Tom Mix & Tony Discovered

My Uncle & a couple buddies.

I love it when I find treasures hidden in old photographs. It's fun when you discover clues to history or a personal story embedded in an image. Take this photo of my Uncle (back right) and his playmates. It wasn't just the adorable expressions of three little boys posed in their dirty overalls that drew me in for a closer look. It was that the photo captured children playing. Photographs of children at play are a rare find in our family photo collection dating 1900-1940. 

While editing some of the damage on the photo, I noticed a Tom Mix and Tony emblem on the rocking horse.  My curiosity peaked, I did a little research.  Tom Mix starred along with his smart and handsome horse Tony in 160 western films which were produced in the early 1900's. Once having worked on an Oklahoma ranch, Mix brought his authentic cowboy prowess to life on the screen through his prize winning marksmanship, riding and roping skills. Tom Mix helped establish the western as a popular film genre in the decades before John Wayne and Ronald Reagan.

Even today, cultural references to this iconic figure still appear in music, television and film. All source credits - Wikipedia:

• In 1967, Mix was featured with many other 20th century celebrities on the cover of The Beatles' Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. 
•  In the "Mulcahy's War" episode of  M*A*S*H Father Mulcahy used a Tom Mix pocket knife to perform an emergency tracheotomy (1976). 
•  In The Beverly Hillbillies, Jed Clampett's reason for going to Beverly Hills was to live in the same place as Tom Mix. 
•  In the 2008 movie Changeling, starring Angelina Jolie, the mysterious little boy claiming to be Walter Collins finally confesses to the police that the reason he ran away to Los Angeles was in hopes of meeting Tom Mix and his horse Tony. 
•  In the 2010 Boardwalk Empire episode "The Emerald City", Nucky Thompson's servant Eddie Kessler offers to frisk someone who's come to see him. Nucky chides him: "You're Tom Mix all of a sudden?   

So now I know a little about Tom Mix.  I wonder if the youngsters in the picture pretended they were the sensational Tom Mix or if their playtime was grounded in the realities of working horses on the farm. I wish that the photographs could tell us more. If you can, I'd love to hear from you.
 

My Dad and a friend. Late 1930's.