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Toys were so
different 50 years ago
07/06/2006 10:57 PM
As we sat outdoors
Tuesday while we had lunch, I looked out across the way at the various shades of
green among the pine trees on the hillside. I focused on an area where the sun
was shining through the clouds to create this beautiful bright yellow area in
all of the green. It took me back to my days as a ceramist and I mentally
envisioned the layering process of painting just such a scene.
I also remembered that, when we were little, how we
would race with the shadow of the clouds to keep the sun from catching us. Of
course, we could never could outrun the sun, but by golly, that didn't stop
us from trying! Toys were not so plentiful when we were young, were they? No TV
or electronic games to sit on the couch with all day long.
We made our own fun out of whatever was available, as
many of you probably remember. Us Stallman cousins would play for hours in the
grass. We liked to find an area with some tall grass so we could have "trees" on
our place. We would clear an area by pulling out the grass and making a
farm-stead with a silo made out of a can or bottle and buildings and cars or
tractors out of pieces of wood. We'd pinch grass off short for a lawn and pull
the grass out to make "roads" to the farmstead. We were busy little bees and
whiled away the hours. And had fun doing it! We didn't know any better. By the
same token, there really wasn't much that was better.
Remember the little clear glass cars and animals that
were filled with candies? Once the candy was
gone it became a toy. A valued one, I might add. I hunted for 10 years for one
of those little glass toys. If memory serves me right, I found my glass train
engine in an antique store in Rapid City many years ago. What a find! Valuable
to no one but me.
Kind of like the little amber glass powder dishes all teenage
girls had in the early 50s. The lids had
a little animal as the handle. Once the powder was gone we had a nice little
covered dish for our "jewels". These were probably the toy jewels we
got out of cracker jacks or maybe the invaluable Mr.
Peanut trinket we got from saving the wrappers from Planter's Peanuts. Saving
those darned peanut
bags was a task in itself.
Talk about amusing yourself ... remember taking a cap
off a bottle of pop then, being very careful,
removing the cork liner. If you did it just right and didn't break the cork, you
could put the cap on
the outside of your shirt and press the cork back in place under the cap through
the inside of your
shirt. Voila! Pins just like Grandma wore. Well, I guess that's not really true.
I don't think I ever saw Grandma Black wearing a pop bottle lid on her dress.
I made one of these beautiful pins for Taylor one day
and stuck it on her shirt. She wasn't any-
where near as impressed with it as I was with mine 50 years ago! The flimsy
little liners don't work as
well as the cork ones did. Maybe if I could find a cork one she'd like it
better... ya, right.
I know, I'll see if I can impress her with my dad's string trick!
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