Toys...

[birdguy 3,943]

I am posting two stories this weekend.  I had to post this one before I forgot.

Last evening we went to a friends house after dinner.  They had invited us for desert.  After we ate the desert we sat around in the living room just talking.

After desert their two sons disappeared.  I asked where they were and their Mom said they were upstairs in their rooms playing video games.

Some day your graandids or great grandkids are going to ask you, "What video games did you play when you were a kid grampa?"

"We didn't have video games when I was your age Jimmy."

"Really?  What did you do?"

Our Toys

Lee and I always had plenty of toys.  We started out with twenty five cents a week allowance and that eventually grew to fifty cents, and later even a dollar.  That allowed us to buy seasonal toys such as yo-yos and kites, replace lost skate keys, acquire short lived toys such as balsa gliders and caps for our cap guns.

Occasionally I would buy a model, which Mom always thought was a waste of money.  In the case of flying or 'stick' models, I guess it was.  I don't think I ever finished 'stick' model.  I always started out with enthusiasm, pinning down wax paper over the plans on the work bench in the back porch and, carefully cutting out the printed balsa with a razor blade.  Then I would lay the parts down on the plans and start gluing them together.
But they never turned out right.  Half way though I could see that something was warped or bent or in the wrong place, so I'd lose interest.

Solid models were another thing.  I built several Strombecker airplane and ship kits that didn't turn out too badly, considering all you had to do was glue the pre-shaped parts together.  I think my favorite was a model of a Boeing flying boat called the China Clipper.

Magnets were another favorite.  We'd soon tire of picking up the little shapes of iron that came in the package with them, and start wandering through the house to see what we could pick up, or, more likely, what they would stick to. We would take them to the beach at Aquatic Park and run them though the sand.  The magnets would pick up tiny grains of black iron that we would collect in jars.

Gyroscopes were also popular.  We'd wind the little string around the shaft and pull it as hard as we could, and then put the spinning playthings on the floor or kitchen table and see how long they would stand up.  There were hundreds of things around the house to balance them on, such as the backs of chairs, the edge of a butter knife, the point of a pencil, or even the piece of string we wound them up with.

My favorite Christmas or birthday toys were my Gilbert Erector Set, my Lincoln Logs, and my Tinker Toys.  My Erector Set even had an electric motor and sets of gears and pulleys to go with it.    Many a rainy day was spent building cranes and windmills, or anything else that moved.

Chemistry sets were interesting only until the chemicals required for making pyrotechnics ran out.  I always though extra portions of sulphur, potassium nitrate, and charcoal should come with them.

But some of our best toys were home made.

The button toy was one of our favorites.  I'd steal a large button from Mom's sewing box and run a length of string through two opposite holes.  Then putting a couple of twists in the string with a flip of the wrist, I'd start stretching and releasing the string.  The button would spin, first one way, and then the other, until was going so fast you would hear it hum.  We'd sharpen or serrate the edge of the button and see if we could cut paper with it.

Clothes pin guns were also a lot of fun.  We'd take the wire spring out of it and tape the flat ends of the wood together with adhesive tape.  Then the spring would be inserted to the coil was on top of the wood and the ends fit tightly into the grooves on the inside.  These little guns would shoot kitchen matches against the side of a brick building, or down on the sidewalk, with enough force to strike them.

If Mom wasn't around, we'd make match rockets.  That involved holding a needle or pin against a match.  Then we'd fold some tinfoil from a cigarette pack or chewing gum wrapper around it and wrap it tightly with a piece of thread. When we pulled the needle or pin out, it left a small hole between the tinfoil and match.  We'd then set the rocket on the edge of a table and hold a match flame under the tinfoil.  When the match lit off, it would streak across the room leaving a trail of white smoke.

Another of our home made toys was the cork sailboat.  We'd find a good sized cork, like the ones that came with thermos bottles, and cut in half lengthwise.  Then we'd glue the thick ends together.  Cut a slot in the bottom and stick a penny into it for a keel, stick a large toothpick in the top for a mast,  attach a paper sail, and in a few minutes we'd have a sailboat that floated well in the kitchen sink or bathtub.

Lee and I never ran out of toys.  Almost anything we found on the sidewalk or in an empty lot or in a back alley could, with a little imagination, be fashioned into a toy.

Noel

What did we do as kids Jimmy?  More things than you can imagine.

Pictured below is my 4 year old great granddaughter Eliza (Elizabeth) already training for her future.

[Fielder 3,644]

We shot popcorn kernels in our clothespin guns. So did several kids at school. What fun especially when class was in session. 🤣

[Matthew Kane 1,343]

Noel my three year old daughter is exactly like your grand daughter, if I wanted her attention I have to dress up like an iPad 🤣

Edited July 25, 2021 by Matthew Kane

[Fielder 3,644]

iPads are great for little people! My only worthwhile non phone device is a 17" laptop because I can actually see stuff clearly on it.

[Mike A 337]

4 hours ago, birdguy said:

If Mom wasn't around, we'd make match rockets.

😆 Yes, I used to do that. Made sure that a window or two were open to dissipate the smoke/burned smell so when my mom came home she would have no clue to what I was up to.

