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The answer to LaSalette Shrine's prayers: Don Quixote.

No, not the man of LaMancha, but a humorously named Jerusalem burro owned by Sandra Fransey of Clemmey Farms in Mansfield, who learned LaSalette needed a live donkey for the manger scene that is part of its spectacular Christmas lighting show.

So the burro - whose name can be pronounced Donkey Oat-y - is on loan to the Attleboro shrine. He's 3 foot tall, a size that's sure to provoke testaments that "he's sooooo cute." Coupled with the shrine's new display on the children's book "Clopper the Christmas Donkey," an imaginative telling of the nativity story by the animal that carried Mary to Bethlehem, the presence of Don Q might well spark renewed interest in these parts about these hard-working little equines.

Once upon a time, though, the shrine would not have had to look far at all for a donkey. Those who were students at Bliss School in the 1950s, among others, would remember a time when one could be seen regularly grazing in a field off the street now known as O'Neill Boulevard, less than two miles from LaSalette.

At a glance, it was a curious sight. The boulevard was lined with factories, but here - with the sprawling Swank building on one side and the Sweet chain factory on the other - was a little patch of open space where a humble burro would be tethered near a small barn or shed to spend his day munching on the grass. In those days, O'Neil Boulevard was called the Speedway. The name was changed partly because too many drivers thought that was an invitation to see how fast their cars could go and partly because Francis O'Neil, a former city councilman, mayor, state representative and postmaster, was due for public honors.

But the Speedway name had a historical footing. The boulevard had its start as a race track, where many of the leading Attleboro citizens of the day raced their sulky-pulling horses. Through the early years of the last century, this road carried far more equines than autos.

While the donkey was an anachronism by the 1950s, it was not the only agricultural curiosity on Attleboro's East Side. A family on Pine Street near Carpenter Street was keeping sheep in their yard as late as 1958. "Beats mowing," passersby were known to remark.

I don't know who owned the donkey and the name of the sheep-keeping family has long since slipped from my memory. If you have information, please share it. My contact information appears at the end of this column.

Better yet, if you have a picture of any of these animals, please call and arrange to bring it to a photo-scanning session we'll be having at The Sun Chronicle offices, 34 South Main St., Attleboro, from 5 to 7 p.m. Monday.

Jessica Kosowski, editor of our new Nostalgia pages, and I will be on hand to take the stories that go behind the pictures and the names of the people who are in them. One of our photographers will scan them and the pictures will be returned the same night.

I should make it clear: We're looking for more than animal pictures. Our goal is to update our stock of Remember When photos and to add to our online collection of Sun Chronicle area photos of earlier eras. Because... well, because nostalgia gets younger all the time. We're interested in pictures up through the year 1984.

We're hoping to see photos of Jolly Cholly's, Witschi's, local bowling alleys and the like, and of Thanksgiving football game floats, Christmas parades and such. If you've got a shot of someone using a typewriter, slide rule or adding machine, we'd be pleased to have it, if only just to show the kids what these things looked like. And our biggest hope is that you'll find pictures that tell stories we haven't even thought of.

And if a shot of the Speedway donkey does turn up, it will answer an old man's prayer for proof that his memory hasn't been playing tricks once again.

MARK FLANAGAN (mflanagan@thesunchronicle.com) is Opinion page editor of The Sun Chronicle. He can be reached at 508-236-0335.