h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Paul Revere had to borrow a horse for his famous ride, loaned by the Larkin Family. Not long after he started out, he was ambushed by the British. Revere escaped, but the horse is not mentioned after that.

So, maybe revere's memory problems extend to remembering what happened to his horse, or his first horse.

Can we allow that the horse carrying Revere was vitally important to his success?

[Of all the animation studios, I think that Disney has a special knack for giving personality to horses. Disney *did* include Paul Revere in his movie "Johnny Tremain, 1957, but it was live action. Oh, well....]

Horses have plenty of personality on their own. We watch old movies and tv shows for the 'scene-stealing' horses.

I'm glad to hear that.

yes, horses have personality on their own. I'm just glad that animators and film directors remember that.

My grandmother recalled carriage rides into the Catskills with her family. On the return trip, no one had to tell the horses how to go. They knew the way.

We had a horse like that in the west of Ireland once. As she was pulling the caravan, we just let her get on with it.

Your grandmother was pulling the carriage? I know she was cool but that's mental!

*swats FWR with oversized fly swatter* Away with yer!

My grandmother probably missed those cool horses. Her childhood was far happier than the 19 years of her marriage. She lost her husband and mother the same year, and had a nervous breakdown. Memories of a happy childhood may have been the only thing that helped her get through that. (Oh, and there were two world wars and a Depression to cope with.)

Anyway, I remember her fondly as the most interesting person in my family. So she has helped me a lot, too. Stand on the shoulders of giants.

No, she didn't pull the carriage. Horse and buggy days are mostly gone for good, for the vast majority of us. But if she said the horses were really ntelligent, then they were intelligent. My grandmother respected them, and I do as well.

I was actually referring to Babe.

If the horse couldn't, she would have. All 80 pounds of her.

Babe wouldn't have been Dmitri's grandmother, would she?

Yes, she was. I think FWR got confused about which grandmother was being featured in the horse story this time.

Come on, I'm on nights, giant Angelic chickens, country and western Blackpool, now confusing horses... Cut me some slack! Lol

Now that I understand that, I think it's funny.

I had to make do with one grandparent: my father's mother, who seemed all but indestructible. How she coped with what she coped with has always been a mystery to me. Then she had to go and live to be 93, and be sharp as a tack almost all the way. When she died, I decided to grow up and starting drive cars and get a house of my own. Sometimes, the death of an ancestor can be the jolt that brings you to your senses. For whatever value of senses I possess.

I had three grandparents - two grandmothers, very different, and a grandfather who set records for different. In fact, he defined different...

The other grandfather passed away a couple of weeks before I was born. I only saw him in old pictures as a doughboy.

My grandmothers were 40, on average, when they gave birth to my parents, and my parents were 28 when they produced me, so 68 is the magic age that grandparents needed to live to. (Well, average is misleading, as my father's mother was about 35, so she needed to be 68 when I was five, and able to remember her.)

Wow. Then your grandmother did remember horses and carriages and such.

Mine were flappers.

One grandmother born in 1775, the other in 1885. If they had been in the right place, and showed enough talent, they could have taken piano lessons from Clara Schumann. But neither was the case. They lived in small towns in the U.S., where only the ambitious middle class families had pianos. And neither was eager to learn to play, as far as I know.

Your grandmother was born the year before the Revolution broke out? That beats the John Tyler story!

Change 1775 to 1875.

Phil Carret (1896-1998) was a money manager whose grandfather was Napoleon's quartermaster. A long time between generations in his family.

To stay with the horse theme, maybe someone had to nag his father to get busy and reproduce.