CHILDHOOD CAPERS - KEEP ON TRUCKIN'...

 Even when you're a little horse...

I guess it must've been around 1968 or '69 - possibly even '70.  I was out in my back garden with two friends, Alex and John, one a primary school classmate, the other a slightly younger neighbour from two doors along, who took a shine to a beat-up tin truck my father had brought home one day after finding it abandoned by the side of a road a few months earlier.  It might've been a Tonka truck, not sure, but John coveted it mightily, which surprised me, as it was hardly in pristine condition.  It had a little lever that, when you pushed down on it, lifted the back of the truck at an angle so that it could deposit whatever load its owner had chosen for it to carry.

Anyway, young John offered me his Marx Toys Johnny West Palomino horse (called Thunderbolt) as an inducement for me to part with my truck, and I accepted.  It was his idea, absolutely no pressure from me, and he seemed delighted with the swap.  Truth to tell, I half-expected him to chap my door at some stage and say that his parents demanded that he get his horse back, but it never happened.  However, there was no denying that I got the better end of the deal.  I think this occurred on a weekend, so imagine my surprise then, at school on the Monday morning, when Alex had a verbal go at me in front of a few other classmates for 'swindling' John out of his horse in exchange for my battered old tin truck.

Of course I denied his accusation, pointing out that he was wrong and that it had been John who had initiated the swap, even insisted on it, but he remained unswayed in his conviction - even though he had been there and witnessed the actual course of events.  I was completely mystified by his attitude, and I've occasionally pondered it over the years, wondering if it was simply jealousy that I'd got such a great deal and he hadn't, even though he'd evinced no desire to own the horse himself.  What took me aback about his attitude is that Alex was (and still is) as fine a person as you could hope to meet, so his 'outburst' was uncharacteristic, hence my surprise.

Anyway, I still occasionally run into Alex, so the last time it happened (at the beginning of December) I asked him whether he remembered the incident with a view to solving the 50-plus year mystery that had always so perplexed me.  No joy - he simply had no memory of it happening at all.  Something that I didn't previously know though, and only found out while talking with him, was that his younger brother was once a friend of John's, though I'm not sure whether that was the case at that particular time or didn't happen until later, in teenage years perhaps.  However, back home, it started me speculating, so here is a possible scenario for Alex's ire back when we were kids.

Let's consider that Alex's brother and John were indeed friends at the time this incident transpired.  Perhaps Alex's brother had himself coveted the horse, and had either heard of the swap from Alex, or had been told by John himself.  "What?! Are you mental, swapping your horse for that battered old thing!"  Maybe Alex had adopted his disgruntled brother's attitude by the time school rolled around on Monday morning and that's why he was suddenly so annoyed at a swap that didn't seem to perturb him in the slightest on the day it happened?  He was merely showing loyalty to his brother and his sense of aggrievement.

I guess I'll never know, but the above imaginary scenario is quite a reasonable one, don't you think?  I moved to another area in 1972 (3 or 4 years after the swap, maybe even earlier than that) and lost contact with John, but we ran into one another in 1978 or '79 (maybe '80) and I invited him back for a coffee to catch up on old times.  I still had Thunderbolt, which I showed to him, but he seemed completely uninterested in it; he certainly had no desire to retrieve it from me.  And guess what?  I've still got Thunderbolt, as well as another two Palominos and a sort of 'Piebald' horse from the same mould as Thunderbolt.

I've even got Johnny West and Chief Cherokee to go with them, plus Cowboy Kid and Cherokee Chief, which were released by Dapol around the early '90s or so, made from original Marx moulds.  I paid cash for two of the other horses, plus the latter figures, so at least no one can accuse me of swindling anyone out of them.  My conscience is clear.

Funny the things we remember, eh?  Or don't, in Alex's case.  But guess what - I wish I could find a replacement for that old tin truck.  It's taken more than 50 years, but I suddenly realise that I miss it.

No, this isn't the exact same truck I had as a kid, but it's kind of similar.  I borrowed the
pic from the Internet just to show you what mine was (sort of) like.  I can't recall whether
it had 6 wheels or 4, and I think the cabin was higher than the 'container' at the back