I assume that by now everyone has assimilated the bad news of Toys ‘R Us closing down. Probably a good deal of moaning and groaning going on as a few generations, including the present on. They recall the good old days when they went gliding through a Toys ‘R Us store wanting everything in sight. My generation (and some after it) don’t have the same concerns since when we were kids there were no such stores. No sir, we had it tough. Back then, we could look in the Sears or Montgomery Ward catalogs, but we couldn’t afford most of it anyhow.
However, those catalog pages were certainly glorious. They had some great looking toys in them. For example, you had big solid toy trucks that were made out of metal. No cheap plastic back then! The trucks, cars and heavy equipment toys held up – unless you forgot and left them outdoors and they became covered in snow. When that happened, I will admit that they could be slightly rusted when they were recovered. Still they could flatten the later toys with no problems.
Lots of toys were cheap – and good. One of the ones I liked was a small balsa wood airplane that you could buy for a few cents. You slide the wings between the body and added a tail. Then you could fly them all over the yard. If you had a quarter, which not many of us did, you could buy a large plane. It had a big rubber band that you ran through a hook on the front of the plane, and bent the wings back. Then you pulled the rubber band as tight as you could and let loose. The plane would shoot up into the air and fly gracefully the length of a good sized yard.
Rubber bands were made by us out of old inner tubes from our Dad’s cars. Heck, today most of the population would be amazed to find that car tires used to have inner tubes in them. They definitely did though. In any case we would cut them up, get some wood and make a gun by strapping the rubber bands around a narrow piece of wood, with a narrow long one as the trigger. After that you put a nail on the front, hooked another band around it, and stretched it so that the other end would go behind the trigger. Then, you went out and looked for someone to shoot – before you got shot. Lots of people would probably be horrified today at such a toy, but I have seen catalogs recently where you can buy a professionally made rubber band gun. What fun is there in that though?
There were many board games that we spent time playing. We didn’t have to worry about someone wanting to see a TV program so we could concentrate on the game.There was Monopoly naturally, parchessi (a game of India), checkers. chess, clue and many more. You could even play an Uncle Wiggly game if you were so inclined. There was a game called Camelot that we liked. No it did not involve Arthur, Sir Lancelot, Sir Galahad and the other knights. It didn’t even involve Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. Rather it was sort of a mixture of chess and checkers. We spent many an afternoon playing that game.
Ah, more of the good old days!
Barry Evans writes about Life in The Villages for Villages-News.com
