Sugarfoot is ready to ride again after an 18-month absence from his home on the Town Hall lawn, better than ever with a stronger body, a paint job, and a new pair of ''kid safe'' antlers.

Sugarfoot's return is good news to youngsters who love to climb on the cast-iron deer's back, something kids having been doing for more than a century. ''I used to ride him like a hobby horse,'' said the late Daisy Dondero of San Anselmo, who donated the statue to the Town in the early 1960s. She died in 2002 at the age of 100.

Sugarfoot first graced the garden of Mrs. Dondero's grandparent's estate in San Francisco, which encompassed what is today the North Beach Playground. The home and its gardens where destroyed in the 1906 earthquake and fire – everything, that is, except Sugarfoot.

In 1914, Mrs. Dondero's parents moved from the city to San Anselmo and brought Sugarfoot with them to stand in the garden of their new home at 1659 San Anselmo Avenue. After their parent's passed away, Mrs. Dondero and her siblings agreed to donate him to the Town.

TLC for Sugarfoot

The renovation of the Town's unofficial mascot, which coincided with the Town Hall Plaza project, turned out to be more intense than initially anticipated, said Dean Nyberg, director of the San Anselmo Parks Department.

''We knew there were problems with its antlers, which were broken down, cracked and crumbling,'' Nyberg said. ''But it escalated into a full-blown restoration.''

What Nyberg and the volunteers who helped do the work didn't know, until they looked inside, was that the centenarian Sugarfoot was full of rust.

''We had to take it apart,'' said volunteer Bill Abright, a San Anselmo resident and head of the ceramics department at the College of Marin. No stranger to volunteer efforts, Abright donated his time to work on the Millennium Playground.

The rust meant that Sugarfoot had to be sandblasted before any other work could begin. Then came the paint. ''We decided that a good automotive paint would be the best,'' said Nyberg. John Guy of San Anselmo Auto Body volunteered to do the priming. The color? Fawn, of course.

A Question of Authenticity

Sugarfoot's new antlers were a bit more complicated, due to their condition and the decision to make them kid friendly by trimming and smoothing the prongs. There was also the matter of creating antlers pretty much from scratch. The volunteer team used photographs of real deer for authenticity.

Nyberg and Abright also decided that Sugarfoot should resemble the deer pictured on the blue banners decorating the Town, created by local graphic artist Michael Schwab. Schwab is known for his colorful, stylized posters and logos for Golden Gate National Recreation Area, Sundance Film Festival, Polo Ralph Lauren, and the US Postal Service, among others.

With Schwab's banners in view and photographs at hand, Abright and Nyberg came up with the design. The work of crafting and welding the antlers was taken on by Dennis Irish, owner of Irish's Welding, and his son, Dennis Jr.

Ready to Ride

The restoration work took about six months, according to Nyberg, and in December 2003, Sugarfoot was returned to his perch, though this time around he sits under the tree on the Library side of the lawn, not in front of the Police Department.

Sugarfoot is also standing on a ''fall cushioning'' pad commonly used in playgrounds. For good reason: Thousands of youngsters have ridden him since he was first installed on the lawn in the 1960s.

''It was very satisfying work,'' said Nyberg. ''Sugarfoot is priceless. And I fully expect that he'll be around for another 100 years.''