The Toys of Our Youth

As you might know by now, I’m a big fan of 1) Vintage; 2) Thrifting; and 3) Forcing both of those things on my baby. While visiting my hometown did involve the insaneostress of rolling with the folks for nigh on two consecutive weeks, I did get to revisit the sources of much of my nostalgia, most of which were covered in my last blog (Rain Day, the willow tree, etc.). An extra bonus was sending my 64-year-old dad into the attic to fetch my beloved Big Bird chair, which I’d long since assumed had been passed on to some lucky Goodwill customer. My mother claimed, no, it wasn’t so; after a half hour in the 110-degree attic space, Dad confirmed my suspicions. (By the by, if you love me, you might buy me this Big Bird chair from ebay. Mine had a blue base, not yellow, but it’s the same damned chair otherwise. I sat in that thing until my 8-year-old bottom could barely perch on the wings. Losses like this make me want to own a giant house and be a pack rat.)

Anyway, Dad did manage to find a few gems up there in the sweaty darkness: one, my Speak’n'Spell, which has yet to be shipped to me in SF, and which I foolishly neglected to photograph while I was in PA. It had the same batteries in since it was relegated to the attic–25 years now, maybe?–and they hadn’t corroded, and the thing still zapped into life with its ineffable wow… wow-WOW! sound effect. It still mispronounced words ending in “tion” and still congratulated me in the same electronic monotone: “You are correct. Now spell… ANYTHING.” My heart sang. I can’t wait to see it again.

I was also reunited with this love from college. I was a Mac person once upon a time. An OG Mac person, really–I graduated from the Apple 2C to the Apple 2GS and got this baby for my high school graduation. It also still works (although I didn’t test the Stylewriter II), although it did start whistling in a most unsettling manner after ten minutes of use. Clicking through the files brought college back to me in a rush. FYI, when it starts, it says, “Beam me up, Scotty.” When it shuts down, it says, “I’ll be back.” Is it any wonder people thought I was a little nerdy?

The sticker is for the German Green party. Deutschland, uber alles blumen..

But my nostalgia wasn’t limited to Rogersville, PA. We headed off to Cape May, my favorite place in the world for antiquing next to the Alameda vintage fair, and I found a fantastic little Playskool wooden wagon filled with multicolored blocks and long dowels. The woman who sold them said the set was called “something like dowels and blocks?” and when I looked it up online, Etsy seller HappyDayVintage came through with the Vintage Playskool Wagon With Blocks. I snaked it at a sweet little gingerbread store called Out of the Past (next to the mini-golf on the west end of town, if you’re in the hood) for a mere $22! Best feature? Take out all the blocks, and the name JOAN is written in faded crayon on the particle board bottom. Dare I dream that Roger Sterling had a little girl named Joan to whom he gifted these blocks? Alas, again, I admit my failings as a blogger: I haven’t yet photographed the toy, and I haven’t had it shipped to me yet (wood is too heavy for a plane, folks). But here’s a photo of the dowels in action.

Mmm. Magnadoodle.

Not all of my toy discoveries were as pleasant as li’l Joan’s castoff. I wandered into my mother-in-law’s living room one morning, kicked aside some of RocketBaby’s toys, and saw THIS staring at me. I don’t know where it came from. I don’t know who put it with my daughter’s things. All I know is, my mother-in-law said it “used to be hers,” and I’m not calling her a liar, but I think maybe she was under some kind of mild demon possession. Perhaps an Imperius curse?

Hello, Georgie. Remember me?

I made light of it at first. I scoffed at its knowing eyes, its patient smile. Then I stashed it in the bottom of a basket and spent the next hour imagining it making secret, evil, evilly secret plans about handing my baby girl a straight razor and gesturing at my Achilles’ tendon with its pointy hat. So after some thought, I resurfaced it, put it on the dining room table–far out of her reach–and then turned its sinister smile to the wall. Better that we all keep our clown enemies close.

Lastly, my favorite toy find of the vacation lives in Bethesda, MD, at the home of my father-in-law and his wife. At first, I thought the monkey puppet might be creepy in the spontaneous cymbal-crashing tradition, but as I got to know him, I realized he’s more of a gentleman than that. Indeed, I think he might enjoy his evening cocktail too much to be bothered with pasttimes like possessing babies and writing death warrants with percussion instruments: a perfectly fine old chap, a little pickled with gin, perhaps, but good for a bon mot now and then. He was distributed by a company called Character, out of Ohio, and that seems just right for him and his little beanie, yes?

Fetch my slippers, boy, and don't forget I like TWO ice cubes in my old-fashioned.

(By the by, if you’d like more on vintage toys, you MUST check out ModernKiddo, the fabulously fantastic blog by my friends Alix and Dottie!)