… was this little finger-pinched monster guy. The blobby lump of his body has a pretty parti-colored glaze, and some sort of tool has been used to make the round, tooth-filled “mouth” in front. I’m amazed his little pinched arms have survived at all; his pencil-poked eyes give you a woeful look. He stands about 4 inches tall.
I was walking around a thrift store one day – and not just ANY thrift store… this was the “last stop before the incinerator store” – a warehouse where our local Salvation Army took all the stuff that hadn’t sold in their network of stores, set it out in bins and boxes, and let you come in to dig around and maybe find just what you didn’t even know you were looking for. Stuff in here was dirt cheap – a clerk there sold me lamps, bicycles, and really good stuff for $1, $2, and even less.
Anyway, I was digging through a box of cast-off household stuff when my eye caught a bit of shiny yellow clay. “Hello…” and I pulled this little guy up and out of the box.
Well being the softy that I am, I was immediately overcome with the need to adopt him. How had this object – obviously a child’s art creation, for goodness sake – ended up in the almost-trash at the thrift store?
I might have been the teensiest bit hormonal – at this time my own daughter was still pretty young and I had a couple of her clay projects at home, and I couldn’t imagine parting with them. It made me quite sad to think that someone had likely died, and their childrens’ art had been donated along with – most likely – a houseful of other belongings.
Anyway, Little Ricky here came home with me for a quarter, and after that I started purposely looking for children’s clay projects in the thrift stores. It still amazes me how often I find them.
