The Wonderful One-Hoss Shay
I have to have minor surgery. I have had a thing on my neck for decades. My doctor looked at it and decided to refer me and so this morning I went to see the surgeon. He said it had to come off. Driving home I got to thinking that in my early years, and until quite recently, I took my body for granted. It never, or almost never, caused me any trouble. Now it is starting to complain about various things. My doctor tells me that it is all normal aging concerns. That set me to thinking about “The Deacon’s masterpiece the Wonderful One Hoss –shay”. It was a poem by Oliver Wendell Homes we had in our school readers a hundred years ago. Perhaps you have heard of it.
The deacon’s genius is that he decided that horse-drawn carriages needed special treatment in all their parts. He decided that “in building of chaises, I tell you what, here is always somewhere a weaker spot,- In hub, tire, fellow, in spring of thrill, in panel, or crossbar, or floor, or sill.
So the deacon then gathered all the very best material and made a masterpiece shay which looked as if it would last forever. And so it did until one hundred years later, as Homes says: “First of November, ‘fifty-five! This morning the parson takes a drive. Now small boys, get out of the way! Here comes the wonderful one-hoss-shay, Drawn by a rat-tailed, ewe-necked bay.
The parson was working his Sunday text,- Had got to fifthly, and stopped perplexed At what the-Moses-was coming next. All at once the horse stood still, Close by the meet’n-house on the hill.
Of course what happened is that, because every part was perfectly made and equally strong, the carriage fell apart all at once. When the minister picked himself up from the ground: “—What do you think the parson found, When he got up and stared around? The poor old chaise in a heap or mound, As if it had been to the mill and ground! You see, of course, if you’re not a dunce, How it went to pieces all at once,-All at once, and nothing first, -Just as bubbles do when they burst.”
I think that Homes has captured a universal fantasy. Most of us would like to fall apart all at once, and not gradually, a bit here and a bit there, as we do with normal aging. I guess I was as bit envious of Homes’ shay as I drove home. I expect that most people feel the same as they get older.
What is your fix on this business of living with our bodies?