The end of riding horses for dignified men in the old west


I was watching the old comedy western "Support Your Local Gunfighter" (highly recommended!), which I hadn't seen since I was a kid, and this is the first time that I've noticed the historical transition from riding horses to not. In a funny line, the main character gives the answer as to why he doesn't have a horse, and I quote:

"A man's gotta be numb on both ends to ride a horse! I'm a train man, at least a carriage"!

And just like that, I saw the historical transition men from riding horses in the old west to refusing to do so. A man in a suit with a silk shirt wouldn't dream of riding a horse, any more than nowadays a man in business suit would ride a bicycle to work, it just isn't dignified.

Of course, in the old west often there wasn't any other choice than riding a horse. Although many small towns in the west had train service, after you got off the train, you really had no choice but to walk, or ride a horse. Asking for carriage service from the train station would probably have just gotten you some strange looks, and of course there were no street cars, and no automobiles.

Nowadays we think of men on horses as dignified, and noble, but really it was dirty, and kinda smelly. If you've ever been on a real horse you know that. Although it's not shown in movies, horses would just stop anywhere and, uh, "do their business". Not very dignified for a man in a suit to sit there and wait for his horse to do that, before he steps off onto the street, being careful to avoid what other horses have left.

Please don't get me wrong, I love horses, and I think they're wonderful. If I could, I'd ride a horse around Phoenix (which is where I live) and would enjoy it more than sitting in a car. I'm also someone who likes to pedal around, and it's wonderful to get out there and breathe the fresh air, instead of being cooped up in a car all of the time. But if I was a man of dignity, wearing a suit with a silk shirt, I'd take the train, the streetcar, and when they were invented, automobiles.
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