O'Boy, My Father's Circus Pony

Saturday I was at my mom's apartment helping her put away her Christmas things. As I opened a cupboard, I saw an old cigar box.

Not really a surprise, since my father smoked cigars and then saved the boxes and used them for storing things. Knowing that, I wondered what was inside and why she was saving it. So, I opened the lid.

Old photos! And right on top was this one.

A picture of O'Boy, the circus pony my grandfather bought straight from the circus for his kids!

"That's your dad's cousin, Betty Jean," my mother told me when I showed her what I'd found.

I shuffled through the pictures in the cigar box and there were all kinds of photos of my father's family that I had never seen. I was most interested, though, in those of O'Boy.

 Like this one of my dad galloping past the camera in 1936.

 Or my grandfather, Robert Martin, showing off one of O'Boy's circus tricks.

That's my father in the back and my uncle Bob in front handing O'Boy something.

As my father told the story, his dad surprised the family some time in 1936 by going to a circus that was in town and buying a circus pony, bringing it home unannounced. When my dad saw him, he cried, "Oh, boy!" in excitement, and that became the pony's name.

I have very little more information beyond that, and had only seen one picture of O'Boy, so I was very excited about finding these in that old cigar box tucked away in my mother's apartment.

I credit O'Boy with my own love of circus horses and ponies, and my horse collection features quite a few from Breyer, Hagen Renaker, Donna Chaney/Animal Artistry, and even a Freeman Leidy.