December 18, 2012
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A History of Playtime with the Mikester
This entry was originally posted as part of my Christmas Celebration in 2007. I'd meticulously created all the composites after performing internet searches for the toys I remember from my childhood. The images were used in a slideshow feature, but the slideshow company went out of business, and the images disappeared from my blog. I recently found them on my computer, and am reposting this which took a long time to create back in 07. Hope you enjoy my recollections, and if you're old enough, might see some toys you played with in the long ago. (Note: The essay doesn't necessarily line up with the images, which, as I just said, were in a slideshow feature.) MFN/ppf 12/18/12
My siblings and I have always been imaginative and creative. We inherited my mother's creative gene, and our playtime was varied and elaborate. I think possibly because my mother might have been trying to make up for the fact that she hardly ever let us out of our own yard, because it was unsafe to "play in the street", she and my dad frequently bought us toys, games, and sporting goods. We did not lack for playthings, and these playthings embellished our imagination, spurred our storytelling acumen, and helped to cement us as a family which played together.
We had our quarrels, and sometimes mother had to show us the "spanking stick" when we got a bit too boisterous, but for the most part, all three of us were able to develop complete worlds of play, with continuing chapters, favorite characters, and involving plots, which had, from playtime to playtime, intrigue, adventure, and a bit of soap opera. Instead of playing like we were in a war movie, we would "construct" a war movie, with sets, actors playing parts, and a definite plot with an ending. Perhaps we didn't exactly know the ending when beginning play, but by the time playtime was over, one scenario would be ready to "pack up", and the next playtime might bring something completely different.
I've never had kids. I did spend three years with a girlfriend who had two children, ages 12 and 14 at the beginning of our relationship. The girl was a preteen, and she liked her CDs and walkman, and was developing friendships with schoolmates in the 'hood, something my mother wouldn't let us do even at 14. The boy was into videogames and videotaped movies. He could watch the same Disney movie endlessly, on tape, and he always had his gameboy in hand. Neither of Pat's kids "played". Possibly because they had to age rather quickly being the son and daughter of a woman who was more "roommate" than mother. Their interests were very passive, TV (They had their first experience with cable when I moved in and activated my subscription.) music, and videogames.
Growing up we had a TV but we didn't get a record player, until I was in the latter half of high school. While Pat's kids could basically be found sitting in front of the television set from right after school until bedtime, including mealtime, my siblings and I would spend whole evenings participating in playtime of some sort or another. After my dad bought our house, in 1960, he made us each a wooden toy chest in his shop, and each chest was about 4 x 3 x 3. I remember regular trips to "Toytown" where Dad would give us a certain spending limit for being good all week, and I would get things like bags of plastic cars or dinosaurs. Each toy was given it's own "place" for storage. There was "the block box" and the "little men drawer." No matter how many toys we "needed' for playtime, at the end of play, everything was piled "neatly" back into it's particular receptacle.
The most imaginative toys were the simplest. Blocks. We had alphabet blocks and those shiny brightly colored wooden blocks in different shapes, but since my father was a woodworker, he made us thousands of blocks from pieces of pine lumber. He would cut them in different shapes, and then sand them so that they were smooth. We would construct Egyptian pyramids, modern cities, and movie backlots with our blocks. Building toys were always special to me.
My dad constructed an electric train layout with tunnel and bridge for me on two pieces of 4 x 8 plywood before we moved from our rented house in the late 50s. At the time I didn't realize Dad had given me the train set. It was a gift from "Santa Claus" and miraculously appeared in the living room by the tree on Christmas morning.
By the mid fifties, Tinkertoys, American Plastic Bricks, and Lincoln Logs joined the toys in our rooms. Tinkertoys were good for everything from making vehicles and structures, to making "people". A "blue stick" in a "spool" was a young boy. A girl had a piece of string (for a pony tale, like my sister) inserted into the slot at the top of the stick. She wore one of those cylindrical tinkertoys with the hole in the middle for a "dress". "Red sticks' were teenagers, and "green sticks" were adults. They lived in houses made with our blocks constructed from blueprints in housing brochures.