Before Frisbees became popular & widely available (@ 1965 or so?) we used to use the lids from tin coffee can containers.  Not the plastic lids that you could reseal the container after opening the tin, because those didn't exist back then, but the tin lid itself. Of course, after being removed from the tin, the lids had a serrated edge all the way around. Not really ideal for playing catch.  But since our neighborhood was within a mile from Ocean Beach, we often had windy days.  We would fling them into the wind at a 45 degree or greater angle as hard as we could.  The wind would catch them & blow them back towards us.  They would crash to the pavement with a noisy clang, which for us kids was a satisfying sound but drove our mothers nuts.  As long as the wind blowed, we flung them.  We would also fly kites a lot with that wind.

[BillW 210]

I often wonder if these kids will grow up understanding ingenuity and imagination. They don't know what they are missing.😕

 

[Mike A 337]

After posting above, another related memory came back to me:

One day, must of been during summer vacation, all of us kids were outside, bored, trying to figure out what could we do.  All of a sudden, my friend Charlie said "I know!" & went into his house. He later reappeared carrying a whole assortment of his mother's Tupperware containers & lids, and said "Let's throw these around!" Sure, why not? We spread out on the block flinging the Tupperware back and forth to our heart's content.

But all good things must come to an end.  Charlie's mother was a really cool person.  I remember she drove a copper-colored (1964?) Chevy Nova station wagon with mag wheels.  So here comes her car around the corner, slowing down as she sees all these kids.  We all froze.  I'll never forget the look on her face when it hit her that it was her Tupperware all over the place.  She got out of her car and yelled "What the *^$@ is going on here?  CHARLIE!!!"

And we said "Uh, I got to go home, Charlie"  "Yeah, bye Charlie"  "See you around, Charlie" as we fled the scene of the crime and left Charlie to his fate.

[spilok 1,132]

22 hours ago, birdguy said:

Pictured below is my 4 year old great granddaughter Eliza (Elizabeth) already training for her future.

My 4 year old Granddaughter could BE the little girl in this picture.  She was here last weekend and that's all she really did most of the day.  I am upset about this, but my daughter thinks it's normal for her little girl. I don't.  This will reveal its worth in a decade or so.  We'll see if it was the right thing to play with.  Won't we?

Stan

Edited July 26, 2021 by n4gix
Removed excessive quote!

[Chock 17,769]

I'd have preferred to have been invited for dessert. 😉

[birdguy 3,943]

We were invited for dessert in the desert Chock.

Noel

[n4gix 4,947]

17 hours ago, BillW said:

I often wonder if these kids will grow up understanding ingenuity and imagination. They don't know what they are missing.😕

When I was just a little lad, I had a neat collection of Tonka Toys: bulldozer, road grader, and concrete mixer as well as a few others. I had a ball with them in our backyard, building "roads". My dad didn't notice for several weeks until it was time to mow the lawn again, but when he saw my "road network" and that I'd actually paved the roads with concrete he "Was Not Amused!" At. All. 

Alas, I had to spend the rest of the next few weeks destroying my beautiful roads and and carefully restoring the back yard. 😓

[sightseer 895]

did anyone else enjoy building dams in the nearby stream and then 'swimming' for a while and then pretending to be a giant monster tearing it all down?  that was one of my favorite things to do in summertime.

I can't believe how many toys we had in common.  I suspect the models changed over the years though.  If I was sick and had to get a shot, mom would let me pick out a model so long as it wasn't too expensive.  I had battle ships, aircraft carriers, aircraft, helicopters,  craft from a variety of science fiction shows.  At one point in my life I had lights in various models and a switch panel (battery powered) and they were all hung from the ceiling.

I loved legos when I was a kid and I loved to build all kinds of things.  they didnt have any of the fancy kits they have these days.

My grandmother was an accountant and she knew that I loved to build and create things so she would save all the cardboard tubes from all the various rolls of paper that she used.  They came in all sizes and some were downright huge.  When i would go visit her in the summer, I loved to build as tall of a tower as I could.  I had to carefully disassemble it though because I didnt want to break anything in her house.

 

on another note: did you know you could make a rocket out of a soda can and a firecracker (and a mud  puddle)?  you cut the top of the can off and put a hole for the firecracker in the bottom.  insert a fircracker, put the cut end looslely down in a shallow mud puddle and then light the fuse.

also - remember water rockets? that you would pump with air?  they were always breaking but they were cool imo.  cheaper than real rockets and you wouldnt loose them by installing an oversize engine and then watching them disappear over the other side of the neighborhood 🙂 

Edited July 26, 2021 by sightseer

[Mike A 337]

15 minutes ago, sightseer said:

If I was sick and had to get a shot, mom would let me pick out a model so long as it wasn't too expensive.

When I was sick my mom would give me a Matchbox car.

[Mike A 337]

20 minutes ago, sightseer said:

also - remember water rockets? that you would pump with air?

Yeah, loved those. When we played war, those were our mortars/RPGs.

[birdguy 3,943]

50 minutes ago, sightseer said:

My grandmother was an accountant and she knew that I loved to build and create things so she would save all the cardboard tubes from all the various rolls of paper that she used. 

Not when I was a kid but later when we lived in Utah I saved toilet paper rolls and paper towel rolls for Estes model rockets.  I had a launch pad on a piece of plywood and an arming switch and a firing switch.  My four kids and I would go out on the salt flats and launch rockets.  Their job was to track them down after they landed and bring them back. 

In addition to the home made rockets I had Estes rocket kits.  Spent many a Saturday afternoon doing that.  And according to my wife spending way too much money on that hobby.

Noel