Growing up in Boston in the 50’s, I remember two summertime treats I could sometimes convince my dad to give us at the end of a long hot day in his upholstery shop: a trip to our favorite ice cream shop, and a trip to the “flying horses”.

Back in the day, before freeways and air conditioned cars, both of these excursions would have taken 30-40 minutes driving on surface streets from the city into the ‘burbs. The ice cream shop was Higgins Ice Cream in Waltham, and the flying horses was my name for the merry-go-round at Revere Beach. True, dad’s Dodge pickup truck didn’t have air conditioning in the cab, but for us kids that got to sit in the open air truck bed, it was pretty cool.

Fast forward some fifty years, to the time I was living in Carlisle PA, freeways and air conditioned cars made it a relatively easy jaunt to visit the various New Jersey and Maryland coastal resort towns. Visiting the boardwalk amusement parks became the inspiration for this series of portraits of merry-go-round steeds.