Calvin Coolidge and I: How We
Spent the Day on March 4, 1925
Screen 1 of 7It was Inauguration Day in Washington. In just a few hours, Calvin Coolidge was to begin his second term as President of the United States. But to a 13-year-old boy in Bowling Green, Kentucky, there were far more important things to think about than the inauguration of a president--especially the inauguration of a Republican president. (At that age and as a result of my Democratic family upbringing, I thought "blackrepublican" was one word and well understood by everyone.) Nor was I alone that day in my notion about the unimportance of presidential inaugurations. My good friend, Lindsey Fitch (also 13) and I wanted to go fishing. Could we? Did we? Well, we tried. Here is what I remember.
Bonnie, a 3-year-old spirited pony had been purchased the year before for my older brother and me by our mother at a sale price of $50. But since our mother's monthly salary as a teacher was only $60, she had bought the pony on the installment plan, $5 a month for ten months. The sympathetic owner of the livery stable had not added any "carrying charges." So on this fourth day of March, 1925 Bonnie was almost paid for.
My brother and I had ridden the pony several times during the previous summer and fall--while Calvin Coolidge was campaigning against John Davis, the Democratic candidate for president; but in November we had "put her up" for the winter in a deserted barn owned by a nearby private school. Winters in Bowling Green were generally cold and wet and usually unfit for horseback riding. So Bonnie had been in a small stall in this deserted barn for almost four months with but very little exercise. Lindsey and I did not know at the beginning of that chilly March morning what this cooped up existence meant for a spirited pony, but were to find out before the day was half over.
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