You know, we’ve come a long way. Drivers have GPS and I see an ad now for a Ford that can park itself. I wonder if it also stuffs the parking meter with coins.
Amazing have been the advances in transportation over the past few years with many more to come. But in another way, there isn’t much new under the sun and in some respects, what went before was just as incredible as what we have now.
I wasn’t around in the horse and buggy days but I was just one generation removed and so the elders in my family had lots of stories to tell about the times before the horseless carriage came along. Stories such as fatal buggy accidents – not high-speed head-ons like today, but buggies overturning and the ensuing mayhem resulting in death. I imagine that was a lot rarer incident than traffic fatalities now, but it happened.
And for some farmers, the horse could double as his designated driver when too much imbibing was done by the driver. My Dad told a story about a farmer from around these parts (in southern Canada) who used to go by horse and buggy to town on Friday nights and hit the hotels, often getting completely pie-eyed during an evening’s fun. He’d make his way somehow to the buggy at closing time, crawl in and sometimes pass out. No problem. The horse promptly left town and carried its owner the almost 10 miles home, never missing a turn in the process.
Match that GPS!
Sometimes the farmer in question didn’t completely pass out, but instead provided the entire community along his route home with a free concert. On a still night in winter, the sounds of the inebriated man’s musical voice could be heard across hill and valley, seemingly for miles. And while he was in the buggy, he didn’t need to take the reins but could sit there in comfort and sing while horsey did all the navigating and steering.
A wonderful John Wayne movie shot in Ireland in the fifties called The Quiet Man has some great scenes in it involving a little old matchmaker who practically gets thrown from his buggy while on chases through the village because his horse insists on stopping automatically and suddenly in front of a pub, a stop it had made many times before.
Just like GPS, I guess, even horse sense had its limits.
©2011 Jim Hagarty
