He’s a one-trick pony
One trick is all that horse can do
He does, one trick only
It’s the principal source of his revenue.
-Paul Simon, “One-Trick Pony”
My parents moved out to Lutz from Tampa in the early 1950s and bought a little one-room “honeymoon cabin” on Lake Hobbs to start a family. They built onto the house as the family grew and they bought a few acres of grove across the road from the house and made it into a pasture and garden.
Growing up in Lutz was a wonderful experience and I feel sorry for kids today who are being raised in a time when they are taught not to talk to any strangers and are not let out of their parents’ sight.
While growing up in Lutz was different than growing up in other areas, just growing up in that era was different from now but remarkably similar across the country.
Going through some old pictures the other day, I came across a photo of me sitting in a little cowboy outfit on a pony. I have seen similar pictures on Facebook and other sharing sites of other people, from other areas, as children, sitting on what could have been the very same pony and it made me think — what was up with the kid on a pony gig?
Turns out itinerant photographers would co-opt a pony and go from neighborhood to neighborhood and from house to house taking pictures of the local kids sitting on the pony and sell the photos to the parents. They usually even had a suitcase full of cowboy outfits to dress the kids up for their big moment. This was a nationwide occurrence. You can find these pictures going from Michigan to Texas to Florida and beyond, and dating back decades before my experience.
They probably had better luck in the metropolitan areas than they did in rural farm country, as many countrified homes had pastures and animals, including sometimes horses and ponies of their own.
We mainly had cows and chickens but we did have a pony for a while. His name was Cleve and he was one ornery animal. He would bite you if you got too close to the front and kick the slop out of you if you got too close to the rear.
We would ride him, bareback sometimes, and I even rode him to “Downtown” Lutz a couple of times. On one such trip, as my next-door neighbor Cheryl and I cut through the groves where the Lutz ballfields stand now, Cleve decided he was going to take a dust bath. He plopped down to his knees and I realized what was about to happen. So, as I scrambled off of him and away, I grabbed Cheryl, pulling her with me, “saving her life,” as he began rolling around on his back in the sand.
At least that’s what I felt I had done, but there was no parade or celebration for my brave deed.
Another time, my entrepreneurial instincts got the better of me and I was charging kids at the little ball field that used to be behind Old Lutz Elementary to ride Cleve around the bases. He only threw off one kid and he didn’t really get hurt, but when my mom found out what I was up to, I couldn’t comfortably sit on that pony for a while.
Turns out there was something called “liability” that could have cost my parents big money.
I guess I could have taken Cleve from house to house and taken pictures of kids on his back with my little Instamatic camera, but after learning about that liability thing, I decided to become a lawyer instead.
(Randall C. Grantham is a lifelong resident of Lutz who practices law from his offices on Dale Mabry Highway. . Copyright 2024 RCG)
Published June 12, 2024
