|
|
Construction
Toys
I had been playing with construction toys from an early age. At first, there were simple blocks. By kindergarten, there was a set of Tinker Toys, a cylindrical container full of dowels and wooden disks. (I recall my father teaching me an important principle when it came time to put the Tinker Toys away: to fit everything into the container, put the largest pieces in first.) Later, I got an Erector set, a collection of perforated steel pieces that could be assembled with nuts and bolts. I used the set's electric motor to make a self-propelled toy truck. (It was an impractical vehicle, due to its low-traction smooth aluminum wheels and trailing AC power cord.) I built a Ferris wheel and enlisted my parakeet as a passenger. And when I started announcing high school basketball games into a tape recorder, I used the Erector set to make a collar and chest brace to hold the microphone in front of me. But I especially enjoyed the toys that were designed to create miniature buildings. My parents gave me a set of American Plastic Bricks around the time I was in first grade. These were stackable plastic blocks, each of which was grooved to represent several bricks. Most of the blocks were red, but white ones could be used for foundations, sills, and lintels. Wedge-shaped blocks could be used to build gables. The gables supported a folded green cardboard roof, embossed with a hexagonal shingle pattern. Holes for doors and windows could be filled with printed cardboard representations of the necessary hardware, anchored into slots in the blocks. I spent hours playing with these pieces in their various combinations, assembling them into little brick houses and schools.
My favorite construction kit, because of its versatility, was called American Skyline. I assembled white plastic drum pieces into vertical columns, and into the slots between the columns, I slid horizontal pieces: walls, doors, steps, and so on. There were also die-cut sheets of plastic printed with a checkerboard pattern for floors and roofs.
|
||||||||||
|
|
|||||||||||
When I was 40, my father cleaned out the basement by selling much of the junk that had accumulated, including the construction toys that I had long since packed away. But I have these pictures to remind me of them, and I'm grateful for the creativity that they encouraged.
|