Good toys?

Chemistry set... small bottles of colored crystals. Miniature test tubes.

Microscope... slides of creatures from the local swamp.

Telescope... after looking at the local scenery the attention wanders.

But what really got my interest was the creek full of rocks. I was into
building dams.

Toy boats for me were suggestive sticks that we found and threw into the
creek and then threw rocks at to sink. There were the rubber band paddle
boats whittled out of a piece of scrap board.

Hammer... good for busting open rocks. Good for crushing colored pebbles
into dust. I had a collection of bottles of stone dust. The bedroom was
full of rocks.

Blue clay... dug out of the creek bed we made bowls and clay turtles,
all sun dried.

A tall walking staff made from an ash sapling. That would go a long ways
for entertainment and I still want one. With this came the need for
hatchet and knife and skills in using them.

Chipmunks... we kept a colony of chipmunks in a rain trough in a room in
the basement.

Wild grape vines... great for swinging from tree to tree. Old wire for
woods rigging also came in handy. We never had much for rope, but old
wire was available.

Dead elm trees... a sense of monumental structure in decay. There is an
amount of critter life in a dead tree. Hours of entertainment value.

Old dump pits... incredible what can be found in the way of rusty hinges
and old bottles.

The earth... I spent a great deal of time digging holes.

Tall trees... sitting in the top of a white pine is where I want to be.

We had toy toys... guns, Tonka trucks, legions of plastic army units
ranging from Roman to Native American to Space Invaders... but all the
toy toys tended to get crushed by having rocks dropped on them. Our
battle reenactments usually consisted of throwing rocks. First at the
toys and then at each other... we were into realism in a big way.

BB gun... we took full advantage of the sport of running around in the
woods with a garbage can lid as a shield and shooting at each other with
our BB guns. Prepared me when I grew up for the construction site antics
of potheads playing with their 22 cal. stud guns.

Tree forts... we had tree forts spread around the area as a strategic
defense against the other kids that lived south of us. I can draw you a
map of the territory if you wish.

Plastic model airplanes... too many to remember and later balsa wood
stick rubber powered airplanes. Then rockets.

My brother was into plastic model cars... so between us we shared a
collection of boxes of things like wheels, or a box for grills, or a box
for differentials and we would make up from the virtual junk pile our
own hot vehicles. When we have the opportunity we continue to enjoy
building models together... though with maturity it is usually rockets.
Quickly in the air, swoosh they are off -- and hours of entertainment
trying to figure out where they hell they went. It is something of a ritual.

We never had too much in the way of battery toys as I remember. Most of
our fun with electricity was AC and plugged in and jolting. A family of
electricians goes for the real juice.

We also had a full size Chris-Craft that we kept in the yard with a tarp
over it and used it as sort of a play house for several years until the
tarp rotted off.

My stepfather was the one who was into toys.

He built a 20' circular track in the back yard with gravel and oil for a
tethered gas powered race car. He ran the car around the track long
enough for the glow plug to burn out then gave it all to me. I never did
figure out where or how to purchase a glow plug. It took my mother years
to get the ring out of the yard.

He also decided to build a 1.5 scale live steam Northern Pacific
locomotive one year. We staked out in the woods where the track would
go, including the bridge and the round table. We laid 10' of track and
built a monster of a table out of 2 x 6 to hold the locomotive. It took
a long time to assimilate the odd table into our lives.

I used to enjoy playing with his 9 mm Smith & Wesson pistol. Oh, one toy
I still have I just remember... the Ithaca 22 lever action rifle. Had it
cleaned up and made workable a few years ago.

Model airplanes was not enough for him and we started to build an
airplane in the basement one time. I got a box of very very small nails
out of that one.

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