RA$HA...Finally, An Association for Rich Farriers!

The Anvil Archives: Rob Edwards, Publisher Extraordinaire

RA$HA [The Rich And Scientific Horseshoers Association]

© Andy Juell

First published in ANVIL Magazine (Mid-80's) 

Well, I have had quite enough. First it was the AFA, then the WSFA, then FAWS, then Walt Taylor's WFA and pretty soon the Interplanetary FA, just in case someone is stupid enough to want to shoe horses on Venus.  So I am going to add RA$HA to the ever-growing list of farriers' groups, as not only is it a cute name for a small dog, but it will also fill the one last void in American horseshoeing: the rich guys.  Here is a rundown on our rules, ideology, contests, membership requirements, and drinking habits.

 

RASHA President and Certification Enforcer.
"We got oil!"

BACKGROUND INFORMATION:

The association was formed last week for no apparent reason. In light of that, our board of directors (who wish to remain anonymous, particularly in the Islamic world), still felt that there was no association in the world to represent rich people; who, by some accident of birth, ended up as horseshoers. By filling this void, it is hoped that people like Jay Leno will invite us to be on their TV shows and ask us irrelevant questions about life or Brad Pitt's last movie. 

MEMBERSHIP REQUIREMENTS:

The International Association of Rich and Scientific Horseshoers will have strict membership requirements.  Well, most of the time anyway.

1.  Applicant must be rich. Proof of richness should be mailed in small bills to: Association Secretary,  P.O. Box 5, Tijuana, Mexico.

 

2.  Applicant should show some degree of scientific ability. This may be ascertained by a), straightening a bent pritchel, b), operating a small electric drill, or c), giving a brief verbal explanation of what pine tar tastes like. 

 

3.  Applicant must be able to accurately distinguish a five-dollar tip from a one-hundred dollar tip and be able to react to a small tip with the proper hostility.

 

4.  Applicant must pass the National Flinch Test.

 

OUR CODE OF ETHICS:

"If you get paid, don't worry about it."

OUR MOTTO:

"Get the check."

OUR MISSION STATEMENT:  E pluribus scrotum and this other stuff:

 

THE NATIONAL FLINCH TEST:

One of Last Year's Judges

All prospective members of the International Association of Rich and Scientific Horseshoers will be required to take the following examination:  Each applicant will be required to shoe a horse in any chosen manner by that member (hiring someone else to do it is fine), with any materials that the applicant can find.  Upon completion of the aforementioned horse (there will be no time limit), said applicant will present a totally outlandish bill to either (A) George Steinbrenner, (B) a Jewish haberdasher from Brooklyn, or (C) Mike Tyson.  A panel of four judges, drawn at random from a local plumbers' union will decide if, in the course of presenting the bill, the applicant either flinches, bats an eye, becomes embarrassed, or God forbid, adjusts the bill in the client's favor. There will be a five-minute time limit (65 seconds if applicant draws Mike Tyson for the exam), in which the testers may say or do anything short of a Class B felony to the applicant.  Those individuals found to have failed the test will be required to pay the association the sum of $125.00 (no checks) and may not reschedule an examination for at least 24 hours, or until the judges sober up, whichever comes first. Those applicants passing the exam will receive $50.00 in cash from each current member, an invitation to join the Republican Party, a year's supply of oakum courtesy of the plumbers' union, a video cassette of the movie True Grit, Donald Trump's cellular number, and a year's subscription to Forbes Magazine.

 

 

THE ANNUAL COMPETITION:

 

Once a year, The International Association of Rich and Scientific Horseshoers will hold a competition to determine the championships in our five recognized divisions:  Best Truck, Best Outfit, Most Creative Use of a Cellular Phone, Most Outrageous Promotional Gimmick, and the Overall, All-Around Farrier Czar of the Day, which will be decided upon by the horseshoer exhibiting the absolute laziest way possible to get a few bucks from the audience. 

 

 

 JUDGES FOR THIS YEAR'S EVENT: 

 

 

 Dick Cheney, DpSHT;  Jimmy Hoffa, RIP; and Warren Buffet, $$$$.

 

In the event of a tie, Mr. Andy Juell, QXTE will NOT cast a deciding vote unless money or a lewd encounter is involved. 

