Fresh Horses

It started with such an innocent comment.

"Those horses look so thirsty.”

As we walked the streets of Charleston, so many things reminded Katie and me of our college days in Williamsburg. It was the open-air walking, the omnipresent rustic signs memorializing events that had taken place on the ground below the signpost some 300 years ago, the peaceful gardens and parks away from the beaten path. Oh yeah, and the horses. It was the horses.

When you go to college at William and Mary, you learn quickly that Town-Gown relations aren’t exactly the same as any other university arena. The college, and its requisite bars, eateries, and collegiate paraphernalia shops are there, as well as the numerous other institutes of commerce by which the locals can make a quick buck off of freshmen with money to burn. However, studying within walking distance of a national historic village will have you walking past others in peculiar clothing choices. (No, not Rush Week sorority sisters, either – colonial re-enactors.) And with the cooper, the minuteman, and the blacksmith comes living with horses.

Yes, horses.

Both Charleston and Williamsburg have their own budding equine populations. And while they’d like to be roaming free and able to choose their own career paths, most horses in both locales remained tethered to one industry in particular: the carriaging industry. Yeah, I just made up the word “carriaging.” But now that I’ve used it twice, coupled with the fact I called people who give tours to tourists at the expense of horses an “industry,” I think it’s okay. Wikipedia? I want an article about this, stat.

Yes, as a carriage horse, your job sucks. You pull people and a giant motorless vehicle around all day in all types of weather, searing heat and driving rain included. Behind you, a tour guide is telling your passengers about everything you see on the route, and you’re not even allowed to chime in with pleasing vignettes or even repartee. And because your tour company hates you, they probably tied your beautiful tail into stupid little bows. God, you would kill for some arms to take out those damn things.

Katie is no doubt a horse sympathizer. As we walked by these mighty people movers, you could tell they would kill for a drink of water. (But figurative language aside, we don’t need horses killing in the streets of Charleston. Leave that to the heat.) She spent parts of her childhood taking riding lessons, probably not to the extent of Toms, but enough that she knows that these show ponies have better things to do. And as we drove by free horses, (those who roamed plantation pastures, not those that cost nothing), I saw a hint of electric possibility in her eyes.

Now that I am back in DC, I can assure you folks that I didn’t turn over any night to find Katie’s place in bed vacated in the name of some mass equine liberation operation (ELO). Thank God. After all this is South Carolina we were talking about.

Last thing we need is for the horses to secede from the Union.