My Childhood Toys

Turn back, turn back, o time in your flight! Make me a child again, just for tonight.

I'm not sure I quoted that correctly; I don't even know who said it. But I do know that I'd love to own every toy and book I ever had as a kid.

What a wonderful thing it is to live during the age of eBay! Thanks to this modern miracle, I have found several of my childhood toys there. And trust me, searching the 'bay is a lot more reliable than visiting antique stores. I can't imagine what the odds would be that I'd find a set of Roy Rogers (or were they Dale Evans?) dishes in some random antique emporium -- but, without great difficulty, I found and bought a set on eBay. (And what are these dishes doing now? Languishing in a glass display case, that's what. But at least I can look at them whenever I want.)

Similarly, I used eBay to find a puzzle called "Raining Cats and Dogs." There are other, newer puzzles with this name -- but I wanted the old frame tray version that shows a boy and girl playing in a sandbox as poodles, greyhounds and tiger-stripe kitties fall from the sky.

I have replaced most of the Little Golden Books and Wonder Books I had in childhood -- those are easier to find, sometimes even for low prices. There are few thrills that compare to what I experience when I open one of those inexpensively produced books and see an illustration I hadn't known I remembered -- and hadn't seen since maybe age 4. Best LGB author for raising such goosebumps: the late and indisputably great Garth Williams.

I'd love to get a pristine Mystery Date game, or a complete Suzy Smart (fully dressed, including smart black beret, and with her desk and blackboard), even though those were technically my sister's toys. (She was kind enough to share them with me; she couldn't exactly play Mystery Date by herself, could she? One fond reminiscence we share about that game is debating the merits of the various "dates"; I always thought the dud was the cutest, and that the so-called dreamy guys looked like frat boys -- not that I knew what a frat boy was).

Perhaps if my sister had been the last Martin child, I'd have most of my original dolls, paperdolls, books, games and other toys. But there were two boys born after Pam, and they were not easy on anything. (And neither were my parents. I once found my father had propped up one leg of my brother's bed with "Now We Are Six" and another A.A. Milne book; these would both be fairly valuable, albeit their '60s provenance, sans the huge dents in their middles).

On the other hand, I probably deserved to lose my childhood possessions. My sister and I both played with our cousin's old Nancy Ann Storybook dolls, repairing their leg-hip joints by fashioning electrician's tape underwear, and otherwise contributing to their degradation. We also gave Jane's old Renwal dollhouse furniture a good working over. That was during interludes between all the time we spent dressing up in the fancy 1930s clothes in our grandparents' upstairs closet, and over-wound the Victrola as we played the thick, old Thomas Edison recordings of "The Laughing Record" and "Bebe" (or whatever they were called) over and over. Those were indeed the days. The days that taught me to guard every possession from current nieces and nephews and future grandchildren.

Thanks to eBay, someday I may have enough of this old stuff to open a museum (and then I can hire a curator to keep stuff really safe). Meanwhile, I have to save up enough to beat all the other baby boomers who want Mystery Date and Suzy Smart.