Hi, this is Ella. I’m Halsey’s youngest daughter. Please sit down on the horse block while I am talking. That’s me holding Old Nell back in 1912. My older sisters Eula and Georgia were visiting. Sister Bessie, naturally, was behind the camera.

A young man named Clifford Hudson gave me my first car ride seven years earlier, but we still didn’t have a car. Wouldn’t get one for six more years. Horses were so much better. Totally sustainable. The only fuel Old Nell needed was hay and oats that we grew right hee-aa on the farm. No need to buy any gasoline and other fossil fuels.

Old Nell was born right hee-aa on the farm. I think Dobbin was the father. About the only thing we ever had to pay for were an occasional new set of horseshoes. Took her to a nice old Irish man named Magee in Aquebogue for that.

Old Nell didn’t produce any smog either. No tailpipe emissions – well, you know what I mean. She was very reliable – took us everywhere we needed to go – church, downtown Riverhead, Aunt Delhia’s, even over to the ocean once in a while.

And we did love that horse. She was about the same age I was – part of our childhood. We just called her Nell in those days. Didn’t want to trade her in for some new-fangled noisy rattle-trap contraption that breaks down every other day. No-sir-ree. Old Nell was for us.

There are many times I wish we still had Old Nell around.