 

  

 

RA$HA Dress Code Rigorously Enforced

                           RULES:

 

CLASS 1:  Best Truck. This class will be open to any vehicle with less than seven axles.  Weight not to exceed 60,000lbs., or overall length of 40 feet.  Contestant may present truck in any acceptable manner.  Please though, no obvious nudity. In the event of a tie, all cigarette butts, candy wrappers, and old donuts will be carefully removed from the cab and weighed.  First Prize: A free triple bypass by the surgeon of your choice, or an all-expenses paid -- two week vacation at a Nevada brothel, or women: 12-hour shopping spree in the Nordstrom's shoe department. On us!

CLASS 2:  Best Outfit.  This is a split-division class.  Female entrants will be judged on poise, confidence, and  their use of shoes and/or accessories.  Chaps are required.  The men's division will be judged on number and quality of tattoo's, overall strength (aluminum can crushing, hammer throwing, etc), and best abs -- enthusiastic audience participation encouraged here.  In both divisions, cross-dressing is discouraged; DNA testing will be mandatory.

 

  First Prize Women's Division:  Leonardo DiCaprio's phone number.

 

First Prize Men's Division:  More beer or something made of chrome.

 

CLASS 3:  Most Creative Use of a Cellular Phone. This is an open class to be judged on the ingenuity of the contestant.  Example:  Last year's winner ear-twitched his favorite trainer with the cord while ordering sushi from the local takeout bar.  First Prize: 500 shares of stock in Verizon, two Super Bowl tickets, and a guest appearance on Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous.  In the event of a tie, the winner will be determined by the balance owing on their American Express Card.

CLASS 4:  Most Outrageous Promotional Gimmick. (Sponsored by the makers of Sorbothane, Hoof Bond, Big Bob's Plastic Pritchel Co., and The Barefoot Alliance.)  This is a thinking man's class, and all contestants will be provided with lounge chairs and a cocktail of their choice.  Deep furrowed brows, smoking ears, and migraine headaches will be given special consideration.  The winner will be established by the first contestant to successfully earn $1,200.00 without getting up from his or her chair.  Lying is optional, with a two-hour time limit for ascertaining the truth.  First Prize: Tammy Faye Baker's face embossed on a belt buckle, $52,000 in legal fees, and a month's stay at the institution of your choice.

OVERALL CHAMPION CZAR PERSON:  The annual champion of The International Association of Rich and Scientific Horseshoers' Annual Contest will be determined by the accumulation of the most points.  In line with the philosophy of the association, the judges have determined that the points may be stolen, embezzled, blackmailed, or bought from other contestants. In the event of a tie, the contestants will be allowed to reach a settlement on their own. However, this class is closed to attorneys, unless they have been recently disbarred and/or jailed.  Prize:  Fourteen feet of cow intestines, a pair of tight jeans, and Wayne Newton's favorite horse.

DUES:

 

Annual Membership dues for the International Association of Rich and Scientific Horseshoers will be one dollar. Life memberships are 50 cents, plus 1.5% of all income received from clients by bad, questionable or larcenous means.  Members will be entitled to our monthly newsletter (if we feel like printing it), our special decal (which has a picture of a rich guy running over a Hungarian immigrant), and the knowledge of knowing that they are a member of the world's finest association for Rich and Scientific Horseshoers. 

 

 

E = MC (MasterCard Accepted)

 

Dating 101...Women with Horses.

Rule # 1:  Skip the Horse Show Altogether

 

 

Horseshows are not designed around moments of hopeful intimacy.  They are angst-filled encounters with what lies behind the blue eyes, seductive smile...your own fantasies of an overnight adventure in an exotic land that, well...smells funny. 

 

 

The cab of a pick-up truck is entirely too small. So is a ferry boat.  And she's driving:

     'The ferry ride turned out to be a lot longer than I imagined.  No, it wasn’t the tension level.  Seems I failed to examine the geography involved in our expedition.  After an hour or so I was thinking Europe.  After two hours, it was time to have a serious conversation with Columbus.  Even the porpoises that had been following us turned around.  I started rummaging around the truck looking for oranges – figured we might need to fend off dysentery or beriberi or something.  At 2hrs. & 37 minutes we struck land.  The locals seemed curious, but not overly friendly.  I considered sticking a flag in the ground and claiming the place for God and America, but a Denny’s restaurant had beat me to it.  The ferry crew was busy hosing Brownie’s urine and other stuff off the deck.  They gave us a cheery one-fingered send off.  Local custom I guessed.  After a quick greasy hamburger we hit the road again.  Smaller road, fewer inhabitants.

