Before there were Cars
I never see horse and carriage accidents in westerns like I see car accidents on television every night. Horse and buggy accidents must have been brutal. Granted no one was driving 100 miles per hour, but with no buggy air bags, buggy safety belts and no one wearing a buggy helmet, it must have been a buggy mess!
I guess back then if you wanted to go to your friend’s house, you took your horse, or borrowed Dad’s old beat up one.
“Dad…can I get the reins to the horse tonight?”
Everyone must have always smelled like horse shit back then. What if your horse got sick while you were there? Would you leave the horse at your friend’s house and borrow a horse to get home or would someone give you a ride on their horse?
“Drop me off here so my Dad doesn’t hear the hooves, you know he hates you.”
If you go out and come back drunk, you can just shut the car off or get out of the cab (preferably) and go in the house. Not so if you are living before the automobile was invented. You have to walk the horse to the barn, then “disrobe” the horse of the saddle, the girth, the bridle, the bit, the saddle blanket. Then you’ve got to give the horse some water because, you drank all night , not him and you will probably want to give him some hay because he didn’t get dinner because of your selfish drinking binges.
If you drive from Phoenix to Yuma in the heat of the summer in the Sonoran Desert and your car dies, triple AAA is a cell phone call away. Border and highway patrol vehicles come by every 10 minutes. If your horse dies on the way to Yuma, you are one fucked hombre. You are going to die. What could possibly be in Yuma that is worth dying for? Also rattle snakes and Gila monsters are abundant in the desert. Wouldn’t the words “rattle snakes and Gila monsters” make you realize that Yuma sucks and you didn’t like your mother anyway?