Writing back to Joey: My Dream Pony

In the early 1900s, a little girl named Joey won a pony named Sunny Jim. Here is an excerpt from her letter:

Last spring out to sunny Kansas from his home away up North in the cold country, came my darling little pony, “Sunny Jim.” His eyes were just like little tiny suns and everyone who sees him, their eyes shine too and mamma says he is a regular little ball of sunshine out in sunny Kansas for a little sunny girl and his name is “Sunny Jim. “

When I was a little tiny girl my grandpa said, “Some day I’ll buy you a nice little Shetland pony. ” Once when I was sick and the doctor’s medicine was very bitter he said, “Just take it, dearie, and go to sleep and some day when you wake up the Shetland pony will be here. ” I always dreamed of little Shetlands all black and spotted but they always ran away when I woke up. Now my grandpa is a real nice bald headed grandpa and when I was a baby they called me a boy’s name just because his name was Joe. So I thought if all my life I had to be called a boy’s name he ought to buy me a pony. But my auntie said when she was a little girl grandpa told her the very same thing and now she is too big to ride and would never know what good times she had missed. So I just knew my grandpa was having dreams too, when he promised to buy me one. But one day my dream came true and I’m going to tell you how.

One day a paper came to our house and the first thing I found in that paper was a whole page of little Shetland ponies and boys and girls riding on them. I read about it and it said the Webb Publishing Company of St. Paul, gave them away to little boys and girls. My mamma read it too and she said if I wanted to I might enter the contest.

I know lots of men who work on the road near my house and they all took my paper, because they had chickens and gardens and cows. But I believe the real reason was that some time in their lives they had had a grandpa who said, “Some day I’ll buy you a pony,” and it never came, just like the dreams I had when I was sick and the doctor came.

When I got the letter from the Webb Publishing Company telling me that I had won the prize I was so glad I nearly cried. I made my grandpa sit up and take me to the train that night. The first night I went to meet him the pony didn’t come as his train was delayed. So we all went to meet him the next night and sure enough he was there and the baggage man helped me up in the car and I was so happy I forgot to scold “Jim” for being a day late. I never said a bad word to him because he just looked up with his little sparkling eyes and he knew me from everybody else who came to see him and he just squealed the cutest little squeal and stuck his ears up and rubbed his wet nose all over my coat. Everybody wanted him to look at them but he just knew it was me he had come to live with, and when the depot man helped grandpa take him out of his box “Sunny Jim” let me get right on his back and grandpa led him up through Main Street, everybody coming along behind him.

I love the Webb Publishing Company more than anything in the world except “Sunny Jim,” because if the man that published the paper hadn’t loved us little girls and boys so much I would never have won my own darling “Sunny Jim” and my dream would never have come true.

If I could write Joey back, here is what I’d say:

Dear Joey (“Sunny Jim”),

Adults can promise many things. And when we are young, we believe them.

My grandma on my dad’s side had rheumatoid arthritis. I had never known my grandma to ever feel healthy. She was always a frail old lady with deformed hands, a pharmacy of “pills” that she had to take, who used a walker, moved around her house slower than the slowest snail on his slowest day, and read from a tattered business card-sized stack of Catholic prayers morning, noon, and night. I never saw my grandma outside.

My devout Catholic grandma was a widow (my kind, wonderful grandpa died suddenly when I was very young). She lived four hours away in my dad’s hometown of Manistee, Michigan. We tried to get to visit her house every few months at her (very) tidy house on 7^th Street.

Now, Manistee is a beautiful lakeshore town. It was where many timber barons lived about the same time as you received Sunny Jim. Manistee still has ginormous grand old homes, many majestic Catholic churches, beautiful beaches, and a Victorian downtown. But, as a child, I hated going to Manistee. It was a long drive, there was nothing for a kid to do at grandma’s house, and parents often bickered during the trip. The only respite for me was when we visited my uncle and his wife who also lived in Manistee. I was able to play with my first cousins for a bit, but we did not know each other very well so we hardly got through our awkward introductions when it was “time to go.”

Back at grandma’s house, we would sit at the kitchen table for hours. The adults would “visit” (talk about boring, adult topics) and I would study the sticky, vinyl tablecloth and note how my drinking glass with little glass balls for feet made the images on the tablecloth take different shapes. It was boring.

