sonny leon and the strike

we jumped up and down hollering 

they came from 15 horses behind and

charged ahead to win

the odds were the worst but we 

took them. by the tears in your eyes

i knew: you carried long odds and i 

carried them too 

#katyamills

Not-To-Mention, mentioned #iii)

Let us circle the wagons back to the horse and the automobile, and the loving kindness with which the horse gracefully agreed to help us build our cities (Sacramento) rather than fight us. The horse may not be indexed generally with the great predators of the world. Still, no one can deny that many a lineage came to its conclusion, behind a horse.The horses today, grandsons and granddaughters of the workhorses of yesteryear, could they not be more grateful to the vision we have together realized? Would they not sit down at desks with feather plumes and fountain pens, armed with loving kindness, beside troughs of ink,  hoof under chin, contemplating before composing epic love letters to Mr. Ford and his former and now widely forgotten associates?

From Stallion, with love. From associated former groups of poor single mares without stallions, on welfare. On behalf of all the mares who were forced to raise their kids single handedly. Single mares living through the nightmares on the farm. The instability of the stable. Untold abuses at the hands of the stablehands. Former oatwinners, shackled to the yoke and the shoe. Chasing mechanical rabbits like the poor greyhounds before them. Stallions reduced to workhorses, side by side with the most meagre of asses! Superlative, indeed.

How tragic, this history. But how the tragedy has turned on a dime and become cause celebre, 21st century! For generations pulling haycarts of America's least wanted. The hayseeds. The rednecks. The layabouts! The long awaited uses of manure toward betterment has arrived... shit for sale! Pulll up a cart! Take a number! They will form in line to worship Mr. Henry Ford et al. They will form a horsepower V, if propriety dictates. You thought the line of humans would be long to give a hug and a handshake to Henry Ford? You were right. Motorheads from as far away as Villarcayo de Merindad de Castilla la Vieja, Spain. Llanfair Pwllgwyngyll of the UK. Rumour has it some expatriates of the ministry of this settlement, which translates loosely as St. Mary's Church in the Hollow of the White Hazel , fled to the States and bestowed all formerly assigned virtues upon dear Henry. After all, it was he who made the migration possible, in original Ford motorcars, out of the hollow and on to an industrial era barge (surreptitiously with a payoff to the captain) to cross our dear lady the Atlantic.

And still the humans are outnumbered! Legend has it, innumerable studs pay homage to the birthplace of Mr. Ford. And to his gravesite. And to those great ruins of Detroit, including where stood his first assembly line factory. Untold fillys and colts of untold single white mares,  untold crews of anonymous black stallion studs worldwide, together take on the distance and swim the seas if necessary to paw the sacred ground. To hoof and trample any man, woman or child stands between them and their iconic father. Regional roundups from California on east, have witnessed the escape of denizens of horses gathered for such human affairs, rarely without fanfare or incident, and most certainly never pressed and published (for the shame that would inevitably fall upon the heads of the sacrosanct cowboys involved) by local media quickly lassoed. These uprisings would have most certainly made for great press, indeed! Alas, the captive reporters were instructed by the cattlemen to shuck it off in the alleyways of local obits in that American calm regurgitation: death by natural causes. 

Of course calm does lie at the center of it all. Mares and studs, men and women, live strangely yet peacably together under the watchful eye of the Fords. The great state of Michigan would certainly be no more than a footnote of Canada, were it not for the legacy. And it is quite thoroughly understood, the great parts both horses and humans alike played in the fanning out via motorcar of an American zeitgeist or pioneering spirit full of life. The wonderfully yet still violently marked canvas of towns and cities that spread like butter from Detroit once and still buttressed by its man and horsepower from Dearborn and Kalamazoo. In memory of the heaping spoonful of bastard foals and fillys from such strangely named townships as Bad Axe, Climax, Hell, and Jugville.  Those poor begotten desperates from the far reaches of the Upper Peninsula.

Not to mention....mentioned #i)

The land settled for a moment in time. The city was captured by the heat, roped by the American River, and surrounded by patchwork farmland spotted by cattle and dogs, and graced by the horses. The land, by the turn and dawn of the new century twenty one, was blessed with horses. They would be cared for religiously, obssessive-compulsively, if not set freed to their native state like they ought to be. Many were still fortunate to run wild over Montana and the Dakotas, and Canada above us. These ones looked upon most others with a fair contempt. Like wild anything will do.

 Over the course of the twentieth century, their predecessors had been shoed and put to the grind relentlessly. They were equally, if not more markedly, responsible as the railroad for giving means toward the making of such a drop dead beautiful American city as Sacramento. This our seat of the great state of California. You need only go stand within a few hundred feet of the Capitol to feel it. The electricity rushes up and down the spine with a nice hushpuppy finish. The calm of the center, that is. Thank your gods and lucky stars for this place.

And for the horsepower behind it all (not to mention rounding cattle and working courier on the side) ((and just did)). The only relief granted the horse, in this century or last, came in the form of one man's vision become reality. Mr. Henry Ford of Detroit, Michigan (and his many forgotten associates, of course). He made the machines that made offroading and joyriding and donuts possible. Not to mention drive-bys and drive-throughs and drive-ins. Now mentioned. Henry Ford, he satisfied our deepseated longing for speed. He offset our collective human discomfort with gravity. The automobile  will always exist in the hearts of men and women who have the courage (and lack the sanity) to strap themselves to engines. These the sons and daughters of those who lacked the sanity (had the courage) to strap themselves to wild horses formerly saddled by the poor sons of bitches who had the stupidity to contemplate taming these powerful wonderful creatures. Those lives were short-lived indeed. One hoof to the head and its history! Watch a lineage, long extended,  end in a moment in a day. The human will always exist in the hearts of the horses who shook him and chased the sun to freedom to no ends of the earth.