I Remember When…We Got A Pony

One evening in the late 60’s, mom and dad got all of the kids in the car and said “we’re going to the Comber auction”. Well, you can imagine the groans and objections, an auction is no place to take a bunch of kids, but once we found out it was a livestock auction we changed our tunes. We can go see all kinds of animals, it wouldn’t be boring after all.
What we didn’t know is that dad had built a stall in the barn and was planning on buying a pony.
We had a blast at the auction, watching the horses and ponies, cattle, pigs, sheep etc. being auctioned off. Dad bid on a draft pony, dappled grey guelding with a white blaze on his forehead. He was huge, almost the size of a horse. Dad was the winning bidder, he bought us a pony and saddle for $56. His name was Starlight.
We took turns taking care of Starlight, we all curried, fed and watered him, but it was my dad and older brother who cleaned out the stall every day. Since we didn’t have a fenced-in yard, we tied Starlight out on a lead beside the apple tree where we had our tree-house, that was the biggest open area with a lot of shade.
We had a lot of fun riding and taking care of Starlight that summer, but, one day Starlight started acting up, there was a mare a couple of fields over that was coming into season. He wouldn’t listen to us, all he wanted to do was try and get to the mare. He started running around, circling the barn and almost trampled my sister. Dad finally got a rope on him and arranged for the previous owner to come and pick up the pony that day. We all missed Starlight but understood why he had to go. It was nice while it lasted.

Filed under: I Remember When, We Got A Pony

I Remember When… The Science Fair

I remember when I entered my project in the Science Fair at Gosfield North Central School, it must have been about 1970. I did my project on “The Killing of the Great Lakes’. While the rest of the kids in the family were in swimming, I walked along the shoreline taking pictures of the dead fish and litter on the beach. It was disgusting! I wouldn’t go in the lake after that for years.
My dad helped me with my backboard, which was made of two pieces of plywood hinged together. I painted it and started to put pictures on it. I had a jar of lake water and even “captured” some air pollution in a mason jar by burning some “Black Snakes” a novelty item that looks like a black pellet and when lit, expanded really fast into an ash snake with a lot of black smoke.
As it turned out, I was the First Place winner for my grade and my prize was a model replica of the Apollo rocket and lunar module, I guess they didn’t expect any girls to win. I let my older brother build it and play with it.

Filed under: I Remember When, science fair