 

     “Uh, just where exactly is this show?”  I swore I saw a sign that said, ‘Last Gas for a Hundred Miles!’  I was hoping it was just a marketing stunt.

 

     Three gas stations later we arrived at the show grounds.  Yeah, the sign was a shameless marketing ploy.  I figured that the next time I toured Europe I’d bring my own hamburger.  Between emergency roadside stops Jesse and I talked about the subjects of her choice.  I asked a question and received an answer disguised as another question.  She must have studied counter-intelligence or male interrogation techniques since after two hours in the truck I wasn’t even sure if Jesse was her real name.

      “Why’d you get into horses, Jesse?”  Seemed like a safe question.

 

     “Wasn’t supposed to.”

 

     “Me, it was school buses and…some other stuff.”

 

     “Other stuff?”

 

     “Yeah, stuff.”

 

     “Home, huh?”

 

     “I didn’t say that.”

 

     “Yes you did.”

 

[Quick...a deflection!] 

 

     “Look, are those Canadian geese?”  Wondered what they were doing in Europe.  Next time we stopped I planned on going through her purse.  Probably find fifteen fake passports, the miniature camera – maybe a Walther PPK.  Oh, the official fingernail pulling manual.

 

     “Have you ever been arrested?”

 

[Another deflection needed...]

 

     “Where’d that question come from?”  My eyes were doing the darting thing.  “Wow, see that!  One shoe by the road.  I always see those and they’re always a right shoe.  Makes you wonder what was going on…like roadside amputations by deranged foot collectors or…least they could do is leave a pair or something.”

 

     “Well?”

 

     “What?”

 

     “I thought so.”

 

This is how I pictured a long weekend of possibilities...

Later in my adventure -- horse bath time... 

 

     “How’d the schooling go?” I asked, knowing full well that Jess had got dumped twice in the schooling ring.

 

     “He was a little spooky out there.  Didn’t you see him?  He spooked at that yellow oxer and dumped me!”

 

     “No, I missed that.  I’m sorry.  You okay?”  Of course I didn’t miss it.  That’s why I ended up behind a barn on all fours trying to cough up the Marlboro I sucked down one lung.

 

     “I’m all right.”

 

     “Tell me something,” I said, wanting to change the subject before I surrendered to the giggles.  “Why do you do this?  I mean, this doesn’t seem like it goes too well, and like I thought this was supposed to be fun?  You get horribly nervous, the trainer chews you out, the horse dumps you and you hardly ever get a ribbon or money or anything.  How come?”

 

     Jessica paused, tossing the sponge into the bucket of shampoo.  “I don’t know.  I guess it’s a challenge.  To take something like Brownie, with no training, no manners or anything, and convert him into something usable.”  She tossed her hair out of her eyes so she could stare straight at me.  “I like fixing things.”

 

     “Oh,” I deadpanned.  I had really hoped she wanted to ride in the Olympics or something.  ‘Fixing things’ tended to make me more than a little nervous.  The last thing that got ‘fixed’ was the cat.  I guess though that it supported my overall opinion that Jesse and Chet had something and nothing in common.  Chet fixing those broken pistons was one thing, but why would a woman sort of pick a man and then try to turn him into some other kind of man?  Why not keep shopping?  “So winning doesn’t matter?”

 

     “No.  Has to do with a poem I read once.  Something about ‘the value of the journey’ as opposed to the destination -- something like that.  Besides, I can’t afford a horse that wins and it probably wouldn’t be that much fun anyway.  I bought my first horse when I was thirteen.  Couple of hundred bucks.  My father said no…”  She suddenly straightened up, gently tipped the bucket over with her left foot, handed me the horse and walked off.

 

     “So, Brownie, now what in the hell did I say?”  I thought about just sitting there and waiting, but there was still that issue about not sitting on the chairs.  So instead Brownie and I took a tour of the show grounds.  I did most of the talking.