Paper bags were "puppets", and I had about 250 or 300 separate "people" in the 5 or 6 years I was making them. My brother and sister similarly had whole populations of puppets made from #6 small grocery bags. We used crayons to color their faces and bodies. They were even easy to store, as they folded flat. My brother and I imagined "planets" where our toys lived. His was "Cowboytown", and mine, "Cartown". We also had a "movie studio" for producing "movies" which came in handy when we were limited to only one and a half hours of play.
Favorite "toys" were the kind we made ourselves. I had a "TV" made out of a shoebox with slots in the sides where I could slide the "film" which consisted of "frames" like a comic book. One playtime "adventure" I remember well was "lava". The contents of the dirty clothes hamper would become steaming lava which was forever bearing down on our GI Joe action figures and Tammy dolls.
Until we grew too old to believe in Santa, he "brought" one "special" toy, usually the largest, the night before Christmas. We children had to stay in our beds, or else Santa might not "come" to set up the toys. Dad and Mom would literally spend the complete night arranging the three setpiece toys for our "surprise" on Christmas morning. Each of us received about 10-15 toys of varying size and cost. Usually half of these broke within a week of Christmas.
Christmas always held an abundance of surprises, and besides the toys which seemed to be engineered to break immediately upon playing with them for the first time, like my GI Joe Helicopter, we did keep most of our toys, and so our "collection" just kept getting larger and larger.
Sis had those tin doll houses, and then one Christmas got a plastic "Dream House" furnished in the best 60s modern style. Both my sister, brother and I constructed whole cities and towns out of construction paper cutouts.
Looking back on our play, it seems no wonder that we liked to "build things". My dad was in the process of adding a bedroom and bathroom on the newly purchased house. Building was in our blood.
My brother and I both collected and traded cards. Playtime at school recesses usually involved sports or trading. I still collect trading cards from time to time. In the 80s I had two complete Garbage Pail Kids card sets because they reminded me of gruesome monster stickers I traded as a kid.
My brother and I loved playsets, and these were the toys "Santa" usually brought. Sister had "The Flintstones". Brother had a medeival castle and a western town, and I had Cape Canaveral and Moon Base Alpha. You can't buy something like the Cape Canaveral setup these days. The spring loaded "rockets" had enough power to take out one of your eyes.
My favorite playset was "The Blue and The Gray", a Civil War playset with so may soldiers, building, bridges, horses, and ammunition, that I got tired after I spent two hours setting it all up.
As a preteen, I graduated from building blocks to model kits. Starting with military vehicles and planes, I immersed myself into model building, and I got "into" building customized cars, by combining pieces in different kits.
In my slideshow above I show a photo of my first auto kit, a Duesenberg, and also the "Big Deuce" a 1/8 scale model '32 Ford which had windows which cranked open and closed and working headlights.
My taste in "toys" changed in my junior year in high school, when I was able to drive my best "toy" to school, a 1965 Dodge Dart I nicknamed "The Fantastic." I've "collected" some vintage cars since then, and I always think of them as my "toys". In the late 80s, I rode a motorcycle.
Since I never married, I have continued to buy "toys". The latest "toys" are electronic in nature. My love of music began by listening to radio, since we didn't have a record player, but as soon as the family started to spin platters, I began buying albums weekly, and this has grown into collecting media of all kinds, including movies on five different formats, three or which are obsolete.
The most recent "toys" are my computers. I could even say I have a "collection" of not only the hardware, but all the software as well. I was an "early adopter" and as the technology quickly changed, I wanted to keep upgrading. Now, thanks to my latest "toy", I have enjoyed an avalance of personal creative energy and production unmatched since my youth.
