HORSE SHOE MAN by John P. Flannery

It sure is hard to

Find good work,

He reflected with

A moan.

He paused and rap-tap

tapped some more

Before he could go on.

Once I was an office

drone, he said,

My soul an open sore.

So I became a horse

Shoe man,

To cobble all I

Can.

I did once wrestle

Hard and long,

Enjoyed it quite a bit,

When I shoe horses now

It keeps me really fit

I strike the hammer, to a tempo tune,

The plate sings me a song.

The warm horse hide

Against my side,

The rhythmic swinging

steel,

It fills the void, it makes

a life,

All this I know and feel.

(Poesy by J. Flannery)

Tighe Cullinane, the “horse shoe man,” and his son, Michael, 12, tend to horses around the region and in Lovettsville and Burkittsville.   Tighe’s Irish forbears come from Clonakilty, a small town in County Cork.  Tighe never rode horses much but he liked horses.  “I liked agriculture and working for myself,” Tighe said.  “My family worked in construction,” Tighe said, “and I didn’t want to do that.”  “I’ve worked with all types and sizes of horses from minis to drafts,” he said.  Of course, 

Tighe makes house calls – as well as barn and field calls.  Tighe said, “We do trims and steel shoes, fronts or fronts and back, but we also do aluminum, glue-ons, pads, even therapeutic shoes.”   

Tighe’s tall, at 6’5” for the NCAA award-winning career he had as a wrestler.  Tighe may not be a horse whisperer but he gets along well with anything equine and Michael and he taught their Holstein how to weed.   

Is Michael, his son, likely to become a horse shoe man?  “More likely an engineer,” Tighe said, “he’s good at math and science.  He’s also a wrestler, but more than that, he does baseball and football too.”