Hard to Believe...!

My grandfather, Hugo Bartz, was an amazing story-teller. Often when visitors came, they would begin to talk about bygone years, and the stories and laughter would start...

Grandpa Bartz had a strong memory into his early 90's, but as he approached 100, his memory began to play tricks on him. At times he imagined that he was still a boy living in the Ukraine, waiting for his father to come home for supper.

One of the last times I visited him, he recounted stories I had never heard before... Were they true stories from his past? Or figments of his imagination? I really don't know...

A week or so before our visit, he had told his housekeeper that the Czar of Russia had given him a medal... Where was the medal? So she began to hunt high and low for it. When my mother and I came, she asked my mother if she knew where this medal might be.

What medal? Do you have a medal from the Czar?! my mother asked Grandpa in surprise. She had never heard about it...

Of course. When I was a boy, I played the tuba in a Mennonite band. One day the Czar and his family were passing by on the train going to their winter home in the Ukraine, so the whole band stood at the side of the tracks and played as he drove by. We were all sitting on horses to play. The train stopped and they listened. When we were finished, someone from the train came up to me and asked me how old I was. I was about 12 or 13 - the youngest in the band. I told him my age, he wrote down my name, and a while later I received a medal in the mail from the Czar.

You played with the Mennonites? I asked... And you played sitting on a horse?

Yes, he replied. We sometimes played while the horses walked. Then someone had to walk in front of me holding the music... Sometimes, the horses walked so fast that the poor guy had to run! He could barely keep up!

One time I took the horse home to show my mother. I brought it into the house - and she yelled at me: "Get that horse out of here!"

You brought the horse into the house? I asked...

Yes, when you were issued a horse, you had to keep it with you. You were responsible for it. The horse was smart... It even knelt at the alter in the church...

You took the horse into the church?! I asked, laughing...

Yes, he said. The horse even knelt...

It knelt?!!

And it took communion...

It took communion?!!

That day I left Grandpa puzzled and confused... His stories were so rich in detail, I could visualize them... But could they be true? ... Why had nobody in the family heard about this medal before? And the strange story about horses in church...

Then I remembered the Feast of St. Francis of Assisi in the Catholic Church, where people bring animals to be blessed by the priest. Did the German Lutheran Church or the Orthodox Church in the Ukraine have a feast to bless animals too? I looked it up on google... Yes, there were apparently some ceremonies for blessing animals...in both traditions... Was this what he was referring to?

As I looked for more clues about the practice of blessing horses on the internet, I googled "blessing of horses orthodox church." I then came across a travel blog where a visiting North American discovered priests in Romania, who once blessed horses and carts, now bless cars... Suddenly Grandpa's story didn't seem all that far-fetched!

And what about his other story - about his medal from the Czar? Did this really happen to him or was it a story he had heard from someone else? If it happened to him, where did this medal end up? Did Grandpa leave it behind at his parents' home when he got married? Was it abandoned when they fled the Ukraine when Stalin took their land? Did Grandpa have it or did someone in his family - perhaps his mother - take it along? In those hard times, was it perhaps sold?!

I will probably never know!