Just Horsing Around...

For a time I lived in the Canadian Rockies. Well, not in them, but... at them!
In British Columbia.
One of the things I enjoyed most during that time was the construction work I did in the remote mountainous areas of that beautiful province. I worked on a road crew as an equipment operator, and often, the work we did would be on bridges over sprawling tree-lined canyons, or side-roads and highways along rivers... and always, the beautiful mountains in the distance. Or sometimes, not in the distance at all, we’d be paving for days at the very feet of them.
I especially liked the week-long adventures, when the whole crew would be put up at a hotel in picturesque Who-Knows-Where... and after a minimum twelve-hour day in the "shphalt" most of us would carouse all night long until pretty much firing up the machines in the morning, and (bleary-eyed but ready) get right back to the spreading and pounding of gravel and asphalt.

One such job was at an isolated stretch of road leading to a weigh-scale area for truckers, and one morning, we were to begin the day at a set of train tracks that crossed the road. The goal was to pave the approaches to the tracks on either side, and as we arrived in our crew-cab we were notified by radio that the first truck hauling our asphalt to us was going to be delayed.
In post-carousal asphalt-worker language, such news means only one thing and that is this:
You may have time for a bit of a snooze, during which time you may try to process why your co-workers’ unanimously reported story of you stripping your shirt off and getting up on the table last night to dance with the waitress has somehow evaded your own ability to remember it!
This is exactly what I was doing this one morning as I drifted off... as we all drifted off in the crew-cab, parked there on the side of the road.

Soon, a slight rustling sound caused me to look to the side, open my eyes and see two absolutely gorgeous horses that had quietly sauntered over to the edge of a nearby fence on the other side of the ditch.
I stared.
There is only one thing more beautiful than naked horses... and these were mesmerizing. And they looked at me, somewhat expectantly, it seemed.
I got the hint.
I opened my lunch kit and brought out an apple and bit into it. The very crunch of it caused a couple of the guys in the cab to open their eyes, and the horses heard the crunch too as it bit through the morning stillness.
I opened the door of the truck and walked down the ditch toward the majestic beasts. If there were no fence they surely would have met me half way.
I bit off a big chunk of the apple, put it in my hand and fed it to the nearest horsehead.
The other came close to me and I stroked his soft cheek, petted him all the length of his long face and neck, as his lips twitched and he huffed and his big beautiful eyes saw only apple. Bringing it near, his lips reached out and took the whole thing out of my palm, and he munched away as I continued to stroke his neck and run my hand through his gorgeous cornsilk mane.

A sort of a snort.... then a chuckle.... undoubtedly some stifled laughter, caused me then to turn back towards the truck where several of the boys were literally in paroxysms of suppressed guffaw.
“What the hell is the matter?” I asked them, my hand never ceasing in its stroking motion. The horse still chomping away... by now, he was more like smacking his lips and wondering where more apple was going to come from.
Silence.
I look back lovingly into my horse’s eyes.

There is no doubt of it... I can hear the boys slapping their backs against the seats... rocking, roaring.... I turn back to the cab and make my way up the ditch. One of the guys, his eyes squinted shut in laughter, is looking at me and pointing back to the horse as I am about to open the door and get back in.
I turned and beheld what I can only imagine to be the most hugest humanly-inflicted horse erection that has probably ever been seen by a truckful of asphalt workers in the history of the great province of British Columbia.

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