by A. Lawrence Vaincourt

A few years back, in rural Ontario, I chanced to observe a Mennonite farmer and his family on their way to town: Their vehicle: a black-topped buggy drawn by a single horse. It reminded me that during my childhood I rode in this type of vehicle many times, and that on my grandfather’s farm there was an ancient mechanism, commonly called a "horsepower." Basically, a large treadmill on which one or two horses supplied the motive power to operate a thrashing mill, a circular saw or any stationery mechanism that required a power source.

Ah yes! Horsepower, the unit of measure by which we determine the force necessary to convey our bodies, at high speed, from one point to another: But how many horses are enough? At one time, when our children were young, we traveled from place to place in a little car powered by a four-cylinder motor that developed a whopping thirty-two horsepower.

A few years later, more affluent, we owned one of the large cars popular at the time; powered by a huge, gas-guzzling V8 that drank like Uncle Louie at an open bar. However, as gas prices were laughably low we were not unduly concerned.

As the price of gasoline started to climb, common sense prevailed and we returned to driving a smaller car with a four-cylinder motor that developed sufficient power to carry us up the steepest hill and to earn for me several citations for speeding. In other words, sufficient horsepower.

Some months ago I changed my car, and influenced by I know not what, bought one with six cylinders. Those six cylinders develop one hundred and seventy horsepower, which is not really excessive when compared to other cars currently on the market, but is certainly sufficient to snap my head back if I should forget and tread too heavily on the ‘Go’ button at an intersection. The rest of the time it totes me along, comfortably, at slightly over the legal speed limit, which is what the thirty-two horsepower one did.

What’s going on? At a time when gas prices are going through the roof, everyone is concerned over the amount of pollution cars are belching into the atmosphere, and the legal speed seldom exceeds 100 km/h, car manufacturers are turning out ever more powerful motors and people are buying them. Cars and vans with power plants rated 200 to 450 horsepower are commonplace and advertisements make a fuss about how quickly they can get off the dime and show them traveling at speeds that would certainly earn them a ticket in real life.

Now there’s something slightly wonky here. The Mennonite in his one horsepower vehicle is poking along at a relaxed pace, bothering no one and enjoying the scenery; while the fellow in the multi-horsepower vehicle is belting along at a high rate of speed, eyes fixed on the road ahead of him, ever alert for natural hazards as well as other drivers like himself who are, also, in a great hurry and liable to resent a slower moving vehicle occupying the space ahead of them.

The fellow with the car, if he has a conscience, cannot help but feel a twinge of guilt over the amount of pollution that huge engine is pumping into the air. While the guy with the horse is probably feeling smug over the fact that his source of motive power is totally non-polluting, and that its only byproduct, after being picked over by the birds, will probably end up as fertilizer on someone’s garden or rose bush.

So why is all this power necessary, or desirable? A friend, who is rebuilding a Corvette with an eye to tweaking a bit more performance out of it, explains; it is not so important how fast your car can go, but how quickly it can get off the mark and how few seconds it takes to reach cruising speed. I’m so glad he told me that; now I get nervous every time I see a muscle car behind me at an intersection.

I am thankful that I no longer have to join rush hour traffic twice daily, but on weekends, as I keep pace with cars ahead, behind and sometime beside me, I ask myself how many horses are necessary to transport one or two people from point A to point B, what is the great hurry to get there and, for that matter, is it really necessary to go at all?

 

All Material © A. Lawrence Vaincourt

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