Bobbie and the Horsey

Now here is an old photo.  I guess it’s not extremely old.  It’s only from 90 years ago.  It’s funny what you consider old when you get to certain ages.  When I saw these photos when I was a kid, they seemed so very ancient.  They were less than 40 years old back then.

This is a photo of my dad Robert Joseph Landry, Jr. when he was about 2 years old.  He was born at the end of January in 1929 and I’m thinking this photo was taken late in 1930.  I know for sure that it was taken in Lake Charles, Louisiana, at the home that he grew up in on Nichols Street.  I’ve seen that house in lots of other photos and it always seems to have a ladder leaning up against it.  What’s up with that?

And then there’s that horsey he’s riding.  Or is it a trike?  It looks like a cross between a rocking horse and a tricycle.  I looked it up online and found several images of this type of contraption.  Most of them are even older than this version.  They were a thing in the mid to late 1800s and some had steel wheels.  Maybe Mee Maw had one (or wished she had one) when she was a child and got one for her kids.

I looked further and thought that I found a name for them – velocipede.  I thought it was an interesting name, because it wasn’t a velociraptor.  It’s a horsey!  But then I saw that the definition of a velocipede is a human-powered land vehicle with one or more wheels.  Come to find out, I had a velocipede when I was a kid.

But it wasn’t a horsey velocipede!  My only consolation is that when I was riding a tricycle, we actually had horses to ride, too.  Yes, I had a pony!