During the last few weeks while unable to do very much awaiting my surgery next week, I decided to dig through some drawers, including one filled with photographs.
I am not one to enjoy having my picture taken, but I found several that bore a little resemblance to me.
As most of you or some of you know, I was born with very dark auburn, curly hair, and as I grew older my mother did not have it cut. I didn’t have a hair cut until I was into my teens.
Anyway, I found a picture of me about 6 months old, sitting in a large overstuffed chair, smiling, showing three lower teeth. Then I found one of the four of us: my brothers Earl and Sam, my sister Wanda and me. Wanda was a carrot-top (bright red hair), and as I wrote earlier I had very dark auburn hair. The four of us had on our Sunday best and smiling.
Then my mind started working and I suddenly remembered the pony and child pictures.
From the late 1930s — possibly 1938 — we have a photo of my younger brother on the back of a brown and white spotted pony. My brother, who bears no resemblance to the man he has become, looks scared to death and the pony looks bored. No telling how many other children had sat astride that pony’s back that day.
Anyway, that was quite the thing in those days, to have your child’s picture made on the back of the brown and white pony.
The man could be seen leading the slow moving animal up the street, and when he was working one street, mothers on the adjacent streets knew it wouldn’t be long before that pony would be led into their yards and they would race inside to prepare their children for their photo session.
In today’s homes, I would imagine there are many yellow-tinged photos of western-clad youngsters smiling on the pony.
The cameras of today can’t capture the excitement of waiting to climb on that pony’s back.
Remember those little snapshots made in the five- and 10-cent stores where you could go into a booth and for a quarter get a row of photographs that bore a slight resemblance to the subject? They usually were little larger than a postage stamp, but the colors, faded though they were, usually held.
What about the old Kodak camera, the ones that folded up, and then when you got ready to make a picture you had to slide it out on a track? It was heavy and it had to be balanced while you were trying to take a picture by plunging a button on the end of the cord.
Then we had box cameras. They looked like a square box.
Then along came the Polaroids, and instant photography and video cameras and everything that supposedly makes life easier so that we can have more time but we don’t.
It is sad that we are so involved that time passes so quickly that we can’t enjoy the time that is so precious.
Maybe we should bring back the brown and white pony.
