Chasing a Carrousel

I find it interesting how things come around – carousel horses too evidently. I lived a number of years in London, Ontario. This would be in the 70’s. I photographed a carousel that I had seen in Springbank Park and later on actually made a painting of one of the images. Actually it was more of a ‘paint by number’ picture really. I did it by projecting a 35mm slide onto a canvas and then traced the image with a pencil and painted it in, but you know what I mean, that is if you still remember what a 35mm slide is. I can’t draw worth a damn. Hey, maybe I should take up photography.

One of the reasons that drew me to the carousel in the first place, and the reason I took the photograph, was to capture the expression on the horses’ faces. I took a close up shot of the heads of three horses that were running abreast. From the expressions you would think that the animals were running for their lives.

I still am very much interested in the faces of the horses, as you no doubt know if you’ve read any of these carousel ramblings. And as the old joke goes this horse walks into a bar. The bartender looks up an says, ‘Hey horse, why the long face?’ I’m still looking at those faces, and recently I saw some very interesting ones. And some were long indeed.

Part of this story is about how I got to the next attraction, well me and my brother, eh.

At each of these rides that I visited I got a little bit of new information; from a pamphlet, a display, or I met and talked with a person who passed on a tidbit, and this iota was the thread that lead to the next discovery. It’s become a process. In this particular case the mention occurred in the town of Roseneath, Ontario where my brother Ralph and I had made a day trip to see and photograph the carousel there (see one of the previous bloggings). One of the people responsible for keeping this particular carousel running mentioned that the carousel, although a C. W. Parker, had on it several Herschell/Spillman horses.

What, who? I wrote the name down. I spelled it wrong.

I was also told that it was likely that Herschell worked for Parker for a time. They also mentioned that there might be some sort of a tie in to a young person who eventually because President of the United States. I haven’t even tried to untangle that thread.

Well when I finally got back to Scarberia I went to the Internet and did a search. That’s where I found out who this Alan Herschell was, the companies that he was associated with, and discovered that the company had been located relatively close by, in North Tonawanda, New York, for many years. The really cool thing about this particular fact was, or is, that the factory still exists.

It’s still there, wow, you got to be kidding. I have to see this.

So I talked Ralph into going on another road trip. Actually it didn’t take much convincing, Ralph was pretty keen on going once I mentioned it to him. The only problem stopping us from jumping in the car and heading off into New York at the first available day was the fact that my passport had just lapsed. Zut alors!

We pause in the narrative in order for me to deliver a minor rant: My brother and I happen to be from Niagara Falls, Ontario. In our yutes (that’s a ‘My Cousin Vinny’ reference) crossing over to the United States was no big deal. Here’s an example.

I can remember, after some function at one of the high schools, probably after the closing night of a musical (I attended one high school, Stamford, and most of my friends attended another, Westlane, so I ended up hanging around at their high school a lot. I participated in some of their events, like the musical, in a backstage or set construction capacity. I even had a key to their students council room, but don’t tell anyone that.), a bunch of us piled into some dad’s station wagon (back when station wagons were more tank than car and more like large personnel carriers) and crossed the bridge to the American side intending on alcoholic libation no doubt. We were stopped at customs on the American side and were made to get out of the car and enter the waiting room, all 15 or so of us. Now, as I recall, nothing major happened, no real hassles or anything, they probably just thought that 15 teens in a station wagon was a bit too excessive or dangerous (and they’d be right) so they turned us back as I recall. But I digress.

And maybe this isn’t the best example of getting across ‘the big ditch’ because we didn’t actually make it into the country per se. Okay, I agree with that. I’m sorry. All that I’m trying to point out here is that the crossing to the United States was like going to your Uncle Sam’s, no big deal as I said. Hell, it was the place where we did a certain amount of our underage (in Canada, legal in the U.S.) drinking. Well, when we could get across.

Oh, and by the way, our destination, North Tonawanda, was where our cousins the Carrs lived (whom we had visited on a number of occasions). It’s not like we were strangers in a strange land, although there are some who might insist that we were just strange.

Now though it is certainly a different world and a different border. Another point that I’d like to get across is that you didn’t need a passport to visit your Uncle Sam’s, or your cousins either; oh you usually needed some sort of ID, but you didn’t need a passport. I ended up having to put off the trip for a couple of weeks while I waited to get my bloody passport back (at the added cost of close to $100).

Finally the day arrived and Ralph and I headed out from Toronto (Scarberia actually, and I think I’ve already done that joke already, right?) and headed for the States. We crossed the border at Queenston, which is on a more direct line from where we started than the other bridges at either the Falls itself or the Peace Bridge that crosses from Fort Erie to Buffalo. We had to wait over half an hour at the border doing the car crawl up to the customs booth but that wasn’t too bad at all. It was a hot day, bright and sunny, and we had packed lots of music to listen to for the day. Soon we had left customs behind.

We amused ourselves on the trip, particularly on the New York side of the border, by talking back to the GPS unit that Ralph had programmed to guide us to the location. We ignored most of its routing suggestions because we wanted to drive to North Tonawanda by way of the river. We drove through some depressed sections of NFNY as we worked our way to the Parkway, and tried to follow some very bad maps that I had printed out the night before on my computer at home – maps that you could hardly read or make out any of the streets. Don’t let me get started on the limitations of Google Maps, I’ve already had my rant allotment for the day.

Still we made our way, a pilgrimage of sorts, to…

Ta da.