Director’s Statement
About 10 years ago a neighbor told me a delightful story: when he was 9 years old, in the summer of 1967, he and his 11-year-old brother drove a pony cart from just outside Boston to Montreal so they could visit Expo ’67, the World’s Fair.
Of course I assumed the two youngsters were not alone – a parent or older sibling must have been along. No, my neighbor Jeff said. They were very much on their own. The journey was about 325 miles. It took them 27 days traveling at 5 m.p.h. And by the time they arrived at Expo, they had become celebrities!
I was full of questions: Where did they stay? Did anything bad happen? Were they ever scared? Why did they even have a pony and a pony cart?
But mainly I was intrigued by the biggest question of all: how could the boys’ parents allow such a thing? I always thought of myself as a fairly laid-back parent, but I couldn’t imagine setting two young boys loose in the world for nearly a month. Jeff replied, “My mother was different from most other parents. She trusted us to get it done, and we did.”
As a documentary filmmaker the story struck me as pure gold. It raises so many questions that are as urgent today as ever. What constitutes good parenting, and how can we teach children resilience, capability, imagination and resolve? Did Jeff and Tony’s parents do something hugely irresponsible and horribly dangerous? Or was it a brilliant move that gave their two boys deep reservoirs of self-reliance to draw on as they matured?
Equally intriguing, what does the pony boys’ story say about how our world has changed in 55 years? Would the trip be riskier for the boys today than it was back then, or safer? In 1967 there were no cell phones for instant communication, and no tracking devices to keep tabs on children. Jeff and Tony called home most evenings from pay phones or from the homes along the way where they stayed for a night. But other than that, they were essentially out of touch. Does all our high-tech communication these days make children any more secure?
Years passed, but I never forgot the story. Jeff and I would cross paths occasionally and I always reminded him that I’d be in touch some day to film the pony boys story, and he always indulged me with a slightly skeptical chuckle.
Finally, two years ago, I told Jeff I was ready to shoot an interview with him if he agreed. We did a 90-minute session, and after a long Pandemic delay, I was able to shoot an interview with Tony as well. The “boys” also lent me the scrapbook of news clippings, letters, postcards and other materials their mother had compiled in the months after the trip.
It was when I went through the scrapbook that I learned how deeply the story had resonated in the summer of 1967; how it had captured the imaginations of newspaper readers across the country and even internationally. Papers followed the boys’ daily progress, reporting on weather delays, steep hill climbs, and veterinarian visits. TV news shows and weekly news magazines featured the story — older brother Tony became the official spokesperson.
When the cart reached the Canadian border photographers were waiting to capture the moment of crossing (which turned out to be more complicated than the boys had expected). And it was being reported on the same pages as horrific accounts of deadly urban riots in Newark and Detroit, a war in the Middle East, and escalating U.S. deaths in Vietnam. I came to see that during that tumultuous summer it’s no wonder the pony boys’ story appealed to so many millions of readers.
The conventions of parenting may have changed since 1967, or perhaps they haven’t changed all that much. But at least one thing has remained the same: people crave a good adventure story with a happy ending – and for 55 years the pony boys’ improbable journey has provided just that.
