Priceless!

Blaze the Wonder Horse had been hanging on a hook from our garage ceiling for a long time. Talk about an inappropriate place for a horse who had been riding the range under a variety of kids for nearly 60 years. Blaze, in fact, was my bouncing horse, when, in the late 40's and early 50's, my mom and dad and I lived in a tiny apartment behind my grandmother's house on Five Mile Line Road in Penfield, NY. My parents often tell me of the hours I spent riding Blaze and listening to the record the "Brave Cowboy Bill" over and over again. I seem to have a memory of climbing off Blaze's narrow back to start the record over, but that might be one of those memories that have been created by the retellings of others.

When I grew out of Blaze, other kid members of the Ellstrom clan rode him in my parents' basement. But for at least 5 years now, Blaze had been on a garage hook, and sometimes I thought I should take the old stallion to the road on garbage day. I just didn't have the heart, though. So yesterday, I decided to deliver Blaze to the Salvation Army in hopes that he would find a new home in some kids corral. I had just handed his reins over to the Salvation Army lady, when Mike Keville pulled up in his van, hopped out, and said, "You just turned a bouncy horse in. I'm going to get it for my kids." If I only had seen Mike a minute or so before, I could have delivered Blaze directly to the Kevilles. "Who did that horse belong to?" Mike asked. "He was mine," I said, and his name is "Blaze." "So his name shall remain," Mike assured me.

I drove over to gas station, filled up, got the car washed, and then stopped back at the Salvation Army just to make sure Mike had gotten the bouncy horse for his brood. "Yes, he did, " the lady told me. It was great. I was mourning giving up an old friend, and another friend bought him. The cost of one 60 year old bouncy horse named Blaze? You'll have to ask Mike. The knowledge that the Keville kids will be riding him into the future? Priceless!