Horses were the way to go

By Alan Linda | The Daily Journal

Published Tuesday, May 8, 2007

Once upon a time, Mankind had only one machine. It had four hooves, a long tail, and for some odd reason, trusted Mankind. It was a Horse Machine.

The Horse Machine gave Mankind a great start. All he had to do was shovel not very good hay in one end, fertilizer out of the other, and the Machine helped him do just about everything. As a Machine, it was nearly perfect for century after century, as much companion as machine, as much friend as worker.

The Horse Machine contained some miraculous genetic programming. For one thing, when it was tired, it slept. Since the Horse Machine couldn't see in the dark — a most convenient bit of engineering— that's when it slept. Since Mankind also could not see in the dark, the lovely outcome of all this was that he could sleep at night, too.

Even better was the fact that the Horse Machine could reproduce itself, making wonderfully diverse copies. More wagons could be built, and more work accomplished. Never before had Mankind had such a convenient Machine to himself.

The Machine Horse has one other wonderful attribute:

Namely, this Four-Legged Machine could, in times of short food supply, be cooked and eaten. Mostly this isn't mentioned where the Horse Machine might hear about it.

Truth be told, over the years it's highly possible that some member of Mankind has gotten so angry with a Horse Machine that he has eaten it. Now really, what machine of any other sort could this happen to? This eating thing rarely took place. After all, eating a perfectly good Horse Machine didn't make much sense, unless due to human hunger it appeared the Horse Machine was going to outlive you. In that case, the Horse Machine was permanently out of work anyway, and may as well be supper.

Quite often, Horse Machine owners have been known to threaten the Horse Machine with being eaten, should it not change its ways. This happened more often toward the end of a hot summer day, when the Machine was pooped and wanted to do nothing buy lie down or stand in the shade. When that happened, the owner was heard to cry: "Pull, you no-good four-legged rump roast basted in mushroom gravy!" Horse Machine owners would shout that at their Machines, with good results. Try shouting that at your tractor someday, or your car, or some electric motor or other deviltry of Man's machine kingdom.

Shouting at a Horse Machine does quite often do some good, and in those cases, makes a lot of sense. The Horse Machine, due to another God-given design quirk, doesn't understand English, and probably cannot have its feelings hurt much. This is a really good design quirk. Just imagine if the Horse Machine could understand English. In times of hunger, they'd be really hard to catch.

Horse Machines have one other positive feature: When you're angry at them, you can punch them in the shoulder, or butt, or some soft spot — none of which really hurts them too much, and makes Mankind feel better. For a while, anyway. Try doing that to any of Mankind's current machines, and the design problems there become immediately apparent.

When Horse Machines were all Mankind had, there wasn't a lot of pent up stress around. We didn't have psychologists, or Valium, and punching bags had yet to be invented. Really, the Horse Machine didn't care or even much notice what human hands could do to its soft spots, and the puncher felt lots better. That's an overall positive gain.

Mankind was on the right track, we therefore conclude, with its Horse Machine, and should have stayed on that track. By now, we'd have 12-legged Horse Machines that could run 70 mph. We'd have Horse Machines that baled their own hay and fed themselves and cleaned up after themselves and who knows what all.

Instead, we invented Tractor Machines, which cannot be kicked or eaten, on top of which we have to run them at night, when we should be sleeping. Instead of emitting gas, they consume it, another mistake.

Yup, this one got away from us, no doubt about it.

Alan Linda lives and writes from New York Mills