HORSING AROUND

Old mate Glenn Larsen recently came to stay at home for a few days while he was doing a road trip around the South Island with his new lady, Deborah. Glenn, ex-Wellingtonian and now living in Waihi Beach, has always been a hot rodder, and has always been a thoroughly good bastard. He was one of the team who made up the NZHRA’s Executive Committee during those difficult years in the early 1990s when we didn’t know if we were still going to have an old car hobby in a year’s time. We’ve remained friends ever since.

As happens when old mates who haven’t caught up for a decade or two get together, there were a lot of conversations that began with “remember that time …”

“Do you remember that night with the margarine horse and the vegetable platter?” Glenn asked me. Now there’s a funny story! Shit, I’d forgotten all about that, but the images came rushing back as soon as Glenn mentioned it. So, let me tell you about the margarine horse and the vegetable platter …

Sometime back in the early-to-mid

1990s, there was an NZHRA Executive Committee meeting in Christchurch.

The Executive Committee members all went out for dinner together on the Saturday night to one of those huge smorgasbord-style restaurants where you go back and load your plate up as many times as you want. I think it might have been Valentines. It was an enormous restaurant — there must have been 200 or 300 people seated there. Our meeting must have coincided with a hot rod event in town that weekend, because there were a lot of other hot rodders with us at the same restaurant that night.

In the middle of the restaurant, there was a very long central area where all the food was. You’d get your plate, and walk along this seemingly endless row of food dishes that were arranged in a long, skinny rectangle. It was massive. Right in the centre of this massive food area was this absolutely bloody huge, life-size horse, sculpted from margarine. Or perhaps from butter. I’m not sure what it was made of, but it was yellow and soft. I don’t recall exactly how big the horse was, but if it wasn’t actual life-size, it was close. Like a seven-eigths-scale Pro Modified car – looked like actual size, but in reality perhaps not quite. The horse’s purpose was entirely ornamental. Someone had sculpted this thing, with incredible skill, and with every tiny detail perfectly reproduced. It really was a work of art. Understandably, there were “Please Do Not Touch” signs everywhere around it. Our horse was sculpted in full gallop — a bit like the Mobil Pegasus. Its neck was fully extended, its eyes wide open, its lips pursed as if it was panting from its long gallop across the Utah desert, and its mane and tail were being blown out straight by the speed of the warm desert wind. It was quite a beautiful sculpture, and I remember thinking what an incredible amount of work some very talented person had gone to, for something which was to last for only a very short period. Despite the huge bed of ice beneath it, it’s lifespan could surely only be for the weekend at most.

Which is why what someone did to it wasn’t really quite so bad …

Additional decorations to the central food table included some huge platters of various fruits and vegetables. Among the vegetables were some of the biggest damn carrots you’ve ever seen in your life. I reckon a bunch of us had exactly the same thought. And, of course, a few of us voiced the thought. Like … “how bloody great would that margarine horse look with one of those big carrots shoved up its arse?” All harmless comments and a bit of a laugh. No problem. Well … actually … there was a problem. Steve Williams was there. Steve’s a well-known Timaru hot rodder, drag racer, salt flats racer, and more than anything, a bloody hard case. Tell Steve something can’t be done, and he’ll do it just to see if it can. And, truth be told, he’ll usually get it done. So, when most of us might think something, and some of us might even say something, Steve Williams will do something. Larger-than-life Steve — without a second thought — walked over to the food table, picked up the biggest carrot he could find on the vegetable platter, walked to the back of the margarine horse, looked at it for a moment, and then in one smooth, swift, and incredibly accurate motion, buried two-thirds of that carrot right up that horse’s great big life-sized margarine arse. We all watched it happen. It looked like slow motion as the horse got it — but suddenly, there it was — and the roaring laughter started. First, it was just 30 or 40 hot rodders who watched Steve do it. Now, a couple of hundred other patrons at the restaurant were all wondering what the laughter was about, trying to see what we could see. As they all got out of their chairs to get a look at what was going on at the back of the horse, they all joined in on the laughter. Within a couple of minutes, there were 200 or 300 people laughing so hard that half of them, like our group, were in tears. Glenn said that he remembered thinking at the time that those pursed lips on the horse took on a whole new meaning once poor old Neddy had had the giant carrot stuffed up its bum. By now, the restaurant staff were all coming over to see what the commotion was about, and their responses ranged from embarrassment to looking away, but they were all joining in on the laughter. Eventually, the restaurant manager — a little short guy with a bald head and a big moustache — was called out by a staff member, and when he saw the reason for his entire patronage crying with laughter, he was bloody furious. Maybe it was his own horse. Maybe he made the horse. Maybe he was in love with the horse. I don’t know why he couldn’t see the funny side of it, but he couldn’t. He started barking out orders to his staff with a funny little high-pitched voice and a French accent that sounded like Rene from ’Allo ’Allo to “Remove ze carrot! Remove ze carrot immediately!” Then he yelled at his staff to “cease your laffing immediately! Zis is not at all funny!” All of his staff flat-out refused to even go near the horse, and some took off and hid so they wouldn’t have to do it. This made little French Basil Fawlty even angrier, and the sight of him huffing and puffing and pointing at the horse got us all laughing even harder. And, of course, that only wound him up even more. “Not funny! Zis is not even tiniest bit funny!” he yelled at us. But, it was funny. It was f*cking hilarious. By now, Basil’s performance had become almost as funny as the initial event. Eventually, with all of his staff having either bolted or just flat-out refused to extricate the carrot, he realized he had no choice but to do it himself. We all gathered around to watch him pull it out, and just as he extended his hand up high to reach for the carrot, a hot rodder called out, “Leave the horse’s arse alone, you dirty French pervert!” Others joined in … “Leave it there, mate — bloody obvious the horse likes it!” “You’ll make a horse’s arse out of that.” “It’ll turn around and bite you, mate!” The situation was becoming unbearable for little Basil and he knew he had to get this thing over with. Amid jeering and booing for taking away the source of our fun (and possibly for spoiling the horse’s fun) the restaurant boss steeled himself, reached up again; took hold of the end of the carrot protruding out from under the tail; and, with far less style and finesse than Steve exhibited during the insertion, pulled it out and almost ran as he retreated back into the kitchen out of our sight and away from our laughter, with the gooey margarine-yellow carrot in his hand. Over his shoulder he yelled in his funny little French accent, not wanting to look at us, “You do zat again, I call ze police!”

He was probably still seething in his office when the laughter eventually subsided. “I reckon I heard the carrot make a big ‘scchhhhllooooop’ sound when it came out” someone said — and that set us all off again. Just as we all calmed down from that, someone put his finger in his mouth, and did the ‘pop’ thing as he pulled it out. And on went … So — moral of the story — be warned. If you ever think of something that sounds really funny but which really ought not happen, just look around to make sure Steve Williams isn’t in earshot before you say it out loud.