Okay, it wasn't a car and it was only mine for the few minutes it probably took for the photographer to lift me into the saddle and then aim his camera. But for that brief moment in the saddle I was riding high even though my butt couldn't have been more than a few feet off the ground; as you can see, the horse was pretty little!
But then again, I wasn't the tallest cowboy on the block either but thank God I was that age when being one and allowed to play with toy guns was not only okay, but also encouraged by parents! It must have been, for why else did my mother and every mom of every boy I knew buy us so many for Christmases and birthdays? We got pistols that fired caps and because nothing was projected through the barrels no one got hurt when we aimed them at one another and pulled the triggers!
If a kid of any age were to do that now a police SWAT team would arrive and the entire neighborhood would go on lock-down.
Somewhere along the time-line between then and after I grew into adulthood playing cowboy stopped being acceptable behavior and photographers with pony's stopped showing up in front of people's houses. It happened when toy manufactures were pressured by the politicians who were pressured by a new generation of moms to outlaw the making of toy guns without a red tip on the barrel to identify it as not real.
Personally I would have hated having to play with something like that because I wanted every piece in my make-believe arsenal to look real, otherwise the other cowboys on the block wouldn't have taken me seriously when I aimed one at them and barked a command to either surrender or fall down and play dead if it was there turn to lose. Hard to imagine now, but back then kids took turns losing and we were okay with that! Toy guns with red tips? That Mustang in the photo might as well have been the broomstick I rode before the photographer showed up!
But back to the moms that raised boys who either weren't taught properly or simply couldn't develop common sense, or were just born with violent tendencies and desires to pick up real guns to get what they wanted or to get revenge for something; maybe it wasn't the mom's fault as much as it was the whole of society for making them believe that kids of any age needed coddling and more parental guidance for everything they do.
I believe that is what happened and why a world that expects and demands we all be politically correct has become as dangerous and irresponsible as it has. Too many parents stopped teaching responsibility and too many encouraged kids to only be kind to one another and never mutter offensive words even if their only intent is to re-enact their heroes.
In our case it was guys like Hoppy, Gene and Roy. Television and movie actors that we wanted to grow up and be like and none of them were bad guys. To us they were on the right side of everything and they shot the bad guys, and at the end of every show a cool theme song played that identified their characters.
Maybe that's what we wanted, our own theme song, or only allowed to form our opinions and be allowed to think for ourselves and use our imaginations.
We wanted to be like those guys and it was okay. But when that new generation of moms replaced the old ones that saw things differently they may have secretly wished their sons were daughters instead. They began raising boys they didn't trust to make good decisions or comprehend right from wrong and they picked out different toys for them to play with.
Toys like soft-cuddly purple dinosaurs and sponge balls; toys that both boys and girls can play with together; they encouraged them to only laugh and be happy because they wanted them to believe that is how it will be someday out there in the real world if everyone could just form a circle and sing Kumbaya instead Paladin. They handed them Fruit Roll-Ups instead of allowing them to eat what they really wanted or be allowed to chew on a piece of grass that some dog might have peed on.
They monitored everything they ate and everything they watched on TV and they encouraged their sons to watch the Disney Channel because it was pure wholesome family fun and no one there was ever mean, and they forbid them from turning on the Western Channel because it promoted meanness and violence and surely would turn them into bank robbers or serial killers.
Those kids eventually grew up, and after being denied a chance to let their imaginations wander into any territory that may be dangerous many of them bought or stole real guns because they were too old to play with toys; they slipped off the leash their parents tried to keep them on and by then they were too screwed up to comprehend the difference between playing and acting out years of suppressed aggression.
The world was a better and safer place to grow up in when we weren't such an uptight society and before we stopped allowing kids to be kids; before we brainwashed so many of them to keep believing in the Easter Bunny until they get married.
That pony was just a prop on that day and millions of kids all over America sat on one just like it during that era. We played with cap-guns for the same reasons our parents bought them for us, because we could be trusted to know they were merely playthings and because there were fewer reasons to want to really kill our friends.
We played cowboys and Indians and we never thought of it as an insult to an entire race of people even though in reality it was. But we didn't do it for that reason because it was never drummed into our heads that it might be. We did it because we weren't taught to believe everything we did probably offends someone somewhere.
Those moms that bought into believing toy guns would certainly lead to wanting to play with real ones make it nearly impossible for some my age to talk about how much we enjoyed life when we were small, but I do, and I do with less remorse or guilt than many believe I should feel and I am not ashamed of that either.
It's not that I am a harsh or uncaring man, although I wouldn't need to wander very far to find many that would judge me otherwise. No, I am neither of those things; I am just a guy that grew up when boys could be boys and toys were just toys, and maybe a little ahead of my time if we only focus on this time.
As for those toy guns with red tips to indicate they are only toys; I wonder if I paint the tips of my Glock .40 caliber, or my Smith & Wesson 9MM red it would make them look harmless. The thought of that should scare everyone! How many of those red-tipped guns are really only make-believe replicas?
How would anyone really know for sure? Maybe those are the guns that should be restricted or outlawed, or maybe we could ban everything that looks like a gun and replace them with whistles.
Somewhere on Capital Hill surely a liberal law maker is drafting legislation. God help us, and forgive me Lord for my sins of youth when I pretended to be a cowboy and left a few friends lying in the grass for the buzzards in my backyard... even though they all got up and walked away when I wasn't looking.
As far as I know all of them somehow managed as I did to turn out okay. In spite of what some now regard as faulty behavior or poor upbringing most of us became law abiding, good, and productive people; albeit our stubborn resistance to changes we think helped make the world a crazy place sometimes and us a more dangerous society.
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