This is a total flashback from my childhood. I found this picture on Ebay i think. It was of the same wonderhorse I had as a kid. Ours is upstairs in our attic but the frame we threw away. The horse I attempted to customize many years ago. I guess I was customizing horses even way back then but didn't realize it. I wanted to make it a carousel horse but never finished it. Now I wish I hadn't done it. maybe I can RESTORE him to look original if the paint can't be removed. But anyway. THIS is the exact horse I had and played with. Seeing it all original like this almost made me cry. I get sentimental over things. I always did but after losing my mother it's even more intense for me now.
This reminds me also of something. I bought a replica of a Muller's Military Carousel horse on Ebay once. They were running them on sale with free shipping so I got a good deal. Anyway, I painted it black (am still in the process of painting it) with a grey and white streaked mane and tail similar to this horse's mane and tail. I wonder if it was my sub-conscience that told me to do it that color out of memory of the Wonderhorse we had as children? I will have to get him finished up and photograph. He's covered in dust in the basement right now. I need to finsh him.
But that reminded me of another Wonderhorse type thing we had as children. My love or obsession rather to horses was at a very early age and growing up in a city I wasn't around them, so my only sources for the start of that obsession was that Wonderhorse I had in the bedroom and the Wonderhorse outside on the swing set. We had one of those 6 pole metal swing sets that everybody was buying in the late 70's for their kids. Ours had black rope-like printed candy-stripe makings going up the poles. Looked like black rope swirling around the poles from top to bottom. The first thing on the swing set was a metal slide on the end. The ladder going up to it was on the side of it. Not behind it like most. The slide was on the outside of the swing set's main frame. The next thing within the set itself was a big reddish brown Wonderhorse, followed by two bench style plastic swings, a teeter-totter style see-saw swing, then a swinging bench type thing with two seats and a floor kind of like a small booth-swing..
The horse, I named it Ginger. It was the larger type Wonderhorse. You'd sit on it and there were handles on the sides of the head. He had a black and brown saddle I believe. He had a black mane and tail and a white blaze and socks. I spent more hours on that horse than anything anywhere in our yard or anywhere else during the summers. I used to stare out the window at him covered in snow in the winter, and on occasion ran out and put a blanket on it so it wouldn't get cold. I was 4 yrs old. lol
I loved that horse more than anything. I started drawing horses at age four out of my obsession. I got Barbie horses and My Little Ponies for Xmas. I was a horse crazed nut. And it started with those Wonderhorses.
Even after the swingset was torn down and taken to the dump, I kept the horse. I used to keep it in the backyard and play with him. Until one summer day my dad was loading up the pick-up with a load to go to the dump and he threw my beloved sun-bleached brittle plastic horse in the truck. He took me along for the ride. When he backed the truck up to this deep gaping ravene at the dump to unload, I tried to grab my horse back from the truck to save it but he snatched it up and threw it far off into the 50 foot hole of garbage and junk. My father took great pleasure in the tiniest of things that would make me cry.
Anyway, a couple years ago I was in google looking around for one of those wonderhorses from the same swingset I had and found these two photos.
It's all warped and sunbleached totally but it's the same one. That was my horse. I cried for a half hour after finding those pictures. It's the closest I've been in forever trying to find one. I can't even find a good photograph of the swing set I had or the horses that they sold with those sets. For some reason I always remembered my mom saying something to me about the horses being banned from the swing sets or re-called and that you couldn't get those sets with those horses on them anymore back when we had ours because some children had gotten hurt falling off of them and they weren't considered safe and had to take the WonderHorse off those sets. So our set may have been a very rare thing even having a horse.
I wish so much I could find another one intact. I'm always trying to find things associated with my childhood to get back.
Imagine....someone's child hood sucking so badly that their fondest memories of it are a sun-bleached, plastic horse.
Hey I followed the picture of the decrepit horse here while looking for the one I had. I had the same exact swing set, I actually got trapped between the bar and the horse once as a kid and the neighbor had to take it apart to get me out. That set was torn down probably at least 15 years ago. My dad though, he had dug a pit in the yard that he threw things in, he rarely took things to the dump. There's a small possibility that the set was thrown out there and an even smaller chance that it's up at the top but it was one of the last things to go in it. I'll go out and look in the pit next time I go over there, I may be able to lasso it out of there if I find it.
ReplyDeleteAwww that would be incredible if you ever found one intact! I know how things like that are so hard to come by because they're so big and bulky that when they've served their use outdoors there's nothing left to do but throw them away or store them in a barn somewhere but those finds are far and few between. Good luck. I've been thinking about that swing set recently as a matter of fact and I'm gonna go raid an old closet of my mom's and see if I can't find that old photo album of us when we were kids. I know there are pictures in that album of us on that swing set.
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