And this was how it ended up...

     After waiting around to see if the judges gave a ribbon for twenty-third place, we took Brownie back to his stall, bathed him and wrapped his legs in forty-five pounds of cotton and Velcro.  Jessica swallowed a couple of aspirin while I organized what was left of the mess.  I slid into the cab of the truck and put the key in the ignition and turned it.  Zip.  The horse show had taken the last ounce of our dignity.  After spending the early morning hours braiding Brownie’s mane in the one good headlight of the truck, the only thing we earned for our efforts was a dead battery.

 

      The ferry ride home was cloaked in a noisy silence.

 

     “So, Jessica, where does this leave things, like with the year-end standings and all?”

      I thought she might have said something but it was just the prop churning the water.  Maybe teeth grinding.

 

     “Okay then.”

 

Empathy: The Food of All Literature.

Where Books Come From:

 

Yes, empathy. And an empathetic mind evolves from adversity, from disappointment...from deceit.  Broken trusts held in the hearts of small children. Children who become adults, mentors to those who follow them...custodians of the planet we share.

 

 

They become our legacy, the next chapter in our dreams and quite sadly, and too often, the cold granite marker of our failure.  A desert, where a garden was destined to grow.

 

I wrote this piece in 1989.  In the middle of a personal and physical crisis of my own making.  I was watching my career end.  Or so I believed at the time.  But during this thankful intermission, my days were spent in introspection, retrospection, negative self-analysis...all while a rather unattractive and brutish nurse was going through her initial catheter training...on me.

 

Some people know my early history.  Most don't give a shit and that is perfectly fine. Sympathy merely feeds self-loathing and this planet has enough practitioners of hate's various manifestations to go around...twice.  It is the spiritual pandemic of our times.  And while many people doubt that it is possible...I was a child once, born to the garden that traveled from watershed to Wasteland at the very moment of cognizance.

 

"A young adult retells a story of depression at its miserable height.  Endless driving, back and forth across the same bridge, trying to find the right spot, just the right moment to pierce the railing.  Tears streaming down her face, she finally stops the car on the shoulder of the road.  "Who," she thought, "would take care of my horse?" 

 

And that is where I live.  These children are my mentors.  My knights in tarnished armor.  For these are the soldiers of my army, the cherished one's who failed to "pierce that railing."  We know each other by our eyes...we feel each other in the rare moments of calm.  And we never stop questioning the value of this thing called life -- deep down in our souls, where the secrets live.

 

That is the great metaphor stalking the pages of this book.  The horse as friend, confidant...healer. And the role of the many custodians of our sport...the teachers, trainers...the sacred camp of other students...grooms, barn owners, vets, farriers...show organizers...those who create a place in the sun, never realizing that the last line on their ledger is really a child's second chance at life.  And off to the side, beyond the comprehension of accolades and applause...a horse.

 

After decades spent tromping about the show grounds of the world, I still find these kids.  We own a mutual awareness -- a road traveled -- words unspoken, but heard.  It used to sadden me to think that love had a power of predation...an ability to hide behind the mask of sanctuary.  But then I had to consider that these children were still here, still standing...they had hold of the reins. And I would smile, for in the end, I knew they would be okay.  Because the horse, this dumb and often frustrating creature had usurped the pain...traded the worthlessness these kids felt for the responsibility, the accountability of putting an animal's needs above their own.  For showing that failure brings humility, not scorn -- that tomorrow is really a new day...an unspoiled opportunity; the clean slate these kids never experienced, never knew.  So today, I celebrate the horse world...from all the Knights in tarnished armor:                

 

 

They Might Be Alive
 

Of distant fields and triumphs,

An aging eye believes.

That fading accolades upon,

Such things we might deceive.

 

As ghosts go rushing by the gate;

And pastures fade to brown.

This horse upon the edge does fall--

Go round and round and round.

 

Spirits leave to live in wood;

Electric lights they dance.
Carousels by night do haunt,
These horses of romance.

In children’s hearts where horses dwell,

Forever to survive.
Touch such wood with gentle hands--
They just might be alive.

                                                       A. Allan Juell  1987

 

 

 

For: John Turner and those like him. You know who you are!

The Sign...

