The Pony Picture

I have a picture of my older brothers David, Richard and James sitting on a pony. The picture was taken on a hot summer day and the boys are shown shirtless and shoeless, just as they usually were dressed. Some enterprising photographer with a pony had come around the Windham apartments looking for business in August of 1948, when I was twenty months old. My mother couldn't resist. Dad was a little surprised when he came home from work to find that my mother had spent some of his hard earned money for a picture that he thought he could have taken himself. My dad had been in the business of selling pictures, and he considered himself something of a photographer. "But you don't have a pony, Artel," argued my mother. Dad smiled that smile of his which seemed to say that he would refrain yet again from commenting on what he perceived to be a lack of logic on my mother’s part.

Every time I see the picture I remember how unhappy I was that day. I wanted to have my picture taken on the pony too. For some reason I was not included in the picture. I may have been taking a nap, or my mother might have thought that I was too little, or you couldn’t fit four boys on one pony, and my mother couldn’t afford two pictures. I don’t remember now. I do remember how I felt left out, and I was unhappy about it. I cried and cried about it. When my mother understood what I was crying about she tried to find the photographer again, but he was gone forever.

Most of my childhood pictures bring back happy memories. I have another picture, also labeled as August 1948. It is a picture of the family at an amusement park. It is one of my favorite pictures. We are happy looking. I had become very tired and my dad was carrying me lovingly in his arms.