Donkeys - First and Last

My model horse collection may be shy on mules (see Stubborn about Mules for more on that story) but it does contain an awful lot of donkeys.

I was always a horsey kid, but early on I fell in love with donkeys too -- probably due to two influential books I read as a child: Jean Klinordlinger's Whitman Tell-a-Tale book The Knott's Berry Farm Burro in Ghost Town, and Marguerite Henry's classic Brighty of the Grand Canyon.  Both books had great stories, but it was probably the illustrations that really got to me at first -- Peter Alvarado's sweet cartoon rendition of the burro Bucky, and Wesley Dennis's more realistic but equally appealing portraits of Brighty.

Image courtesy of vintagedisneylandtickets.blogspot.com

I was reminded of the very first donkey I ever purchased for myself a few days ago when reading the Braymere Custom Saddlery blog post for Cinco de Mayo which featured, among other things, a picture of one of Jennifer's comical bobblehead donkeys.  That charming little burro reminded powerfully of a bendy donkey I bought as child. ("Bendies" are what I call those figures made of soft plastic over a bendable wire armature -- like Gumby and Pokey were.)

My "treasure" -- a Brabo bendy donkey made in Hong Kong for Imperial Toys

That donkey was the first toy I ever bought for myself, and it commemorated the occasion of the first time I was allowed to go shopping by myself.  There was a small drugstore near my elementary school which I was allowed to go to after school sometimes if I had enough money to buy myself some chips, candy, or chocolate bars, but the deal was that I had to come straight home afterwards and not linger too long at the store.

That was different from "going shopping."  Shopping involved taking a bus to your destination and then catching the correct bus home.  Shopping meant going to a store with more than one cashier -- a store big enough to get lost in if you weren't paying attention to the layout when you ventured inside.  For me, as a child, that store was Zellers.  Zellers was a large, single storey department store, much like Kmart in the U.S.  By the time I was in junior high school my neighborhood also included a Kmart store, but in my opinion it was never as nice as Zellers.

I think I was about 9 or 10 years old when my parents finally decided I was old enough and responsible enough to go shopping by myself.  Technically, though, I didn't go strictly by myself -- I went with my very best friend.  It was her first "solo" shopping trip too, and we were so proud and excited when we got on the bus and started off to our destination.  Zellers was not actually very far from my house -- as I got older I used to bike there and back.  But it was far enough away for two little girls to require public transit to get there, and that was an adventure in itself.

Zellers had a great toy department all year round.  The huge department stores downtown, Eaton's and The Bay, had fantastic toy departments at Christmas, but in the summer their toy departments were dead zones featuring mostly sporting goods like plastic baseball bats, plastic horseshoe pitches, badminton sets, inflatable swimming pools, and beach balls.

Zellers had wonderful toys.  The ones that drew me the most were the books, the paint-by-number sets, the plastic animal sets, and the fad dolls of the year, which ranged from Lucky Troll dolls, to Little Kiddles, to Flatsies (I had at least one of each of these as a child).  They also had an unaffordable (to me) but jaw-dropping selection of Marx "Best of the West" horses and riders, and many large stuffed animals.  Lucky me scored one or two Marx pieces every year for a while, as they made excellent Christmas and birthday presents.  Give me a "Best of the West" piece as a gift and I wanted nothing else.

When I went on my first parent-less shopping trip to Zellers, I knew I had to purchase at least one toy to commemorate the occasion.  I didn't have a lot of pocket money, but in a bargain bin on a bottom shelf I found a selection of scrawny cartoony bendy animals, which included a homely grey donkey.  I had to have him.

Some of his wires are broken, so he's not as bendable as he once was.

And I have him still.  He's a constant reminder of that magical time in my life when the world was my oyster and I was rolling in pearls.  And like so many donkeys, real and fictional, he's impossibly cute -- in a homely sort of way.

Although not the main focus of my collection, I still collect donkeys to this day.  My last or most recent purchase was a John Beswick donkey that I bought last year.  This donkey was available in either brown or grey, and without thinking I chose the grey since most of my other, older Beswick donkeys were brown. 

"Hosanna," the latest donkey to join my herd.

In a way, she hearkens back to the donkeys of my youth -- to Bucky and Brighty, who were both greys, and to my bendy donkey, who was grey as well.

"Donkeys live a long time," Benjamin, the donkey in George Orwell's Animal Farm was wont to say.  My donkeys will live forever -- in my heart if not in my home.