rocking horse head

photo: jetheriot

The nine-inch-long wooden dowel still stuck through the plastic head-carcass can be slid back and forth about an inch in either direction, prevented from falling out by some hidden internal mechanism.

Its sideways slide is guided by two circular cut-outs – one behind each ear – and the dowel can be freely rotated about its horizontal axis, but the cut-outs are so precisely sized to the circumference of the dowel that the wood scrapes the plastic as it slides, and even when I hold the head in full daylight it’s difficult to peer through the narrow circular gaps between the dowel and the cut-outs to see what’s going on in there.

I slide the dowel toward me and away from me as I squint into the shadows and can barely make out a screw screwed into the dowel, the head of the screw poking out of what looks like a small rubber stopper: a clever device to keep the dowel from sliding out. The stoppered screw bumps against the inside of the head just below where the mane cascades. At least that’s my guess from the outside looking in. 

But something’s not right. Why is there a second stoppered screw screwed into the part of the dowel that never enters the horse’s head? It seems to serve no purpose. Wouldn’t it just get in the way of the hand of a toddler gripping it? And why is the dowel asymmetrically positioned in the head with five inches (six inches if I slide it) sticking out from the right hole, and only three inches (two inches if I slide it) sticking out from the left hole – too little length for even a tiny hand to grasp. Surely when the horse was whole the dowel would have been centered.

Of course! The two stoppered screws are external stopper mechanisms – one on each side of the mane – serving to keep the dowel centered in mid-position with enough length for a toddler to grip. If that’s the case, how did one screw end up inside? The cut-out is so tight that it must have been rammed through the head with considerable force, enough to crack the plastic.

On the left side of the head, running rearward from the circular cut-out across the muscular jaw-line toward the chipped brown paint frosting the yellowed mane-hair is a meandering crack in the plastic where the stoppered screw must have smashed through. Once inside the horse’s head, the screw must have become trapped in the same way that a crawfish in a crawfish cage can’t find its way back out. (Some holes are easier to enter than they are to exit.) To center the dowel now, I’d have to break the head again. When I push the dowel firmly, forcing it against the plastic, the crack in the horse-head widens.

Maybe if I had a better window into the head, wider than the narrow spaces between the dowel and the cut-out, I could see how the screw butts up against its trap. If only there was a way to look inside the head instead of blindly deducing what must be happening from the outside looking in, maybe I could back the screw out the same way it came in, and maybe I could set it free, setting the dowel right.

I move the head of the rocking horse from my right hand to my left, wishing for a way to look inside. Then I realize with embarrassment that there is an easy way to look inside – no x-ray vision needed. I turn the horse-head upside-down and look up through its neck-hole. There’s the stoppered screw. There’s the crack in the cut-out. There’s the flap of plastic stopping it from escaping. The plastic looks fragile, like it would chip if I really forced it, so I leave the screw inside and the dowel askew.