Alice and Sharon being put through their paces in the basement
It was called the Harnessed Mares' Club. HMC. We didn't use the term ponygirl at the time. I didn't read that term until the mid-1960s when I found a copy of John Willie's work and first read his From Girl to Pony story and later his Magic Island. To Mom and I it was human mares in harness.
The members of the club included Mistress Nellie, who was called our stable mistress, very similar to what Janeygirl used. I was the only male member and both an "honorary" mare and stable hand.
Stable hand meant that I kept my clothes on as did Mistress Nellie. All the other members, mares, were naked during the meetings and we practiced harnessing, bridling and bitting, how to walk and marespeak.
Mistress Nellie's two teenage daughters were part of our group and their mom was clearly training them to be her lifetime mares. Also included were my mom, my cousin Alice's mom, my cousin Sharon's mom and Janeygirl's mom. And Alice, Sharon and Janey. So the "stable" as we called it for short, consisted of nine mares, one mistress and one stable hand/honorary mare.
My favorite part of a meeting was when we got to Mistress Nellie's
house and all the mares would remove their clothes. We'd fold them neatly
in the living room before we went down to the basement. The
Mistress' daughters were, of course, already nude and in harness
when we arrived. They would boldly hold open their front door to
let us all in.
My chief duty was to "tack" up the now naked mares before they were led into the basement. I got to put harnesses, bridles and bits on my own mother and all the others, with Mistress Nellie helping out or giving instruction. Practicing and refining marespeak was part of this event.
These meeting, held whenever the fathers went off on fishing trips together, were almost monthly all summer, early fall and late spring. In winter months they became less frequent. From 1949 until the last meeting in 1959 the group gathered whenever it could. This was in addition to actually going out to a farm where they could really be in harness and be real mares pulling wagons and carts. I got to learn to drive my own mother and all the other mares in our group.
My favorite was Janeygirl, but we called her Chestnut for the club. My mom's light blond hair had us calling her Blondie, and Alice was Nugget.
So Janeygirl's stories aren't so far from what we knew growing up as children and being part of the Harnessed (human) Mares' Club, Skokie chapter.