 

Quite Obviously a Case of Rogaine Abuse

Superstitions and Thoroughbreds...
 

Gotta Love it!



     On this farm, I decided to wean the old-fashioned way.  The first thing I do is check for the sign.  The sign is an off-shoot of some long forgotten secret society of Kentucky horse breeders who were expelled from The Odd Fellows Society for hanging around seedy places like racetracks, which in itself probably wasn’t that odd – though what they did with the winnings evidently qualified.  However, they could keep a secret it seems.  All most people can remember is that it has something to do with astrology, Bourbon, black mysticism, animal bones and an albino buffalo.  Nancy Reagan could explain it better than I can though I am willing to try.  Here goes:

 

Now according to “The Farmer’s Almanac,” that frightfully right-wing manual for potato farmers, each part of the body (apparently this also applies to humans, including children.  More on those possibilities later.), corresponds with a particular constellation – the 12 signs of the Zodiac.  This occurs when the moon wanders into say, Capricorn’s neighborhood.  However, since the moon’s orbital cycle is about 28 days and somebody just randomly decided to add a day or two to some of the months of the year, the system is kind of sloppy.  That leads to all that rising and falling stuff you read about in your daily horrorscope.

This system was actually formulated about 2000 years ago, though the Almanac didn’t say by whom exactly.  Plus, there is the small matter of the origin of Thoroughbreds, which only dates back to the 1700’s and was not only contentious, but pretty arbitrary as well.  Thoroughbreds were derived from Arabian horses (well, one Turkish horse too, but nobody likes to talk about that one), and given British colonial policy, probably stolen on top of it.  The British actually liked the Arabian horse overall, but wanted something with longer legs.  Once they achieved their goal, they changed its name and pretended the whole thing was their idea.  That’s really why oil is so expensive.

 
But who decided on the birthday presents?  Obviously it was Aires.  He got the head.  Virgo – poor buggar, he got the bowels.  And Libra?  A kidney.  Aquarius got the legs, but Aqua is the root word for aquarium so he should have gotten something like fins or a good face mask.  Ah, but there is Scorpio.  Nothing like having your loins rising or falling every 28 days or so.  Everybody else got appendages.  Thighs, arms or a foot.

So according to our 2000-year old anonymous soothsayer, young horses should be weaned when the sign is below the body.  Why?  Because we’re weaning the ‘body.’  No, I don’t know what good a body is without some legs attached, but who am I to argue with twelve constellations, the moon, Nancy Reagan or Aunt Bea’s favorite moonshine recipe.  This is tradition talking.  Oh, children should always be weaned in December.  You have at least six good days and they all fall before Christmas.  That’ll save a few bucks.  And guys, be careful about May.  The Almanac says it’s a good month for castrations.

Regardless of which system you choose to deny a young horse his/her rightful udder,

this is what follows:

 

     Most new weanlings follow the same routine.  I call it the weanie shuffle.  The weanlings all run around crazy for the first hour.  Then they congregate in a corner to choose a leader.  The guy that gets the long straw picks out a path and head to tail, they march around the paddock like soldiers on a scavenger hunt.  Every so often, a voice from the wilderness will cause the formation to break up into small, noisy groups that think they heard something important.  After a few minutes, they all decide it was a wrong number and return to their treks, only stopping occasionally to see if one of the group happened to sprout a bag.  A bag being an unattached mammary gland, preferably one that was both available and full of something close to 2% milk fat.  Colts are the worst, as they assume, quite illogically, that another colt’s penis has a mystical power to convert urine into milk, leading to all sorts of crotch snatching and less than sincere apologies.  Fillies join in of course, but they categorically fail to reciprocate the favor.  Instead, they just kick the offender senseless.

 

I can only stand about an hour of this nonsense before I retreat into the house.  Sure I feel guilty, but the best thing I can do is watch the “Wheel of Fortune” and let the boys and girls process the mess.  Besides, this is going to go on for at least a week, which is about the length of time it takes for me to lose my hearing and them to lose their voices.  Now if I could just lose my vision.

     UPS Guy:  “Sign here, sir…ah, what’s that horse doing…is he…?”

 

     Me:  “Nothing, nothing.”

 

     UPS Guy:  “Well, I just took over this route…Geez!  Look what he’s doin’!  Can I get a picture of this?”