Everyone has their own toys, and their own way of playing. A lot of social interaction is built on our experiences at playtime. Much of our imagination and creativity first receive inspiration during playtime. And probably, we all remember our toys throughout the decades, and playing with our toys helped us to begin acting and reacting to the pitfalls and foibles of life in the "real world"
Comments (9)
I didn't have much toys growing up, my big thing was blanket forts and cardboard box car rides haha
and Fishing with shoes.
This is what kids nowadays should play and not those video games, or pc games, or nintendo, or playstation.
When we were kids, we used to play with Legosets or puzzles. We also do a lot of painting and even create lovely things out of paper into some boats, airplanes or flowers. I even do some crochetting which I still do until today and a little knitting ... these arts are fading nowadays to which I think it is really pity. We use our mind when we play and we create things with our own hands.
I remember those days when me and my bros used to make a raft and we swim across the river and play in the woods, climbing some trees even and exploring bushes and grasses. We catch grasshoppers and watching some butterflies, even some crikets and looking at birds! We had adventure times everyday outside in the rain and it was the most loveliest childhood ever ...
Nowadays kids has all of those electronic things of which preventing them to move around and they start to put on weight and some urinate in their Coca-Cola bottles because they are too lazy even to walk a few metres to the loo; and they hell scared of the green and got panic when they ever see the earth worm! What the heck ... I felt pity for these city kids ... they know nothing of their surrounding and do you think they know what trees are there and what flowers are there ... I really doubt that at all ...
Kids should be creative and do something with more movements - go out and play football, go out and explore the river with the rafts or little boat, go out and for godsake climb the trees, go out and cycling to the park and play cricket with some friends ... Don`t these kids do anything at all?
Wow this brought back memories. The Snap Train is the first Christmas gift I recall getting. I know I was no older than 3. Lincoln Logs and an Erector Set were gifts after I was 5. I remember playing Mouse Trap sometime around then but because another kid on the block had the game. I had Fort Apache and Fort Tomahawk...I don't remember the Blue and Gray set. Looks cool. I had an Etch a Sketch but I recall not liking it much which was perhaps a harbinger...I knew already at 6 or 7 I wasn't going to like the 2012 GOP Presidential candidate. haha.
I vaguely recall the erector set but basically I did not build much models or paint much either. Junior high had print shop (now obselete using lead types) and also electric shop and wood shop.
I played in the street and made water dams blocking water running next to the curb. I explored vacant lots and discovered red ants that bite and trap door spiders that looked like miniature tarantulas.
I also spent a lot of time in the yard weeding around the fruit trees and vegetable patches. We also dug deep holes into the ground and unburied some of the deer heads that my father buried in the back yard.
I recall most of them, plus others too... there were five of us as children growing up. My favorite is the same as yours. My brother and I had that set for years. You have an interesting blog; bringing the genius down. Thanks for posting.
I've always been an outdoor kind of guy, my younger days were spent swinging from vines, playing in treehouses and I get into any kind of sports from soccer to baseball. Indoors I would play with my Transformers, Lego set and toy cars.
I was a child in another era -1930s - and toys were a bit different. I was fascinated with toy soldiers. My father did some work for FAO Schwartz - building and decorating their Miami Beach store - and took part of his pay in toys.
So that xmass I got a lot of Wm Britain lead soldiers and accutriments. I still have a handful - so battered that they are good only as curiosities. I sure wish I had taken better care of them! I think I mentioned once that when Fleischman Studios went under, my father hired several of their artists to do Xmas yacht decorations - one of his yearly resposibilities. When WW2 started, he got a commission in the US Coast Guard - retired as a Captain in the 1970s.
Another morning as I was putting on a little makeup at the picnic table, my heart almost stopped…there was a HUGE spider on my tent.
) To: coffee260 Our Pastor said that these beings were placed on this earth to give us enjoyment and companionship and there was no way God would not have them in Heaven waiting for us if we get there.