Naw, that's not the first line of a bad joke. It's what really happened.

Cross my heart -- and a legal cigar was the only thing my buddy and I had been smoking when we pulled up to a Guess Road carwash recently and saw this beautiful, majestic equine obediently standing there being washed (but not waxed).

We asked its owner questions, the most obvious and stupid being "Why are you washing the horse in a carwash?"

You know where a horsewash is, sucka?

He didn't really say that, but the look he gave us conveyed that thought. "It's the easiest way," he said while loading the steed back onto its trailer.

Come to think of it, it was.

Before he did, though, he gave us a flier for the Ed Hawkins Trail Ride that's taking place this week.

I didn't get the horse-washer's name, so I called up Ed Hawkins.

"We been doin' this stuff for several years," Hawkins said when I asked about the trail ride that'll take place in Durham County, way out Guess Road.

As for using the carwash, he explained, "That's just the better way to do it. Horses can get sweat in their eyes" and hosing them down in the carwash allows you to rinse the dirt away, he said. "You have to be careful not to power-spray near its eyes."

Hawkins, of Guilford County, isn't a talkative chap, and it was hard getting him to talk about the annual ride. To him, the trail ride is "just some friends gettin' together to ride" and "no big deal."

Perhaps not, but it's a big enough deal that he and Greg Lee of Durham expect 300 or so riders belonging to horse-riding clubs from Georgia and South Carolina and as far away as New York, to bring their horses for the two-day event.

"It's gon' be a bunch of 'em from all around," Hawkins understated.

Hawkins, 73, grew up on a Guilford County farm. "I rode farm horses and mules the biggest part of my life," the retired mechanic said.

Lee, 45, said he's been riding for about 13 years. "A group of guys from Apex started riding at night and we called ourselves the Midnight Cowboys. It got so big we had to get somebody to keep a schedule of where we were going to ride.

"It just kept growing," he said.

When I first talked to Lee by phone, he was at the general store -- uh, Sam's Club -- loading up on supplies for the ride and the big Saturday night cookout that has become a vital part of the annual event.

On Saturday, Lee'll be riding Gunsmoke. "He looks just like Matt Dillon's horse," he said.

So, if you find yourself driving on Guess Road Saturday or Sunday and see hundreds of black cowboys on horseback parading by -- or if you see a horse in a carwash -- don't think your eyes are playing tricks on you. It's no big deal.