Oh what a fantastic story! Thanks so much for tracking me down and sharing it! I agree, our horses are priceless! Like you, I grew up on them at Happy Hollow.
I would be happy to loan you the Arrow book, you can just send it back to me when you are done with it. Send me a message with a mailing address and I'll get it out to you. These books are out of print and hard to come by and when they do come up they go for about $80 - $100. (I got lucky and got one for $24) The writing is unfortunately quite amateurish, but the content is fabulous.
I spoke to the man who purchased the carousel for Happy Hollow back in the late 1950's. He was with the San Jose Jaycees at the time. He told me they had a hard time finding a carousel for the park and how important it was to bringing in revenue for the park. Our carousel was found in storage underneath the old Tanforan Race Track outside of San Francisco. He and his partners with the Jaycees came up with a bunch of guys with trucks and hauled all the pieces of the carousel down to Happy Hollow in the middle of the night. It was designed to tear-down and transport, but it sounds like it was quite an adventure hauling it in pickup trucks! Sadly, the carousel was up for sale being parted out on Craigslist a few months ago.
I'm really pleased to be incontact with another person who loves these horses as much as I do!
