Road Toad

At last, after years of missing my little mascot, he's been replaced!

The story is that when I was very young I acquired a very nicely hand-crafted wooden toad. This I promptly placed on the dash of my pickup, which seemed like a nice place for it. From then on I became known as the "road toad".

I was always the guy with the car (since I was given my first car--1931 Model A Ford--by a friend even before I had a driver's license). All my friends knew that they could depend on a ride to school, or wherever, because of this.

Once I was telling a hitch-hiker about the Baha'i Faith in the car; he asked if we worshipped toads!

That toad got passed from car to car over about 40 plus years!

A few years ago some kids stole it out of our pickup. When word got out, I started receiving "replacement" toads from friends around the world!

This is the one that was finally a suitable dude for application to the dashboard spot--a gift from Paul and Frances Klippel who found it in a Chinese store in Panama.