50th Anniversary - The Girls of Pawnee Stables

Pawnee Stables was a very active barn back in the late 1960s. Three teenage girls ran it with no adults to help. And did those girls ever do an excellent job of caring for a bunch of younger girls, a herd of horses, the bunkhouse, and the grounds! 

Lana (a Marx Best of the West Janice West doll) and Skipper still remain in my Pawnee Stable things. Lana was my favorite because she was so posable.

Sadly, Jane, my Josie West doll and third member of the trio of girls running the barn, was not in the box.  (Photo from Collectors.com.)

I was at an age where I no longer played with dolls, but I still had them, so I rounded them up and added them to the bunkhouse. If you are old enough to remember Mattel's Liddle Kiddles series, you will recognize them!

Clockwise from left: Liddle Red Riding Hiddle, Greta Griddle, Liddle Diddle, Surfy Skiddle, and Violet Kiddle. Violet was scented as was Lily of the Valley Kiddle who is missing. Also missing is Lola Liddle. 

A very late addition to the bunkhouse was Allison, a souvenir from a trip to Paris, and Ida, a souvenir Native American doll who I no longer have. 

Using items from my Barbies, I created a bunkhouse on one shelf of my bookcase. I taped this backdrop to it and added a Barbie couch (now gone),

a record player, phone (notice that rotary dial!), teapot, and basket of flowers for the coffee table (also gone). And, the best part of all:

A Color TV! Only the best for the Pawnee Stables gals! (We got our first color TV around 1966 so this was really a big deal.)

The barn had its own amenities including this coke machine. (Folks in this part of Indiana do not call it soda or pop, we call it coke. If you want something fizzy to drink, we ask, "What kind of coke do you want?")

I put every kind of coke on there that I could. Notice that the cost was only ten cents and that you got a bottle, not a can.

The coke machine was made from an empty parakeet seed box. I had a really nice parakeet back then, Buttons, who could talk and whistle. I also used his discarded feathers for Native American regalia. (See those in a future blog entry.)

The Pawnee Stables girls had access to Dixie Cup/Lincoln Log jumps, complete with their own stable brand.

I created cavaletti out of egg carton cups. They, too, carried the barn's brand.

And naturally the girls saved all the ribbons they won in shows. Some of these are from the live shows I held with Bobbie Sue and Carol. There used to be some Breyer blue ribbon stickers that I'd taken off my models, but sadly, those are gone, too.

I spent hours and hours with my carpet herd and the Pawnee Stables girls.  I even drew pictures of them going about their various activities, too. Look for those in a future blog entry.

The winner of the first giveaway, the alabaster Shetland Pony, will be announced in another post later today.