Fake Horse at 11:00
A Little Local News with Amy Barnes
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Second dip in Amy’s brain today. Enjoy.
🖤AV
There are many horse statues in Tennessee. Some are residential, in front yards: a fiberglass trio, four metal steeds pulling a metal stagecoach, and tiny versions next to yard gnomes and lawn jockeys. There are commercial ones, too. Abandoned grocery-store penny horses that don’t rock anymore. Forgotten carousel horses stored with Chuck-E-Cheese animatronics somewhere in a musty barn. Confederate statues in town squares and on college campuses.
I think about these horses that aren’t really horses often, silent equines whose hard, fake bellies ring hollow. My phone is littered with photos I’ve taken of them. I imagine an alternate universe where they canter with manes blowing on rural Nashville roads, they eat plastic apples from children, and count to ten with their hooves. I wonder what they think when they see their living counterparts across the road behind a picket fence. Trotting. Galloping on roads dangerously close to cars. Wearing plaid blankets with little brass buckles. Lying on their sides long enough for the neighbors to post on Facebook that there looks to be a dead horse near the post office.
Are fake horses fake jealous of real ones?
I went down a horse hole to find out how to buy one. When I searched, the first link came up for Walmart. You can have a fake horse delivered to your house. Some are available for the low price of $1,500, but go all the way up to $15,000 for the most deluxe model. There are a lot of them for sale.
I don’t miss the biggest horse and rider statue—infamous in Nashville—a giant abomination ridden by an equally-ugly KKK founder, Nathan Bedford Forrest, surrounded by tattered flags on tall poles. The statue was like the “scary” Lucille Ball in New York, but it didn’t get re-sculpted.
It was technically in someone’s front yard, but highly visible from the main interstate. The owner eventually died. Before the statue was literally knocked down by the city and (rumor has it) kicked to pieces by people attending its demise, it was spray painted by vandals, marking it as fake.
One string of suburban fake horses “lives” near me. On our neighborhood Facebook page, there was a protracted discussion about the wine-drinking couple who sat in lawn chairs and directed the installation of their life-sized fake horses. And, also how the horses still give drivers jump-scares because they don’t look fake when you come around the corner. It makes sense because there are real farm horses nearby. I guess it was ultimately decided by Bob and Mary Smith that it would be cheaper to buy fake horses than have to pay for boarding, feeding, cleaning, and gear. I wonder if the fake horses exist because the owners had a childhood of Breyer horses or they really hate horse poop. Are the fake horses only to look at? What compels a person to buy multiple fake horses, call fake horse installers, and have them set in concrete? I’ve never seen the neighbors “ride” one, but I wouldn’t be surprised to come around the corner and see the wife naked on one of them, laughing with long hair blowing in the wind.
My husband got ads for fake horses after we drove slowly past the horses near us, pondering their existence out loud. He let me know we don’t need any in our front yard. I do think he’d take one over a real horse.
Historical horse statues with famous generals are fixtures, especially in the South. I think it’s part of why the KKK rider and statue stayed up so long. Suburban horses, not so much. What would today’s version of a horse and rider statue be when people look back? A president astride a bicycle or in a black motorcade crypt? When Elon Musk dies, will there be a big ugly statue of him in a giant fake horsepowered, no-engine Tesla, next to a fake SuperCharger?
For a minute, I feel a little bad for Mr. I Had a Giant Ugly Horse Statue of a KKK Founder in My Front Yard, but more for his big fake horse. Perhaps instead of kicking it down, they should have buried the statue’s owner next to it, turning into a huge tombstone. It was his big ugly legacy. I can’t remember the man’s name who annoyed Nashvillians for decades, but I do miss the horse
In a fit of empty-nestedness, I’m back searching on Walmart.com to see if the price of fake horses has gone up again. I also ponder buying fake fiberglass kids (they start at $249.99.) If I cement them in my yard, they can’t go to college like my real ones.
My college anthropology professor told us the only things that really survive intact are cockroaches and stadiums. Centuries from now, when archaeologists excavate hard-shelled bugs and football fields, will the fake horses still be standing? Will they wonder if my neighbors worshiped life-sized horses named Walmart and Madeinchina? I have a fake horse in my online cart.
Does a retired horse from a merry-go-round count?