Sunday, September 13, 2009

Station of Happiness

The father of a great friend of ours, who had retired from farming, decided to give his beautiful, strong, healthy donkey to our small son, Daniel. Another farmer craftily convinced the old man to switch donkeys with his old one so he could still farm and since the donkey was going to a two-year-old he wouldn’t know the difference. The day finally came when the truck arrived in our drive and the donkey was unloaded. Daniel took one look at her, with love in his eyes, and said I am going to call her Station of Happiness. We have no idea where he got that name from but it didn’t seem to fit, in our eyes anyway, the donkey was thirty some years-old and a bag of bones that could barely walk. But Daniel loved her. After about a year of tons of food and loving care she became a very respectable example of a donkey. This is a picture of Daniel and Station of Happiness in a turn-out class at the Mojacar fiesta horse-show. He and Station are turned out in authentic agüero get-up. An agüero is a water-boy who brought water from the natural springs in the mountains in four clay water vessels carried in hand-made baskets made out of esparto-grass. The agüero would go door to door selling fresh water to the people in the village.
Needless to say Daniel and Station won the competition for many years.
Station of Happiness became a valuable member of ANIMO taking disabled students that for one reason or another needed the strength, height and pace of a donkey. She even played in our yearly Burro-baseball fundraising game. That is another story all together because it is at one of these events the Jessica met her husband Matt, a marine stationed in Rota, and fell madly in love. I will leave that story for Jessica to tell.

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