The Diving Horse

News Item - Atlantic City's Steel Pier scrapped plans to re-introduce its classic horse diving show this summer after protests from animal rights activists. For fifty years, Steel Pier patrons witnessed a horse and rider climbing to the top of a 40 foot platform. After appropriate music and a stirring introduction, the platform would tip dropping the horse and rider into a 12 foot deep pool. It wasn't exactly "Avatar" in 3-D and Cinemax, but it was state of the art entertainment for the 1950s.

I actually saw the Diving Horse Show in 1955. All the billboards along the drive to Atlantic City depicted the horse in full flight mounted by an attractive young lady in a (for those days) scandalous bikini. Travel arrangements for that particular day were such that I was in a different car than my Mom, Dad, and sister. I was seated next to The Cool Uncle - Uncle Algie. LIke any eight year old dreaming of a career alongside Hopalong Cassidy or John Wayne (Roy Rogers and Gene Autry weren't real cowboys. They sang and kissed girls. Yuck!), I was enthusiastic about seeing a horse. Like any poor soul married to my domineering Aunt Martha, Uncle Algie was enthusiastic about seeing the bikini-clad rider. What if her top fell off in the dive?

We made secret plans to slip away from the group "for a soda" and see the Diving Horse. It was a disappointment. The horse wasn't all that enthusiastic about climbing 40 feet. In fact, he was prodded along which even to my eight year old eye seemed cruel. The rider had a few more miles on her odometer than her depiction on the billboards. Uncle Algie muttered something to the effect that Aunt Martha looked better in a swimsuit. The platform tilted. The horse plummeted. The whole thing was over in seconds.

I am no animal rights activist. Had I known about plans to re-introduce the Diving Horse Show, I would have joined their protest though. Admission to the Steel Pier pretty much exhausted Uncle Algie's spending money so I never got that soda. It would have hit the spot that day unlike the Diving Horse.