Highway people

A 1970s-vintage Honda Civic (they looked a little like Gremlins, only smaller) preceded me off the I-205 exit yesterday. As we slowed to the left turn, I noticed something odd about the car (yes, beyond its being 25 years old with an aluminum engine block). It had hay scattered on its bumper, hay that wasn't going anywhere, even though the car was just exiting a 55 MPH speed limit highway. You don't see hay on the backs of tiny hatchbacks, even in Oregon City -- pickups maybe, but hatchbacks no.

Looking closer, I saw a bale of hay stashed in the back.

I wonder about that. Why would someone carry a bale of hay in the back of a 1970s-vintage Honda Civic? Does he haul really tiny horses? Is he taking the hay from the farm to the house's house in Gladstone (local reference: Gladstone is a middle-class residential area, pretty tightly settled)? If not horses, then what?

I never saw the driver in more detail than a silhouette against the front windshield, but I have to admit now that highway people can be every bit as perplexing as bus people; we just can't see them as well.