What I did on my summer vacation - part the two

And so… the intrepid travelers make their way over the highways and byways of British Columbia to the Burnaby Village Museum where they find, much to the delight of the Campbell of record, a village, and this...

And so here I iz making another post about something that fascinates me. In fact, let’s just call this…

The Carousel Take Three

You know, I’ve been thinking about my interest in carousels and carousel horses and I believe I have isolated the when and the where of it all, when the fascination first hit me. Now, to tell you about it we have to get permission from Mr. Peabody in order to use his ‘Way Back Machine’ and go back a few decades in time. I’m thinking we’d have to go back possibly to the middle to late 1960’s at a guess.

I recall, when I was a yute back in Niagara Falls, standing on a sidewalk located on a street that was once quite infamous in its day. Its name was, and still is, Erie Avenue. This used to be, again an age gone by, where women of negotiable affection plied their trade. But that was years ago and business and custom had moved away from Erie Avenue to other locales; the street and the buildings that I remember as that youth looked grubby and were in disrepair.

I remember looking in the dirty front window of an old rundown storefront, what you might call an antique store if you were feeling generous, past the corpses of flies, and seeing amidst the rather squalid items inside (I sort of recall the huge metal ‘harp’ out of a piano lying on its’ side) a beat up wooden carousel horse. I thought it was, in the jargon of the day, very cool.

In my mind that store was always closed, so I never had the opportunity to go in or to find out how much the horse was (and probably not that I could afford to buy it even then), or from whence it came. Still, the memory lingers.

Ah, my first horsey love.

The day after I posted the story I came across this shot of the building in question shot around 2005

My second infusion, if memory is serving this up correctly, occurred in Springbank Park in London, Ontario. I was a rock’n’roll musician back then (we’re talking the mid 70’s now) and I was this tall skinny bass player with long permed hair and a beard. I was also into photography, as they say, and had photographed (and even attempted a painting of) the horses on the carousel that is located in the park. The painting, I admit, was not a very good one and has fortunately been lost to the ages. I still have many of the images I shot back then, including a few of the horses and carousel, but these have not been digitized and were shot mostly on slide film (which is beginning to fade now). It was back then that I really looked at the expressions on the horses’ faces for the first time.

I’ve written at some length on this topic in an earlier blog entry so I won’t redo the rant here.

So since then I’ve been a photographer of carousels when I could find them in my wanderings. These ones from Burnaby are a beautiful example of the woodcarver’s art.

As it turns out, I seem to have turned another corner or added another dimension to my interest in carousels and their horses. I’ve done more than just photograph; I’ve actually researched this carousel in particular and found out a bunch of interesting information about it.

I found out the who, the when, and the where of its manufacture.

The carousel was built in 1912 at Leavenworth, Kansas (yes, also home of the federal prison and the fort of the same name) by Charles Wallace Parker who owned the C. W. Parker Company. This was the 119th carousel made by that company and it was sold initially in 1913 for $5,886.00. Its speed on the outermost track is a rocketing 7 ½ mph (and about 5 mph on the inside track).

Hell, I’ve even found out the names the horses were given during the latest round of restoration work that was started in the 1990’s (the horses were named by the patrons who paid for their restoration. Their names appear in the article that is cited below).

And if you’re interested in more on it’s history see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C._W._Parker_Carousel

The only problem with this list is that, at least online, there is no master diagram that shows you which horse is where on the carousel, or tells you where the numbering started in their tally. If I had this information I could tell you the names of all the horses I shot.

The exception to this is horse #37, known as "Old Paint". The horse was named for the "old paint" that was originally on the carousel before it was restored and is currently in a display case next to the carousel.

Another little tidbit of information is that Parker liked to use the term Carry-Us-All for the ride and some people mistakenly think that this is the origin of the word carousel. It isn’t. I believe that I also wrote about this at some length earlier in a previous posting.

Wow, what beauties these are. Go ahead, look at them all again. And there are more.

All photographs taken by me.

The Port Perry Fair (part the second)

 

Actually the clown in the car from the previous post was the official 'balloon lady' and I was told that she is something of an institution at these events. Clowns and institutions, hmmm.  There’s something in that combination of words that is worrying. Doctor, I don't want to talk about the clowns right now, okay?

Anyway, as I was saying, because things go in circles, there just had to be a carousel, and there just had to be a cute girl and her mom riding it, and they were nice enough to let me photograph them. I was already in the process of taking pictures of the ride itself. Look at that face.

