That was my first thought. I’ve spent years selecting artwork for jigsaw puzzles and almost half of the lighthouse images submitted have subtle (or intended to be subtle) Christian symbology incorporated.
I’ve seen gnomes, bathtub Mary, the racist jockey, horses, lions, Buddhas, and fake wishing wells. I can’t recall seeing a lighthouse. But maybe i just didn’t notice.
Everything but the lawn:
A lighthouse on a (considerably smaller than Lake Michigan) lake:
At a guess, I’d say it’s maybe seven feet (two meters) tall. And it is certainly NOT used for navigation. Likely a local homewner put it up as a sort of meta commentary on Midwestern municipal lakes.
Please educate a clueless furriner. What are racist jockeys as lawn decoration?
It’s a little statue of a black man dressed as a jockey. His skin is very black, his features are exaggerated to be slightly cartoonish, and he usually has a big grin. He typically stands next to the driveway, where it meets the street. And he might be holding an iron ring that i suppose you could tie your horse to. (Although the ones I’ve seen are too small for that to be practical.)
Thanks, but I’m still puzzled. Where does this meme of a racist caricature of a black jockey come from? What does it mean or imply (other than that the homeowner is a racist)?
In decades past, they were a pretty common yard decoration in the U.S. (I always heard them referred to as “lawn jockeys”). As @puzzlegal notes, they seemed to be styled in the fashion of something that one could tie one’s horse to, though they were likely too small for that, and they were still popular long after most people stopped riding horses to other people’s houses.
I hesitate to link to a picture of one of them, because, yeah, they were pretty racist.
And, as noted, they have, thankfully, fallen out of popularity.
Ah, I see, I think it’s similar to old racist depictions of black servants/butlers as props for holding dresses or bottles or whatever. I’ve seen those kind of things here in Europe, too.
There were several in the suburb where i grew up, which was mostly developed post WW II. I saw them outside houses built in the 1950s, and i can’t imagine anyone ever rode a horse down those roads.
I don’t want to link to an image, either.
It’s ok, I don’t want to see a picture either, I can imagine how they look.
Yes, i haven’t seen those, but it sounds exactly the same.
I always thought of them as stable boys dressed in the house’s livery. Haven’t seen one in decades, thankfully. I think the last one I saw had the face painted “white” (like the old Crayola “flesh” color).
Getting back to lighthouses, I’m now curious about their geographic range.
This.
They were footmen to accept and hold your horse or coach-and-four upon your arrival. Not a jockey who’d ride your race horses.
In any case, the message was like the butler @EinsteinsHund mentioned. A servant to stand out in the rain for you who had no life of their own and certainly not one you cared about in the slightest. After all, they weren’t White and therefore Did Not Matter.
I remember seeing lawn lighthouses in eastern North Carolina in the mid to late 90s, typically installed as a replacement for a traditional light on a pole. They were often painted to resemble Cape Hatteras lighthouse, which was relocated inland slightly in 1999. I always thought this sparked local interest.
Oh, my mom has a friend who still dresses her concrete geese in seasonal outfits.
I last saw a booth loaded with the things at an indoor antique show in North Carolina sometime in the early 2000s. I don’t see them in people’s yards anymore.
A water well. Or, more accurately, the top couple feet of well casing that stick up visibly. Locally the norm is well water, not city water. In fact I think of anyplace with sidewalks as “the city”, whereas my more urban-raised friends think I’m a quaint country mouse.
A great many lawn decorations are hollow and of a size that would hide these well casings. I figured well-hiding was a significant part of lawn decoration strategy (though clearly there are plenty of decorations that would not be able to hide one, too).
Our fiberglass fake boulder is an offense to the senses. People must suspend disbelief to accept it as a boulder. They must furthermore overlook the most unboulderlike flange molded into the base, and the bolt holes which would allow securing it that it might not be lost to the four winds. If I had ever put bolts in them, which I haven’t. Color me hopeful.
Not sure about actual installations, but in lower, slower Delaware (especially towards the ocean side of the county) it’s very common to see garden lighthouses for sale is places that sell outdoor decorations. We don’t have one at our shore house, but we do have a couple of lighthouse-themed lamps.
When I was a little kid, we lived in a house with a lawn jockey (it was there when we moved in). My dad went to a hobby shop and got a bunch of little bottles of paint. He turned the lawn jockey into a Caucasian lawn jockey, causing some neighbors to stop and stare.
Coincidentally, the racist black lawn jockeys were the subject of last night’s episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm.