Carleton Watkins Aurora Borealis
If their days weren't filled with the likes of July Forth festivities, then it was the arrival of a circus that set up in a field across from the McDonald Tavern, and if not the circus then it was performances by itinerant theater troupes at the hotel. In one of these theatricals young Carleton was on stage when he was six or seven years old playing a small part in a program based on Sir Walter Scott's, Lady of the Lake.[42] Carleton and his sisters also sang in the Glee Club and to their father's annoyance became involved with Whig abolitionist politics singing "Tippecanoe and Tyler Too"[43] all over Otsego County in preparation for the 1840 presidential election.
During the winter months in the mid-1840s young Carleton and his sisters were entertained by activities such as ice skating by the dam on the Susquehanna River, sledding on the Baptist Church hill, and sleigh riding with others their age to the nearby village of Otego.[44] The Watkins children attended the new one room school house that opened in 1842, where there were no individual desks and where the pupils sat on stationery benches facing an inclined shelf fastened to the wall used for instructional materials.[45] If we are to judge from young Carleton's adult application of occasional quotation from poetry to his photographs such as the phrase, "Inverted in the tide stand the grey rocks" quoted from Sir Walter Scott that he inscribed below of reflected view of Yosemite's Three Brothers [Fig. 8], or just the word "Shunshine" inscribed below his own self-portrait then we judge his education in the one-room school house with no individual desks gave him a respect for words that served him well as an adult.
Possibly the most direct antecedent events to Carleton's adult love of play were antics carried out with his Oneonta pals like soaking cotton balls in turpentine then tossing the flaming missiles from the Presbyterian Church tower,[46] or starting a pretend bank in an abandoned log cabin,[47] or starting a youth military company that wore paper caps ornamented with feathers,[48] or mischievous removal and relocation of building elements like signs or covering chimney tops with pots[49]— pranks that were accepted by the community apparently without adverse consequences in the spirit of boys-will-be-boys.