Jake, The Carousel Pony - Chapter 2


  
When I was a young Pinto Pony on the carousel, there was a little boy who liked to ride me best of all.  Teddy and I would gallop around on the carousel all afternoon, while the waves crashed on the beach and the seagulls screeched above our heads.  We never got tired.  Teddy liked to dress in his cowboy clothes when we would ride together.  Teddy would wear his cowboy hat, boots, and his leather vest, along with his gun and gun holster.  Teddy's gun was a six-shooter with a pearl handle and looked just like the ones real cowboys used, but Teddy's gun didn't shoot real bullets. 

We were all very happy on our carousel by the sea, until one day something happened that changed everything.  Wildfire came to us and said, "I heard a man talking to Mr. Peterson about selling our carousel and all of us, too."  "Mr. Peterson told the man that he loved the carousel and would never sell it or all of us ponies, either."

Mr. Peterson always made sure all of us were covered up and protected from the rain.  He was very careful to keep the salt spray that blew from the ocean waves from harming our paint or our carousel.  He took care of the engine that makes the carousel go around.  He even kept the machine working that plays the music and turns on the bright colored lights on our carousel. 

The man left, but Wildfire said, "I heard the man say he would come back with other men."  "Then, Mr. Peterson might change his mind."  We were all worried and did not know what would happen next. 

The next day the man did come back.  He brought two more men to talk to Mr. Peterson.  Finally, Mr. Peterson told the men he would sell them the carousel and all its ponies.  We were all very, very sad.  Mr. Peterson was the saddest of us all.

Then, the men held an auction.  At the auction they sold me and my pals to  people who had come to see the carousel for the last time.  Some people came and bought Shadow.  Another man took Dusty away in the back of a big red truck.  One by one, all my friends and me were taken away from our carousel and the sea shore we loved.

One day, a young man walked by the store window where I now sat, alone without a carousel or my pals.  The man stopped and looked at me.  For an instant I thought I knew his man.  He came into the store.  He spoke to the storekeeper who had placed me in the window.  "Is that Pinto Pony in your front window for sale?" he asked.  "I'd like to buy him, please," he said.







Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

What's a Swamp Box?

Image
One thing you notice as soon as you start driving around Tucson is the many  beige-colored metal boxes  you see sitting on the roofs of houses all over town.   Some look pretty neglected and rusted out.   At first glance, you might mistake them for air conditioning units, and they are, sort of.   They are often referred to as “Swamp Boxes” by the locals.   A Swamp Box is what the heating and cooling industry calls an Evaporative Cooler.   It works much like a home humidifier.   The cooler contains a basin of water and a rotating drum with a foam pad.   Air is blown over the wet pad and into the house to produce cool moist air.   With an A/C unit, humidity is sucked out of the interior air in the cooling process, whereas with a swamp cooler humidity is blown into the interior air.   Since Tucson is a desert climate with very little humidity, for most of the warm season, an A/C unit is of little use.   The locals who have lived with their quirky swamp coolers since the 1960’s, like to
Read more

Desert Fruit

What distinguishes our Tucson home from all the rest in our post-WWII tract-home development are the two stately olive trees that grace our front yard. Our property is the only one in the neighborhood that retains its original curbside olive trees. When our development, and others just like it all over Tucson, were first built, its streets were lined with olive trees.  Over time, the trees died or were chopped down my homeowners who found the trees to be more of a nuisance than a distinctive shade tree.  The city of Tucson has since band the planting of fruit-bearing olive trees anywhere in the city.  Olive trees have a nasty habit of producing tremendous amounts of pollen and dropping huge numbers of olives all over sidewalks and streets. Believe me when I tell you that fallen olives will turn a sidewalk into a slippery purple-black mess. They are so bitter that the birds won't even eat them. People who come to the desert to get relief from their pollen allergies, have little appr
Read more

Figaro - Growing Figs in Tucson

Not long after settling into our new place in Tucson, I discovered a garden center just down the street that specialized in native plants.  Great!  I could now start learning how to identify and name all the local desert flora.  As I browsed the aisles and started noting names on the tags of the most interesting plants, I found my way over to the fruit tree section.  Just beyond the lemons, oranges, and grapefruit trees, I spotted an aisle of trees that looked surprisingly familiar. Could they be? Was it possible?  Was I really seeing rows of fig trees? Yes! They were truly fig trees. I had never expected to find fig trees growing in Tucson.  It was early September, and the figs were just beginning to ripen. Unfortunately, some trees were infested with fig beetles.  Fig beetles are gigantic iridescent purplish black things the size of a cockroach.  When they begin to feast on a fig, they swarm on that one precious fig until they are hanging from it like a bunch of deep purple grapes. 
Read more