In a Simple Lawn Ornament, Echoes of Slavery, Revolution

"They had black faces, and somebody didn't like the black faces, I guess. 'Cause we went out there one day, and they were painted white," Kehne said. "I'd imagine it was some kids. Running around at nighttime and didn't know what to get into, I guess. But we didn't make a big thing about it."

Kehne, who worked 29 years as an elementary school secretary, said maybe it was just a prank. Maybe it was racial. All she knows is that their black faces bothered someone.

"I think it was maybe some colored kids that did it," she said. "I just said, 'Well, somebody didn't want them black and changed them white.' "

And so they stayed.

Today, they wear red vests, red caps, red shoes. Their eyes are painted blue -- all blue. Their faces are white. "We just left them be," Kehne said.

* * *

When Margaret Darby was young enough to think that snow glittered because it was worth something, she imagined owning a horse farm someday. And that farm would have a lawn jockey like the one that stands today in front of Darby's Midnight Meadows farm in Clifton. It was what every horse farm should have, along with a turning circle and a tree-lined drive, she said.

"One of the things that I always had in my vision was driving past one of these lawn jockeys and it holding a lantern," Darby said. Hers is solar-powered, she added.

Now and then, she said, people ask her pointed questions about the dark-skinned groomsman.

"They want to know, 'Why is it a black person?' And I say, 'Hey, that's the way I got him, and that's the way I'll keep him,' " said Darby, who is in her fifties. "It's not any racial thing. It's just, 'Hey, that's the way the history was back then.' "

* * *

Joe and April Peterson's fair-skinned lawn jockey stands about four feet tall in his orange hat, which goes with his orange riding silks. Children love him: They pat his head. They hang on him. They measure themselves head-to-head against him until they grow tall enough not to care.