Missoula’s Carousel Reopens This Week

By Sutton R. Stokes, 1-27-08

Two weeks ago Monday, a white-haired woman in jeans and a flannel shirt was carrying paint-flecked boxes from her car into a curiously shaped building tucked among the trees in downtown Missoula’s Caras Park. Inside, in the still-dark, still-chilly vaulted space, she laid out the day’s supplies on three folding tables: cans of paint, tiny brushes, pencils, empty baby-food jars, toothbrushes, rags, sponges, sandpaper, toothpicks, Q-tips, popsicle sticks, plastic spoons and two binders entitled Paint the Ponies: How to Paint Historic Wooden Carousels.

The day had dawned bright and cold, with the temperature not yet above twenty degrees and a winter storm warning announced for that night. Weather like this makes Maggie Caraway wonder if she did the right thing by moving back to her native Montana from Arizona eight years ago, but if she had never come back she never would have gotten involved with A Carousel for Missoula, where she’s been volunteering almost ever since.

And that would have been too bad not only for Maggie, who loves the carousel, but for the carousel itself, which depends on volunteers: if you count the hands that helped build the facility’s adjoining Dragon Hollow playground, the number of people who have pitched in over the years is in the thousands, according to director Theresa Cox, the non-profit organization’s only full-time paid employee.

At least it’s not hard to find good help. “The people I called this year to help paint were just thrilled to do it,” said Maggie. “It’s probably the easiest thing in the world to get volunteers to do. Missoula just loves the carousel.”

The carousel reopens Monday after two weeks of restoration. The work started with a washdown of the ponies and included two days of touch-up painting, followed by a tear-down and cleaning of the carousel’s mechanical parts, a top-to-bottom scrubbing of the entire facility, a new coat of varnish for each pony, and the re-sealing of the blond wood platform.

Since first arriving in Missoula in August, I’d noticed the carousel without really noticing it. I don’t have or know any kids, so I didn’t pay much attention, just figuring that of course a town whose image is so consciously wholesome and family friendly would have a carousel. But what could it have to tell me about Missoula beyond that?

It may seem strange, but — out of everything I learned while watching and talking with the painters that Monday morning — my favorite little fact is that some carousel purists apparently disdain A Carousel for Missoula a little, according to John Thompson, one of the lead woodworkers. It’s a matter of what you might call historical authenticity, or, specifically, the Missoula carousel’s lack thereof. Please understand that this isn’t a criticism; it’s the essence of our carousel, the thing that makes it truly special.

“Most carousels were commercial projects,” said John, making the point that old-time carousels were built by business people as money-making enterprises. The less work that went into building them, then, the better. John explained that this is why most long-standing carousels have maybe six different styles of ponies, and why so many carousels — most built by a small handful of companies — have similar pony designs.

“Ours are all different,” he told me with obvious pride. “If we’d known what we were doing, it wouldn’t have come out nearly as well.”

Indeed, the supposedly “historically incorrect” ponies are fascinating, one-of-a-kind works of art. I was glad to have the opportunity to explore and study them while the carousel was not in motion. Each pony was sponsored by private individuals, organizations, or businesses, and the sponsors were able to specify what their ponies should look like. The resulting individuality is astounding. Some ponies wear the armor and other traditional trappings of a knight’s mount, one wears a sun hat and carries a satchel of fresh produce for market, and there’s even a mischievous-looking donkey.

Decorations include family crests, elements from the local landscape (one of the “chariots” is crowned with a bald eagle and features a fighting trout on a tight line) and in-jokes among the carvers and painters (there’s this “basket” I’m not allowed to tell you the story behind). The intricate wood work on each pony is especially impressive when you consider that, among the many volunteers who contributed the approximately 100,000 hours necessary to get the carousel ready for its 1995 opening, only two had had any previous wood-carving experience.

“Everyone else just had to learn,” said John. (If you want to learn, the carvers meet every Tuesday; ongoing projects include repairing the carousel and creating new carousel animals for charity auctions, other non-profit carousels, etc.)

Four of the ponies have pennies worked into their trappings. These four were sponsored by local fourth-grade classes, and the pennies represent the $10,000 they managed to collect for the purpose — all in pennies — through donations, bake sales and the like. Thompson says that working with the fourth graders to design their ponies was “the most exciting, the most rewarding” part of the whole process.

“We carried two horses in to the fourth-grade classes and designed them on an overhead projector,” said John, who still runs into people from those classes. “They’re in college now, but they still talk about designing their pony.”

So what does the carousel have to tell me about Missoula? I visited expecting a quirky “scene” but found myself really charmed by what I saw. The volunteer time that has gone into creating and maintaining this labor of love speaks to a community spirit that Missoula should be proud of. Based on the evidence at hand, the people here are creative, generous with their time, a little audacious.

I don’t want to go too far with the metaphors, and I’ve never actually been to a barn raising, but I’m guessing that there would be a similar feel: neighbors pitching in to help with something everyone considers important; knowledge passed down between the generations; time and care taken with even the smallest tasks simply because there’s no point doing something — especially something for the kids — if you’re not going to do it right.

By 10 a.m., the volunteer painters had been at work for about an hour. They hadn’t all gotten right to work, catching up at first the way old friends will when brought together for a common project. But soon enough the chit chat was replaced by murmured conversations about how to mix a certain shade of paint or what grit of sandpaper to use, and the air turned acrid with the tang of mineral spirits.

As work proceeded, the painters leaned close to their ponies with the intent gazes of artisans or maybe even medical personnel doing triage — in fact, although the horses were found to be in good overall shape, a painter did find an injury to one mount’s wild mane, and there was a quick consult with one of the carvers about how to fix it.

Under the glow of the carousel’s 966 red, green and yellow decorative lights, the room was warming right up.

For more like this, check out the rest of the Missoula Notebook.