm, she lived a long and healthy life.

(Kate Farrell has been a storyteller extraordinaire from an early age. By age ten, she’d tacked signs on telephone poles in her neighborhood, announcing her fairytale play. As a first-year teacher, she stumbled on storytelling as the best way to teach literature to inner city kids. By 1970, she’d honed the skill as a new librarian, and in the 1980s, funded and trained teachers in a California state-wide storytelling project—and published educational materials on the art with big name publishers, like Scholastic and Highlights for Children. Her book, Story Power: Secrets to Creating, Crafting, and Telling Memorable Stories, provides techniques for creating and framing personal stories alongside effective tips for telling them in any setting. You can learn more about Kate and her book at https://katefarrell.net.)