The Word - Vol 99

City Slicker

I was at a traffic light the other day and a truck pulled up beside me and it was from one of those rubbish and junk removal companies. Give them a call and they’ll come and take almost anything away and dispose of it for you. I used one of those companies before one of our moves, and it works great. They roll up in a big truck and load whatever you have. I think I paid by what the junk weighed, and they took it all away. Where they take it, I have no idea, but at least it’s gone. ​

This all took me on another trip down memory lane. Actually, not memory lane, but the lane behind our apartment building in Vancouver. Now, not to say I’m old, but I remember years ago when the junk man would come down our back alley in a cart pulled by a horse. Yes, a horse-drawn wagon. That was a big deal for a city kid. 

The year was probably 1954 or 1955. My Mom, Dad, and I were living in what was known as the Veterans Apartments on West Fourth Avenue in Vancouver. It was just down the hill from the main shopping area of West Fourth. We had moved from Burnaby when an apartment became available in the Vet’s. It was a low-cost apartment building that the government set up to assist military veterans following the Second World War. Dad was in the Navy for the war years and had moved to Vancouver from Winnipeg after the war. 

Back to the horse and buggy. I would wait for the arrival of the junk man to come down the back alley. Not so much to see him but to see his old horse. People would leave anything that the garbage man wouldn’t take, and the junk man would pull up in his slow-moving cart, stop, and drop a weight on a leather strap that I’m assuming would be the signal for the horse to stop and wait while he loaded the various items in the alley. As mentioned, it was quite a sight for a city kid. There weren’t many horses around Fourth Avenue in those days, or these days as a matter of fact! 

Those were also the days when you could get your milk delivered to your door. I don’t believe the milkman had a horse-drawn cart, I’m certain he had moved on to a truck. Every so often we’d get a winter that was cold enough to freeze the cream in the top of the glass bottles of milk, and when the cream froze it would pop up and out of the top of the bottle.

Recycling was going on even back then. The milkman would leave the full bottles of milk on the porch, and when empty, you’d leave the empties for him to take back on the next delivery. Correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t bread get delivered to your door too? Of course, these were the days of stay-at-home moms, when there were few mothers who worked outside the home. So, there was a lot of door-to-door trade going on—things like ice cream trucks, bakery trucks, and door-to-door salesmen like the Fuller Brush man. 

Back to the junk man and his horse. As I mentioned, it was a big deal to see a horse in the city. The only thing that could be better than the junk man’s horse, or the ice cream truck that would circle the neighbourhood, was the arrival of the Pony Picture Man. Once a year it seemed, a man would roll into the neighbourhood pulling a small horse trailer behind his truck, and inside the trailer was a pony complete with saddle and bridle! He’d set up on the corner of Fourth Avenue and Trafalgar, and as soon as that happened every kid in a four or five-block radius would run home and beg his or her mom for 25 cents, 50 cents, whatever the price might have been, so they could get a photo sitting on the pony. The pony didn’t move, it wasn’t a ride, it just stood there while each kid got a turn to put on a holster with a six-shooter, chaps, and a cowboy hat, for the big photo. That was the highlight of the year for me. When I was writing this little memory, I thought I’d Google “pony photos” just to see what came up. Well, it seems that I wasn’t alone in getting my picture taken on a horse. There were postings of people remembering the pony photos from all over North America. Texas, Arizona, California, North Carolina, Illinois. Seems like it was a cottage industry that flourished in the early 50’s and was pretty much gone by the mid 50’s

It was a moment in time when a city slicker could for just a moment be like his cowboy heroes, Roy Rogers, Gene Autry, and Hopalong Cassidy! 

Till next week…  
Wayne

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