Now look at these faces.

One of the things that fascinates me about carousels is the look in the animal’s faces. I see things there that are not all nicey, nicey.  I see panic, and fear, and sometimes other emotions. The people riding the ‘pretty ponies’ are oblivious to that fact. Odd, isn’t it?

 

The bonus round at the Port Perry Fair:

There was actually a 2^nd carousel there as well, this one in miniature. 

And  I spent a while talking to it’s creator, Gord Fraser, about carousels and other things. I told him that I really liked his work. I also, of course, spent more than a little time photographing the wonderful menagerie of animals that he had carved, painted, and set in place, like this dragon...

... stork

... tiger

...goat

...and camel.

But you can also see in the pictures a number of other animals that he had done a remarkable job on as well. Way to go Gord.

Pretty cool, eh?

All the photographs in this and the last posting are mine by the way.

Carousel

All photographs by Colin Campbell

Joni Mitchell, The Circle Game

And the seasons they go round and round

And the painted ponies go up and down

Were captive on the carousel of time

We cant return we can only look behind

From where we came

And go round and round and round

In the circle game

The Hollies, On A Carousel

Riding along on a carousel
Trying to catch up to you
Riding along on a carousel
Will I catch up to you

Horses chasing 'cause they're racing
So near yet so far
On a carousel, on a carousel

What do you think of when you hear the word carousel? Do you immediately think of the amusement ride (also called a merry-go-round or roundabout), or are you more likely to think of the thing at the airport that brings your luggage (if lucky) to the claim area after your flight? Say, does anybody remember the other type of carousel, the plastic thing that held your slides and transparencies and allowed them to be slotted into a projector one at a time so that the images could be shown on a screen? Anyone? No-one? I guess in this age of computers and digital media nobody want to admit to such ancient technology? 

I was actually thinking of the first meaning for the word as mentioned in the last paragraph. Again, as I've stated before, being from Niagara Falls Ontario I have this carnival side to my being; an appreciation for cotton candy, the sound of steam pipe organs, and the love of lights and glitter and glitz. For many years too I have been a fan of the 'kiddie' ride, the carousel, with the beautiful prancing ponies (the variations that have wild animals et al I'm not so keen on) going endlessly round and round. I've always liked them, though when I think about it I don't believe that I ever actually came across one in Niagara Falls itself. Hmmm. Anyway, I have always marveled at the figures of the animals.

There is something else happening here though and often you only see it if you divorce yourself from all the other distractions going on around you. Now that you have taken a breath and centered your attention take a look at the expressions on the horses' faces. Often what you see is that the animal depicted is frightened, often terrified, and the idea that comes to my mind is that these creatures are not leaping for joy, they are running for their lives.

Interesting isn't it?

And don't get me started about clown faces when seen close up. Now those are really scary.

Okay, History 101.Where does the word originate from?

Here's an entry I found for it on the web.

The earliest carousel is known from a Byzantine Empire bas-relief dating to around 500 A.D., which depicts riders in baskets suspended from a central pole. The word carousel originates from the Italian garosello and Spanish carosella ("little war"), used by crusaders to describe a combat preparation exercise and game played by Turkish and Arabian horsemen in the 1100s. In a sense this early device could be considered a cavalry training mechanism; it prepared and strengthened the riders for actual combat as they wielded their swords at the mock enemies. European Crusaders discovered this contraption and brought the idea back to their own lands, primarily the ruling lords and kings. There the carousel was kept secret within the castle walls, to be used for training by horsemen; no carousel was allowed out in the public. Eventually some small carousel rides were made and installed for royalty in their private gardens. Soon after that, with the pomp of France and circumstance of Paris a grand game was devised and played in Le Place du Carrousel. Along with a pageantry-filled jousting tournament it also consisted of "combatants" throwing clay balls filled with perfumed water at each other, thus those being hit would smell for days. A highlight of the carrousel was the ring-tilt, in which knights would attempt to spear suspended rings at full gallop.

Now that puts an interesting wrinkle in the idea of the innocent little ride, doesn't it? And when you think of it it also goes a long way to explain the expressions you see on the horse's faces.

All this verbiage here and all I wanted to do was show you a couple of photographs that I had taken of a nice little carousel I saw in Seattle a couple of years back, near the Space Needle and Science Fiction Museum.