Household idol

We had a lawn jockey. I don’t know why. I don’t know if someone gave it to us. Or if my father bought it. 

But there it was at the entrance of the driveway holding an iron ring you could hitch your horse to. Dressed in white with a red vest, black face. We had it in Jupiter and brought it with us to Palm Beach Gardens and it stood at the entrance of the driveway.

A few years later, maybe 1968, someone left a note on it saying it was racist. I would’ve been 13 or 14. I’m not at all sure of the year. People were becoming more conscious of racism and even we were becoming aware of racist words and symbols. Instead of getting rid of it I proposed changing his race. I painted the face beige and the jockey kept his position as a hitching post for nonexistent horses. Now that the jockey was beige we could convince ourselves that we were not racist and never were.

Then he was gone. Someone stole the beige jockey and it was gone for a long time. Then it returned with a note saying he had run away, needed a change of scene, had a good time, many adventures, but missed us.

A newspaper writer and a photographer came over and wrote this pointless human interest story. A few years later it disappeared again. Then a different jockey, similar but different, appeared at the entrance to the driveway. I knew who put it there. It was two teenage brothers who had heard about the jockey and said they had it. They had stolen it and still had it, they said. But they had stolen a different jockey and now we had it. The strange jockey had also been painted over, deracinated with white paint, not with my beige, and it had a different base.

This is a stupid story about a stupid object we were stupid to have. Maybe it reminded my parents of Kentucky. I don’t know. It was a household idol. When we came back from a road trip it was there to greet us. Here’s home! Dad would say, as he pulled into the carport. I don’t know what became of the second jockey.

Another household idol we had was an iron Robert E. Lee figure, about ten inches tall, that my father kept on a table by the front door to use as a weapon if someone attempted to invade our home.

This object was purchased in 1965 during the road trip we took visiting Civil War battlefields. It was the Civll War centennial. We weren’t Confederate sympathizers. My ancestors had fought in the Union Army, but we picked up this souvenir of someone we had been told was an honorable general. I had a picture book that said he was honorable. I was told Civil War stories in which brother fought against brother and now we are at peace and try to work together.

Now that Confederate monuments are coming down in many places I think about that little idol, that little Confederate monument that stood in our entranceway and I can’t explain it. 

I wish I’d forgotten it.