The Great Escape

Here we have yet another example of how you never know what in the hay you're going to see here in Mathews County.

Here, what we have is a horse sashaying down the middle of the road without a care in the world.

On my way home from Haven Beach yesterday, I was only slightly surprised to see a horse getting ready to cross the road. A horse with no rider, no halter, and no fence surrounding him. With nothing better to do (except all the thousands of chores I had to complete but was avoiding by driving to Haven Beach), I stopped the car and started taking pictures from the comfort of the driver's seat.

So to clarify, there was a horse loose walking down the middle of the road, and there was a crazy woman stopped right behind him--in the middle of the road--not rushing out to secure the horse, but sitting in her car snapping photos.

That sounds about right.

As I was snapping photos of a horse walking down the very same middle of the road where I was sitting in my car, two young men approached on foot from a nearby house. Rehearsing my standard speech about being an amateur photographer, I suddenly realized that "I'm just taking pictures" was not an appropriate response in this particular situation, even though as I sat in the driver's seat with the passenger window rolled down to talk, my camera dangled from my neck.

After a brief conversation so full of twists and turns I could scarcely convey it in a miniseries, we mutually determined that we did not know where the horse belonged. They said they'd contain the horse, and I said OK.

As I drove off in search of horse pastures that were missing one blanketed horse, thereby assuring there'd be no time for laundry, vacuuming, and putting up Christmas stuff, I came upon a car stopped in the road. The driver was talking to a person in another stopped car going the opposite direction.

This is not an unusual sight in Mathews, this business of blocking traffic briefly as people chat in the middle of the road. But the protocol is that when a car comes up behind one of the two blocking cars, the conversation is over, the two parties wave and depart.

When that didn't happen, I realized one of the cars belonged to the game warden. I pulled up, put the car in neutral (as another car pulled up behind me), walked up to the conversation (in the middle of the road) and said, "By any chance, are you all talking about the escaped horse?"

Indeed they were.

So I told him where Mr. Horse was, and after wrapping up the second "middle of the road" conversation, everyone parted ways. Presumably Mr. Horse is back home.

Tomorrow I'll share a story about my trip to Haven Beach and something I found there. It's not nearly as exciting as an escaped horse, but then again, what is?

Three-Thing Thursday

Welcome to a three-ring circus Three-Thing Thursday, where we each share three things (or more, the number is as arbitrary as anything else written here). It's sort of like show and tell, except there's no showing involved.

The three things can be related, as mine are today, or they may be entirely unrelated, like most of my sentences and paragraphs.

Here we go:

1. Saturday night at 6:00 is the Mathews Lighted Christmas Parade at the court house. This is probably my favorite land-based parade, and I've been to my fair share of parades.

2.a. That same evening, there's a lighted boat parade at Yorktown. The boat parades are always fun, always beautiful and sometimes good for a laugh (see #3 below), but I must attend the Mathews land parade. It's tradition.

2.b. The first time I attended the Yorktown boat parade was from the Gloucester Point side of the river. One really big boat--all decked out in sparkly lights, replete with blow-up Santa Clauses and extremely drunk inebriated individuals--ran aground just inside Sarah's Creek. This is where the laughter part of a boat parade comes in. The sight of raucous people in a big boat adorned with blow-up Santa Clauses running aground is really a sight to be seen. By the way, I love the word raucous.

3. I went to the DMV (Division of Motor Vehicles) two times in one week for the exact same transaction--and almost had to come back a third time. This is after I had tried three times via internet and twice by phone to complete said transaction. On the last trip in person, I actually had to use vacation time. Because everyone wants to spend their vacation in the DMV, right?

But this, dear reader, is a story for another time.

So, there are my three things. Now it's your turn. Have at it.