 

 

 

Good thing there was no YouTube in the 80's

 

 

 

                                                                                               Excerpt From:

 

Lessons From A Horse

Horseshoeing School, 1971:

 

War is sometimes a very personal experience and not

always shared on the evening news.

    PTSD hadn’t been invented yet, though the whole class decided that we’d be happy to testify that it really exists whenever they actually got around to identifying war as a causative in anomalous behavior.  I found these two guys oddly reassuring in what seemed like a morbid or perhaps desperate kind of affection.  Certain noises – the backfire of a car, a news helicopter in the distance; those things would suddenly silence them.  Their bodies would tighten at the sound, yet their eyes never sought out the source.  Then laughter, almost hysterical; another swallow from the brown paper bag.  I knew that feeling.  It would come over me when I heard a beer can open, or when the door knob rattled in my darkened bedroom.  The muffled noises that filtered into my private space, delivered overtly from a sad kind of distant privacy. 

      I too, was among the drafted -- in 1969.  Same year I attended our non-graduation party from high school.  Couldn’t really stand one more achievement followed quickly by an elevator ride down the totem pole.  This time it wasn’t just peer digression, but a potentially fatal encounter with most of Indo-China.  On the surface it seemed like simple cowardice – not necessarily a negative reaction to being killed in whatever scenario the imagination could produce, but something else.  An awakening born of a subtle oppression that lived in the ‘50’s, but was being swallowed by the energy of a new decade that seemed to embrace an ideal that recess should never end.  Woodstock put other people’s expectations on notice.  The 1968 Democratic Convention, held in Chicago, was a declaration of a different kind of war for America.  One that would be waged unarmed -- on the battlefields of conscience.  The great orchestra of America would play on, but one by one, the musicians were leaving the building.  I had left myself about 1967, the result of smoking my first joint while listening to my sister’s Frank Zappa album:  “Absolutely Free.”  Can’t quite remember if it was “Son of Suzy Creamcheese” or that arresting symphonic riot known as “Brown Shoes Don’t Make It.”  Probably the latter, given the fact that I was never able to wear brown shoes after that day.  Seemed sacrilegious or something.

      1969 also marked the introduction of “The Great Human Egalitarian Though Slightly Obscene Body Lottery for Eighteen Year-Old Males Born in the USA.”  Winning was actually losing and the grand prize was an execution hosted by a mob of well-armed angry strangers.  Yes, the draft went democratic – or so they said.  Instead of poor white boys and poor boys of color going first, the poor white boys and the poor boys of color would compete for the coveted title of,  “Less Likely to Celebrate Another Birthday.”  I fell for it until I found out that my birthday was drawn in the 38^th round.  A recount seemed out of the question.

     I was requested to report for a physical by the Selective Service the same summer that Jimi Hendrix re-wrote the National Anthem.  During the ‘pee in the cup’ ceremony I noticed the fellow next to me was wearing black panties and a bra.  One of his fingers looked vaguely familiar.  I figured he was a shoe-in for some kind of deferment since the Army probably frowned on cross-dressing in combat.  Funny how things work.  He went to ‘Nam’ – I was excused by a cliché:  flat feet.  That only resulted in a 1-Y classification.  Three more slightly scorched draft cards finally earned me the coveted 4-F.  The only question more difficult than one’s own potential cowardice is the question about who’s left standing at the end and why.  But then again, I already knew the terms and consequences of violence.  So I suppose if the military taught me how to kill, then the only remaining question would center on who I might shoot first.

 

From: "Mares, Foals and Ferraris." 

 

And yes, shortly thereafter, I bought a horse.  And the horse began the long journey back to humanity.  And yes, we have all been at the crossroads.  The place where our mind must choose war or peace; in all its complicated and multi-layered facets.

Confession first...lame explanation later...

  
 

 Lids and Furlongs:

 

 

     Well, there was that small misunderstanding about the 54lbs of marijuana... 

