MIke McCarty

The pony is long gone, but the little boy remains!

I was sitting on the sofa reading Don Quixote when a knock came at the screen door. As I approached I could see an old man, and behind him, just beyond the porch steps in my front yard, was a pony! Ponies didn't come to my front yard. Ponies didn't exist in my neighborhood. The old man said: "Would you like to sit on this pony, son?" Then my mother showed up and I knew she would put the squash on this chance of a lifetime. However, to my complete amazement, my mother was down with the program. I would sit on the pony and have my picture taken and my mother would give the old man money.

The man and the pony had parked at the end of the block and walked up to each front door looking for a six-year-old boy like me. They had with them, strapped to the side of the pony, the entire set-up: the camera, tripod, hat, chaps, boots, and even a red handkerchief. And so, under the magnolia tree in my front yard, with my mother looking on and my father at work, Trigger and I posed for this photograph.

During the brief time that I sat in that saddle I felt that Trigger and I had developed a bond, an understanding of sorts, a common sense of purpose: to rid ourselves of this mundane life and head out on our own and find something more - together. But alas, our short time together had come to an end - or had it?

"Ok, son, time to get off," said the old man. Suddenly I was filled with purpose! I kicked the old man in the shoulder, dug in my spurs and shouted: giddy yap! Trigger responded instantly to my bold initiative and bolted out from under that magnolia tree like Secretariat out of the gate. Down the sidewalk we flew toward Spain and the windmills of Cervantes. On we galloped toward adventure and away from our ho-hum life on Hammond Ave on the South-side on San Antonio, Texas. Farther and farther we went; my borrowed hat now off with the wind.

Well, actually, we only got down to the front of Mr. Porter's house, which was three houses down, when Trigger's legs gave out and he came to a full stop. His spirit was there, he felt it as I did - I know it - but his old legs had betrayed him.

Shortly thereafter the old man and my mother arrived to drag me unceremoniously out of the saddle and back to a ho-hum life, albeit now with some time-out restrictions. Back I landed at 1123 Hammond Ave on the South-side of San Antonio, Texas.

It was sad to watch as he was loaded into that trailer at the end of the block - head down, defeated, somehow. As the years have passed I've come to forgive him. There are times even today when I want to bolt forward with some bold initiative only to be brought to a full stop by these old legs. Ride on, Trigger, ride on.