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Everybody clap your shoes! Woooohoooo...the horse mall is in town baby! Please! Read this post while listening to the following tune:
There's this horse, let's say Johnny. Johnny is in the market to buy some new shoooooooes. He knew the market was coming for spring in his little, hill-side village called Starchiojd so he managed to fuck up all his shoes during the winter. His caretaker could put on the old ones, no one would notice, but damn, Johnny is one lucky horse. The biggest superstition of Cezar, the caretaker, is that his horses HAVE to have new shoes when the spring comes.
By his side, Madlein a nice lady horse, in her second part of life that came to market for a new bridle. Cezar ows her that. She managed to save his life last year when he fell out of the wagon, drunk dead. If she wasn't paying attention the cart would have run him over but she was nice enough to stop right in the instant the bloody idiot fell. Lucky the owner never found out. She's proud and one cool horse.
Around these parts they are the stars. When they come out, jogging easily, everything seems to go into slow-motion. A Chris Hemsworth and a Catherine Zeta Jones, Disney&Pixar style, side by side, with carefully planned moves and steps that would make even a Ferrari turn its head and check this pair out. They own the show and they know it. People are coming around just to catch a ride with them.
Their owner is a very wealthy gentleman around these parts that happens to be a horse lover so Johnny and Madlein have their future setled. They are not a couple but hey! this is Horse Hollywood so who said that during those winter nights they can't keep each other warm. Let's say their status is "Open Relationship" on facebook and they are OK with it.
Today is market day. First real day of spring and even craftsmen from 500km away came. A very rural area is a perfect place to place your horse accesories for sale. Horses, carts, cars, people and bikes in a mess that combines hats, winter jackets, second hand sweaters and slippers creates this place that still lives in the old but is somehow adapted to our times. Though the needs are the same, people here have different ways of coping with them.
It somehow looks like a twisted scene from "50 shades of Grey" where, in the end, some horse gets it. A BDSM of horses, with or without their driver. The guys making this are coming straight from up north of the country, from Bistrița county. Specialised in making all sorts of briddles and harnesses they also are able to put shoes in your horse's feet and also accessories you with the latest type of whip that will be like a shot of N.O.S. to your cart.
Whipping is back in the spotlight it seems...
While some people are negotiating their price, Ghiță and the pig family of 5, are still taking their morning nap. They traveled almost the whole night in the back of the van that brought them from Buzău. Ghiță is the laziest of them and he tends to occupy a lot of sleeping space. He bothers one of his brothers. Just outside, the owner is cooking their price trying to squeeze everything of the young buyer that is in the market for a pig to raise, to hold and in the end, to eat. Ghiță has no ideea that 9 months from now he will be bacon so now he just relaxes and bothers his brothers and sisters with his laziness.
Aaaahhh...a pig's life.
Around noon the market is fading out. Slowly but certainly, the carts are taking their drivers, the cars are taking their merchandise and Ghiță is on the way to his new home. In the end, only the trails of the vans and carts that left their wheel prints in the muddy soil and the yellow pieces of corn that already are being eaten by the soil are here to remind that a market is open weekly around these parts.
In Starchiojd everybody is starting the second part of each and every Sunday. Some are starting the grills while some are tending to their animals. The ones starting their barbeque always accuse the ones still working that they are going to bring God's Wrath upon the village. Sunday is the day of laziness. The ones still finding something to work around in their yard, call the ones riding the grills "putori". That's a romanian word for being lazy and unconscious; maybe a little drunkiard.
But who cares?!
Spring is coming and all around this far away village there's this smell. A fragrance of wood smoke, combined with pig feces, wet soil and freshly stepped on grass. Life is good, life is round.
Sometimes you need to check out this kind of places to realise just how nice it is.
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