 

Really belonged to the one-armed guy they handcuffed to the banister on the patio.  Naturally he escaped, dragging twelve feet of iron railing behind him.  You would have thought that he’d be pretty easy to spot.  Might have clarified things with the judge, though it really didn’t matter since the evidence had mysteriously disappeared anyway.  No, not corrupt cops.  The stuff had some quality control issues.  It had this really peculiar odor to it.  A little like sitting next to a live skunk that had eaten moldy sauerkraut for lunch.  You see, 1970-era marijuana was still in the pre-product improvement stage.  What that meant was that the whole plant got ground up -- seeds, stems, maggots, roots – might even find somebody’s finger in the mix.  Then it was distributed to consumers in a sandwich bag, affectionately known as a ‘lid.’  A lid was a pretty subjective form of measurement.  Kind of like a ‘ furlong’ in racing.  Nobody seemed to know where the term came from or what in the hell it meant.  (Furlong, not lid.)  The end result was that when you smoked a joint of this awful stuff, two things were bound to happen:  either a seed would explode and take out your left eye, or the heat generated in the joint would magically turn all the maggots into happy little flies.  And about the only way you got high was to smoke the marijuana with the plastic bag.

 

 Okay, a lid is roughly 1 to 3 fingers short of a full sandwich bag of weed* and each finger was considered to be about an ounce unless you were either near death from smoking plastic and dead maggots or you had fat fingers.  The term ‘lid’ was derived from the fact that an ounce of marijuana would fill an average sized Mason jar lid.

  As for ‘furlong,’ we can all thank the British again.  The word is derived from the Old English words furh (furrow) and lang (long) and originated in the 9^th century.  That’s probably why it is ‘Old English’ rather than something we can actually understand, like Hungarian goulash recipes.

Originally it referred to the length of a furrow in a one acre field.  Never mind what shape the acre was in because it appears a couple of oxen were doing most of the math.  So it comes out to 1/8 of an international mile, 220 yards or 660 feet – though none of that matters since the term isn’t recognized as having any real meaning anyway, particularly if you’re building a house or outrunning a cop.  Just hang onto this example:  five furlongs is approximately (British ho-hum math again) 1 kilometer. (Really 1.0058 km.)  A meter is one-quarter of one ten-millionth of the circumference of the Earth, measured where it passes through a well-known boulangerie in Paris, France.  I’m not sure why Paris claimed this distinction, but if you ran a race that began and ended in front of Gustave Eifel’s odd little monument, it would be a 200,000 furlong race.  No, I don’t think I’d wait around for the winner, much less a potential windfall on the daily-double.]

*Or, if you were a novice shopper, three fingers of oregano, basil and alfalfa.  Never happened to me though.

 

            From:

A book that eventually clarifies everything you really didn't want

 to know about...

Memories...

Thoroughbreds are the great rivers of heart and soul....sometimes to the point where fire and oblivion must meet.  Love them for sure, respect them always.  Dark Ivy left life at Beecher's Brook in the 1987 Grand National, Aintree.

For Dark Ivy

  

Blew cold and dark for all to bear,

Of mist and sheltered faces;

The hair stood high in veiled defense,

A proper day for races.

 

A heroes race this National,

A chase for gold and glory;

A danger sought, a risk fulfilled,

With age, a grand old story.

 

The horses know the test to come,

Much smarter than we think;

A finger points -- the flag goes down,

Tis time to ride the brink.

 

Death will lurk at every fence,

Its vacant face appealing;

Mouths take hold of nervous hands,

Each seeks a spot worth stealing.

 

The first fence looms in no regard,

For horse it’s now or never;

Take no chances here me boys,

Don’t try to sport the clever.

 

Three go down to kiss the earth,

The gamers gallop on,

Impatience paid a price today,

As odds be far too long.

 

To Beecher’s Brook the mob descends,

Three chestnuts and a gray;

Sticks are cutting madly now,

The devil joins the fray.

 

Still fresh and jumping bold for sure,

The four attack the wall,

Three will touch the earth again,

The fourth will get the call.

 

The gray goes down with little hope,

A fire burned so lively,

But flames upon the wind may be,

As frail as dear Dark Ivy.

 

But fields go on with neigh regard,

The thunder fades politely,

Such threads are thin for winners too,

A tear for dear Dark Ivy.

  

                                                                                  A. Allan Juell, 1987

 

{From my days as a hopeless romantic; born of the wrong century -- seeking forever a Renaissance for my wandering, chivalrous soul.}