The days wore on.

Occasionally when my dad was busy fixing things around the house and my mom needed a nap, I was sent from the comfort of the basement living room to go “sit with grandma.” Now, I did not want to sit with grandma. It was one thing to sit at the table with my parents, invisible, listening to the mundane adult chatter. Having to go sit with grandma as her primary conversationalist was terrifying for some reason. How long would I have to sit there? Who was going to save me? I wished that someone would set a timer so that I would know when my duty was complete. During my time sitting with grandma, she discussed two topics with resolve: her faith and her health.

Grandma was determined to teach me about Catholicism (I was in catechism at home, so it was not like I was not learning about being Catholic anyway). Grandma’s dedication to saying her prayers morning, noon, and night was almost cult-like. She had me say her afternoon prayers with her sitting at the kitchen table, just the two of us. Most of the time I just listened. But, because of grandma’s dedication to teaching me about Catholicism, she insisted that I memorize one prayer that I have never forgotten, “Angel of God.”

Angel of God, 
my guardian dear,
to whom God’s love commits me here,
ever this day be at my side,
to light and guard, to rule and guide. 
Amen.

She would quiz me on every visit to make sure that I had not forgotten my prayer. I decided along the way that my cousins must have had their own prayers with grandma, too. Angel of God was my special prayer that I shared with grandma.

After the afternoon prayers were spoken at the kitchen table, grandma would shift our chats to talking about her other focus in life, her health. She would tell me how, when she was younger, she was active, vibrant, and beautiful. It was hard to imagine, but I tried. She would talk about the hats she wore and the things that her and my grandpa would do together. I think she was angry at her body for turning on her. There are medicines for rheumatoid arthritis, now, that my grandma did not have access to. She suffered for a long time. It was about that time that I started to wonder why God did not help her. For someone that was such a steward of the Catholic faith, for all of her praying, she just must not have had the right prayer in her well-worn stack. There was no other reason, in my mind, why God did not answer her prayers for good health. I was afraid to ask her why she did not track down the right prayer. But I wondered.

Joey, your grandpa regularly promised you a pony that you never received from him. My grandma promised me shopping trips that we would never take.  Grandma would tell me that once she could start on a new “pill” or once she could get into a certain doctor’s office, she just knew that she would get better and then we would be able to go shopping all day. She told me about how she would take me to the stores in downtown Manistee and she would buy me whatever I wanted! Hats! Shoes! Books! Sweaters! Jackets! Dolls! She said we would go to lunch downtown and order fancy drinks! Oh, the story she wove in my mind sounded wonderful, like a dream. Grandma and I skipping down the sidewalk in downtown Manistee with bags upon bags hanging from our arms. Giggles with each other! The secrets we would share! The fun we would have! “And, then…” she would say, “Once we purchase all that we can purchase in downtown Manistee, we will travel to Traverse City where we will find more stores! Fancier stores! We will have to stay the night in one of their elegant hotels, of course, and order room service!” She told me not to tell my parents about our plans, though. She wasn’t sure they’d let her take me on such an extravagant outing. We kept our secret shopping plans to ourselves.

For years as we made the long drive up to Manistee to visit grandma, I quietly wondered if this would be the trip that grandma and I could go shopping together. I did not want to ask my dad how my grandma was feeling because I was afraid he’d start asking me questions about my questions. This was a secret that I was determined to keep. Eventually, as the months and years went by, I began to realize that grandma would never be able to take me on those promised and amazing shopping excursions. Grandma never got better.  To this day, as a middle-aged woman, I have never told my parents about the secret shopping plans.

I realize now that grandma’s shopping trip dreams were as much for her as they were for me. Sometimes what grown-ups want to do and what they can do are very different. Joey, I think your grandpa really wanted to give you a pony.

Warmly,

Regina

p.s. When you wrote, “Now my grandpa was a real nice baldheaded grandpa and when I was a baby they called me a boy’s name just because his name was Joe. So I thought if all my life I had to be called a boy’s name he ought to buy me a pony.” I thought, well that is a smart sensible girl! I wonder if you had daughters and what you named them? Very feminine, flowery names, for sure!