Life at the Amusement Park

Stowe, that is. Vermont, to be specific. The place where people pay enormous sums of money to “get away.” Oh yeah. Step right up (with your wallet) and we’ll do everything we can to get you far, far away.  As the Vermont saying goes: It’s more lucrative to milk a tourist than to milk a cow. Indeed.

Yes, I’m driving sleighs all week. Eight different horses and four different sleighs. Gitty-up. Two rides per hour. Ten hours a day – eight driving and two to harness, hook, unharness and unhook the giant Percherons and Belgians.

Oops, I lied. I didn’t drive sleighs today. It was my day off. And, instead, I worked my own horse, Big Jim, in the never-ending pursuit of firewood. But the sleigh-driving marathon continues tomorrow through Sunday.

This is all a rather long-winded (imagine that) way to say, I’m otherwise occupied and won’t be doing much writing until next week. I am, however, continuing to keep good notes on the experiences, stories and moments of everything interesting that happens after that moment when each and every ride begins with: “Hello, I’m Moike and I’ll be your driver.” And let the adventure begin. But I apologize if I ask where you’re from more than once because…well…you all kind of look and sound alike.

Oh no, sounds like I need some snob sensitivity training.

But, then again, it’s hard to remain snarkless after carting around blowhards like the fella who bragged about his massively lucrative “cancer product” business, his recent purchase of a million-dollar condo at the new Spruce Lodge, and then handing me a friggin five-spot at the end of having to hear his nonsense for 25 long minutes. Cheap bastard. But, as they say, that’s how the rich get rich: Screw the non-rich. God bless America.

My tips were uncharacteristically low yesterday morning. At first, I chalked it up to the fact that I was giving a lot of rides to mother and daughter combinations who, along with the British and French, are notoriously bad tippers.

But then we had a little lull in the action and I was chatting with two other drivers. As we talked up our experiences and the various tendencies of the horses, I reached for my chapstick and applied it liberally to my lips as I had been doing all morning. Being outside all day in the wind and the semi-cold dries me out like crazy, making my lips cracked and dry.

“What’s in that?” a fellow-driver asked.

“It’s just chapstick,” I responded.

“But it’s sparkly,” she continued.

Sparkly? Huh?

“And really red,” she added.

Oh no.

I pulled it out of my pocket, telling them the story of how I saw it on my eleven-year old’s nightstand as I was leaving for work that morning and, yes, “borrowed it” since I was in an urgent need for it.

“Look,” I explained, reading from the red/pink label, “it’s…strawberry….sparkle…lip gloss….”

Oops. I guess I should have read the label before then. Because it seemed like the last thing the good Stowe tourists want is a sleigh driver with ruby-red-and-sparkling lips.

I replayed all my morning rides and our conversations, but this time with the image of me in ruby-red-and-sparkling lips.

“Hello, I’m Moike and I’ll be your driver!”

“I love being in the woods with my horses!”

“I started working with horses seven years ago and fell in love with it!”

I went to my truck to see for myself and, yes, I was donning ruby-red-and-sparkling lips. And I laughed. And laughed. And laughed some more.

But then I thought: Fucking uptight tourists. What’s so wrong about a sleigh driver in drag? Some people have no imaginations. And most of them are tourists. That’s why they pay the big bucks to be entertained.

So, let me offer a new service to those so inclined: “ Hello, I’m Moike and I’ll be your horseman in drag….”

Hey, horse jobs aren’t that easy to find…

Diversify. Diversify. Indeed.

Any takers?