Old Friends

I've been inspired by Ms. Candide to share a bit of an old school book with you.

This comes from my elementary school, James Madison, which I attended from the first grade through the second. As I dimly recall, the book was being phased out, and the teacher simply gave the books to us at the end of the year.

This is one of the classic "Dick & Jane" books There is no print date, but the copyright is 1946 (Scott, Foresman & Co).

Here, you see the Table of Contents. The copyright information is that very fine print at the bottom of the page. The text is a little more complex than the stereotypical "See Dick run.  Run, Dick, run!" Here, the sentences are actually a little longer — as we shall see.

The selection I still remember is "Dark Pony," which the table of contents lists as a folk tale. Here's the first two pages:

Dark Pony (Folk Tale)
Every night a little dark pony came running along the road.
Every night he took boys and girls to Sleepy Town.
Every night his four little feet came galloping, galloping, galloping.
His color was dark, and he came at dark.
So that is why all the children called him Dark Pony.

One night a boy met Dark Pony running along the road.
The little boy called,
 "Please take me down
 To Sleepy Town."
Dark Pony stopped running.
Up jumped the little boy, and away they went.
Galloping, galloping, galloping.

[Next a little girl, then a little puppy, then Grey Squirrel]

How happy they all were!
They sang and sang and sang.
Soon Dark Pony began to go slower and slower and slower and slower.
He was coming to Sleepy Town.
The puppy, the squirrel, the boy, and the girl were all very sleepy.
And so was Dark Pony.
Slower and slower he went, and at last he stopped.
He had come to Sleepy Town.
And so had the puppy, the squirrel, the boy, and the girl.
They all had come to Sleepy Town.

It's odd. Whenever I think of this entry, I think of it as a poem. It's sort of formatted as a poem, but it does not have a regular rhyme scheme or metrical pattern that I can discern. Primarily, it has repetition; but it is more or less the same sort of repetition common to the remainder of the book.

If it pleases me to call it a poem, it does no one any harm. But I wonder what Mike Snider would say?