Donkey engines

I have no idea what the phrase 'donkey engine' means to you. To me it means a small steam engine.

Misery Guts (my stepfather) gave me one in 1963. A small thing consisting of a brass cylinder for a boiler with a space beneath which one could light a fire and a tiny piston fed with steam from the boiler. It had a flywheel to store enough energy to keep it going and it was perfectly useless as a source of power for anything at all.

I can't remember any toy giving me half as much pleasure as that donkey engine. Just the having of it accrued status among my friends. We'd gather fuel of various sorts ranging from sticks to candles to methylated spirits (Methyl Alcohol) and we'd overheat that poor piece of brass almost to the point of melting it's solder.

We'd couple it to our mechano set constructions and marvel at the breeze a few spokes could produce in summer. We got more pleasure from that slight breeze than I ever got from air-conditioning.

I wish I knew what happened to it. I don't remember having it after 1965 and I suspect it was thrown out. My folks were like that. Mum would, about twice a year, go through our stuff and throw things out if she suspected we hadn't used them recently. I remember one book in particular that I had to save from oblivion at least half a dozen times. It was 'Frontiers of Astronomy' by Fred Hoyle. I suspect that part of why I had to keep on rescuing it was that it was one of my fathers books. I can't blame my mother; she wanted to lose all traces of my father in her life.

It was a narrow line I trod for the sake of that book. In order to prove that I'd read it recently I'd recite parts of the text (I remember describing Chandrasekhars limit and why Iron is the heaviest element produced in stars) but that carried it's own risks. If I knew the subject that well why did I need the book?

Catch 22 and eventually it caught me. One day in 1969 I saw that book disappear into the rubbish bin.

So yeah, I give Andrew hell about collecting empty coke cans and milk bottles in his room but I will never ever throw out something less perishable that he wants to keep.