In these degenerate gasoline days, there is less opportunity for such friendly exchanges of left-handed compliments. When the horse was the chief mode of conveyance, the frequent watering trough afforded occasional chances for the circulation of the perennial Yankee jokes.
“Say, Put the Doctor Ahead”
A man returning to his farm from a visit to the grocery store, in waiting to give his horse a drink, fell in behind an unusual collection of vehicles. At the head of the line with his horse’s nose in the trough, was a well-known undertaker. Directly behind, waiting for his turn was a veteran dealer in tomb-stones. And next in line was the village doctor. The man in the rear, who knew all the parties concerned, could not resist the opportunity to make a suggestion.
“Say,” he called in loud tones to those in front. “You’ve got this procession dead wrong; you ought to put the doctor ahead!”
All this is but a part of the record of the past. The actors have all passed on, but there are many more recent echoes of amusing happenings along the country roads.
The Scrambled Eggs in the Highway
At the foot of a long hill, near the outskirts of a certain busy town, the middle of the snowy road for a protracted period of winter cold, presented the appearance of well scrambled eggs. In reality it was not exactly an optical delusion either. A well-known farmer, who lived considerably back in the hill country, started out one ‘day in his old-fashioned “pung” sleigh to deliver to a local grocery store two or three weeks’ accumulation of fresh laid eggs. These were carefully packed in a receptacle with a loose cover. Just as he was reaching the foot of the hill near the railroad, a train suddenly darted into view and while his horse was old enough to have become steady, he had never become reconciled to the arrogant actions of a locomotive. He gave a quick leap and in spite of the best efforts of his driver, succeeded in dumping the contents of the sleigh into the middle of the road. The slaughter of eggs was practically complete.
The conventional thing to say would be that the driver, who soon controlled his horse, returned to his home a sadly disappointed man. But this would in reality be a misstatement. The spectacle of thirteen dozen eggs totally wrecked in the middle of the highway and the prospective wonderment of passersby so stimulated the farmer’s Irish sense of humor, that he told the story with great delight to everyone whom he could induce to listen to him. Naturally his attitude regarding this untoward event might have been somewhat different had he been in circumstances which made the loss of the eggs a matter of any real importance.
The occasional wrecked vehicle which may be seen by the roadside in country districts is more likely in these days to be a gasoline buggy than one drawn by horses. But one midsummer day not long ago, travelers along a back country road observed with much curiosity what remained of an old time buggy which indicated a bad case of misunderstanding between some horse and its driver. Those who found out the facts were considerably amused.