EVERY KID HAD A PONY

We have a beautifully framed photograph that dates back to the Thirties that sits on a buffet in our dining room. It’s a small black and white 5 by 7 in an old-fashioned brass frame, the kind that sits on a stand. In the photo a small boy is tightly holding the reins of a black pony with a hairy mane. On the pony’s stirrups is written the name “Lulu”. The boy is probably about four or five years old and seems slightly frightened as he stares straight at the camera without smiling. The pony looks weary as if it had been traveling great distances. What may seem strange about this photo is that both the boy and the pony seem to be standing at attention, military-style, in front of a brownstone stoop in South Brooklyn. Of course, to me neither boy nor pony seems out of place and the whole scene looks perfectly normal and appropriate.
Recently our adult niece was over one evening having dinner with us. She saw the picture for the first time and innocently asked, “Did you have a pony when you were a boy?”

Now back in that wonderful time and place, some enterprising individuals earned their daily bread by shlepping tirelessly through the borough with pony and camera searching for little boys and little girls. Apparently their purpose was to immortalize - at least on Kodak paper - those children whose parents had some extra change to spare for such luxuries. I’m sure these wandering entrepreneurs existed in the other boroughs and cities during the lean depression years of the Thirties.

I also remember, in those days, an old rinky-dink truck with a small carousel (we called them “merry-go-rounds”) in the back and on the bed of the truck. Excitedly, we would watch this ancient vehicle slowly limp into our Italian neighborhood. It always seemed to lean one way and then the other, weaving from side to side, especially when turning corners as it slowly made its way down our narrow streets. Now that I think of it, the carousel’s brightly colored horses were small, no bigger than the size of police dogs but they were big enough for us kids to enjoy. I remember that the whole thing worked mechanically, with no electricity at all, just the driver, with all his strength, pushing and sometimes pulling the carousel by hand round and round while we yelled out with all our might. I guess it sounds primitive compared to today’s video games, cable TV, and computers, but back then this was one of our most entertaining pastimes. And it was cheap too; I think it cost only a few pennies or maybe at the most a nickel. The driver would wait by the truck until at least three or four kids showed up. Then he would securely strap us on to our ponies and start the ride from outside the truck by pushing the carousel. Our mothers stood by, arms folded, watching anxiously and occasionally waving to us from the sidewalk. I don’t know how the guy made music in that contraption of a truck but I seem to remember hearing lively “merry-go-round” melodies while we rode those fast ponies pretending we were Tom Mix, Red Ryder or the Lone Ranger.

I looked again at the photo recalling that bygone time and without smiling boasted to my niece that in those days every kid had a pony, at least in South Brooklyn. She went back to eating her pasta with a quizzical look on her face.