Maybe it was the big fancy truck...

Teddy in his sleek gooseneck trailer.


What makes us so blind that we cannot see what is right in front of us? Why do we let our prejudices and our past color that which stands before us, bright as day, bright as a white horse whose ancestors carried knights and kings?

I know that I spend an awful lot of time on this blog complaining about stupid things people say about me and the carriage horses, but sometimes they're just so unbelievably, entertainingly stupid they deserve to be retold here.

A couple of weekends ago, 76 Carriage horse Mike, fellow driver Kelly, Uncle Bill and I had a wedding to do in extreme South Philly. The job was too far for Mike to walk with the carriage, so he walked downtown to work, did a nice half hour tour for a lovely woman from Australia, and then was loaded on the gooseneck trailer for a short ride down to Oregon Avenue. Anyone who has ever been to South Philly knows that finding a place to park is no easy task, and it is even more difficult with a 30-foot horse trailer. So, we finally found a place near 10th and Bigler, right near Citizen's Bank Park (the Phillies were in town that afternoon).

We had the rear doors and tailgate down once the carriage had been unloaded and were re-harnessing Mike inside.

A couple of guys from the neighborhood pull up in a pick-up truck and strike up a conversation with Uncle Bill.

"That's a beautiful horse," they say, pausing to appropriately admire Mike's 2000 pounds of Percheron perfection. "So beautiful. Gorgeous. Very well taken care of."

Uncle Bill agrees. "Oh, very well taken care of."

They continue. "Yeah, not like those carriage horses you see downtown."

Oh, the look on their faces when they were told that Mike, the consumate carriage horse, had just come from work at 5th and Chestnut. Disbelief. Shock. And then, embarrassment. Humility.

And then they hit the accelerator.