Books and toys

When I was in third grade, I read and re-read a book, over and over, written as if through the eyes of Comanche, the horse that ended up being the last US Cavalry survivor of Custer's Last Stand at the Little Bighorn. (I've even been to visit him in person--he's in a museum here in Kansas.) Drove the school librarian half crazy, because I kept checking it out again and again, and the fact that it was 8th grade reading level didn't make her very happy, either. That was many years ago, and only small vignettes remain. I wish I could find it again, but unfortunately none of those vignettes include the title or the author. It's probably long out of print, anyway. Considering that it was written as if from the horse's point of view, I'm sure it was fiction, but I think there was a fair amount of historical research woven into it. I'd like to read it again, and see if my grown-up self remembers any of it correctly, and might correct or flesh out things that may have been skimmed over.

I also read Black Beauty, and as many of Walter Farley's Black Stallion books as I could get my hands on. I had a serious case of horse-crazy. But I also lived in town, and nowhere near anything like a public riding stable, so I didn't get much contact with the real thing. (Unless you count feeding marshmallows to my uncle's cutting horse, and singing to him, when I was two.) Instead I had a rather extensive stable of toy horses. Breyer was my favorite maker (they have had some really wonderful artists to make their models) but since most of my steeds came via birthday and Christmas gifts, I had examples from many makers, in plastic, glass, acrylic, and porcelain. Toward the end of my collecting days, I also accumulated other things besides horses. Cows, bulls, elk, deer, moose, buffalo... I even had several bears. Though, simply by happenstance, I did not get even one "teddy bear" until I was 16 years old. I did, however, have two different stuffed rats as cuddly toys when I was small.

We had a small fire, a number of years ago, that thinned out my toy collection drastically, and two floods that cleared out a lot of books. Lucky for me, I can still remember at least some of the fun I had reading and playing. Probably worth more than the things, by any measure. Part of the drive to make this blog is the hope that I will be able to remember. Happy memories, for me, seem to fade too fast, or never take hold at all, while the nightmares stick like crazy glue.