You firget CJ, you may have been a child of the 70's but I was a child of the early '40s and 50's. Yes, older than dirt!!! to you young "whippersnappers". Hey CJ, there is another old timey word, meaning "smart backside" or "arrogant young punk", depending on severity of emotion. Haven't hear it used in years!!
So, ranked through time,
1. My one and only doll Angel.
She was given to me by the lady who delivered me (a midwife) and filled out my rough draft birth certificate as a girl name Carolynn May, for the Dr. that subsequently modified me and filed a different birth certificate. She also baby sat me and gave me the doll when I was three, a doll bottle, and a few clothes. She said she (the doll) was an Angel to watch over me, and so I thought that was her name. My father threw her into a burn barrel, along with a cardboard "pretend stove" that baked with a lightbulb in small aluminum pans, when we were moving from the town of my birth to another in 1950. Those were my only overtly girl toys. I didn't need Dr. Zucker to experence Reparative Therapy, I had my father and his instincts about how to make a "man" out of me.
2. a cast iron Jeep, painted sand colored, with folding windshield (like the real thing), and steerable front wheels. I still have that one. Its paint is still pretty good. The body is virtually indestructible. It was given to me at three after I cried for it in the middle of the PX (post exchange for those not raised around an army base). It seemed so large, and I thought Angel and I could ride in it.
3. A metal toy depicting the battleship North Carolina. It had wheels and a friction sparker, so that when you rolled it on the floor, the sparks would fly visibly from the front guns. I still have it, and the paint is in great shape though the sparker wheel needs to be replaced. I don't recall how much I may have played with it, but it somehow survived.
4. American Flyer S-guage train. I got it when I was 7, following my involuntary purge of my few girl toys by my father. It was waiting for me in my room at the house in the new town. It was fun after awhile, mainly in the stories and day dreams I could make up about the little figures "traveling" on it. I modified some of the tiny S-guage figures to be able to sit on furniture and painted them so they were like the standing figures. I also had buildings for accessories, and one of those I converted into a small doll house with two floors and made furniture and curtains for them from scraps of balsa and cloth. I made a "dresser" with a mirror by trimming a bit of chewing gum wrapper and gluing it to a trimmed razor blade to hold it steady between the uprights. It was the only way I was ever going to have a doll house, and I had to be careful my father didn't know or I expected it would likely "disappear" or get stepped on.
5. Western Flyer 28 inch bicycle in 1950. Like the electric train, it was another sop to my father's conscience after he realized I was REALLY upset that he had burned Angel. I had sulked for two weeks so he tried to buy me off. The bike represented an escape, a degree of freedom, a symbolic running away.
6. I recieved a bow (25 lb. test) and arrow set for Christmas in 1956. It was one of the few Christmas's that I had viewed with anticipation for a present since 1950. When I went to string up the bow, it snapped, and Christmas lost it's cheer for that year. They got me a replacement, but it wasn't the same.
7. A homemade bow that Merle, one of my cousins hand carved for me out of bois d'arc. He was a year younger than me, but clever with his hands. He made it and gave it to me in the interim between the broken bow and it's replacement.
I treasured it more than the purchased replacement bow and it lasted for 8 years, longer than the store bought bow, before I passed it on to another cousin when I bought a fiberglass recurve bow. I think I bought it more for the halibut than anything else.
I had thoughts of going deer hunting with it (50 lb test), but learned that killing things still seemed stupid, though I did join my father and granfather in shooting quail with shotguns as part of Thanksgiving dinner. I gave it away after a couple of years of disuse. I had bought it with my own money earned working in the broomcorn fields.
8. My comic book collection. I had the first Action Comic, and lots of others including the introduction of Supergirl, numerous Tarzan "annuals", and a lot of superhero comics in series that I could have sold for an insane profit today. I tended to purchase the ones where they had a secret identity to preserve. I felt like that was what I was doing, by wearing or presenting a facade over the real me, so their struggles to preserve their secret identity appealed to me. I bought the Tarzan ones where he would find lost cities and civilizations. That always fascinated me. It would be twenty years before I could experience that thrill in real life.
In 1964, I left them, of course. at my parents house when "Uncle Sammy" thought I needed to serve my country as cannon fodder, but I fooled him and joined the Navy. My father, bless his pointed head, purged that childish comic collection he was sure I had outgrown when they moved house in 1965. I could have half paid for surgery by selling those.
They were already worth money when he hauled them to the land fill.
9. I built models, plastic model cars, boats and airplanes from a young age. And I also made balsa models, some of them from scratch with only a picture to go by. I bought the models and materials with money I earned for the most part, though some in the early years were bought from an "allowance" for doing chores around the house. The plastic ones of those and one balsa and paper Piper Cub with a rubber band "motor" were sacrificed to the gods of 4th of July, as I had one neighbor boy that loved to blow things up. And once I built the models, they meant nothing to me. A means to an end, to lift me for awhile from the depression I needed to climb out of.
One of the later ones was a gas engine powered, flying, control line airplane, a WWII Mustang. I flew it three times, the last time it was shattered when I crashed it trying to learn to do a loop with the control line.
The impact was very hard and balsa and colorful silk fluttered in the air for several minutes.
as I said goodby to a year of building and painting and detail work. I actually felt a twinge at the loss of that one. I was never very good with broad hand-eye coordination, but good with detail work.
10. Sorry. I tried but I can't think of another "toy" that I cared anything about in childhood.
"It’s not given to anyone to have no regrets; only to decide, through the choices we make, which regrets we’ll have,"
David Weber – In Fury Born
