Toys are very important to me. Anyone who knows me now knows that I treasure that which amuses me probably alot more than that which benefits me in any profound way. But whatever. I'll live longer.
Toys have always been really important to me. I can recall exact toys that I played with (I won't recall the age at which I played with those toys, because that could be embarassing) in which house I played with them, and in which room or in which pile of dirt or mud those toys had the fortune of calling home.
What is pictured here is one of my earlier memories of a toy...an electronic horse that would loll it's passenger back and forth. Pretty simple. Classic. This particular horse is definitely much older than I, but it is one of the last remaining vestiges of my early childhood days. This horse is kept at a Benjamin Franklin's. Probably only a few people know what I'm talking about when I say that name. They were sort of an anything and everything store for towns whose population had not crested 10,000. They were the female compatriot to the Pamida. There was a sizeable second floor consisting of fabrics, clothing patterns and everything else seamstresses would need to equip themselves. But in the basement... in the basement there used to be one of the most magical assemblages of toys! Toys that no one else had! Toys that no one thought kids should have! Toys that had long since stopped being made, but had found their way to the shelves of this tiny store in Minnesota. And every once in a while, my siblings and I would get to bring something home from this store. These were always amongst the best toys.
This is because they were real toys. Not like the cheap knock-offs you found at Kmart and elsewhere. If you bought a toy pistol (as I was very fond of) at Kmart, it would be plastic, weigh about 5 oz. and would break soon after you got it home. This led you on a never-ending crusade to find real, tough toy guns and weapons with which you might destroy all foes, imaginary or otherwise. The best not-cheap toy guns came from Benjamin Franklin. These guns were made of heavy plastic, perhaps even metal (if you were lucky) and felt very significant in your hand. There was sense of empowerment there, even for a six year old.
The concept of a "real" toy, or at least a plaything which had (in my mind) an added element of realism reached to the horse toy above. The horse was a glossy plastic - not very convincing at all, but what always made me run to it and clambor on it's back was the saddle! Why this saddle was as good as real! It was made of leather, now worn my so many years' worth of childrens butts, and the clincher- it had a metal horn, fasteners and stirrups. If anything contained metal, it was professional quality.
There is one toy I loved and adored for the short while I had it, and to this day, I still wonder where it disappeared to.
Staying in the spirit of this moment, it was, of course, a gun. But this was no pistol. No mere handgun! This was a fully-automatic sub-machine gun! Capable of decimating the oncoming hordes of invading Germans with a simple tug at it's plastic trigger.
Okay, this gun WAS plastic, but this was the heavy-duty sort of plastic I mentioned earlier. You had no fear of playing with this gun. It could take the abuse.
It was bought from Benjamin Franklin's sidewalk sale during the "Crazy Days" promotions for all of the local businesses. All of the downtown stores lined the closed-off street with tables and put out hundreds of grey bins, displaying their wares. I had recently had a birthday and had my grandma's $10 birthday money burning a hole in my anxious shorts. My dad and I went down to the "Crazy" madness and I found myself looking through the bins in front of Benjamin Franklin and coming across a small collection of toy firearms. Such delight! A small child's delirium is only compounded when he realizes he actually has the money to buy his shiny new trinket! Such was my excitement, I didn't even make it home before playing with it. My dad and I sat down on the curb, and I watched as he un-twisted and un-screwed the gun from it's constraints.
Thus began an era of unprecedented make-believe. Wooden guns and imagination will take you part of the way, but with a good piece of hardware, the benefit is tremendous. It's more like having a side-kick along who always wants to play exactly the way you do. And the side-kick shoots bullets.
One day, as my make-believe plans demanded, I found myself climbing the tree in our front yard, side-kick firearm in tow. At some moment, I got into an argument with my older brother, and who's fault it was is now beyond my memory, but the gun slipped from my lap and fell to the sidewalk, where the tip of it's barrel shattered. I remember holding my brother solely responsible. And then being sent to my room for my temper tantrum.
The tip was glued back together, but it's glory was only a shadow of its former self. It was still played with a great deal, but my child-self could never see too far beyond the gobs of glue.
Sometime soon after this, during the course of one of my games, the gun disappeared somewhere from which it never returned. We have since moved from that home, and I now live in another state, so I know the chances of finding this wonderful toy are nonexistant, but in the back of my mind, I wonder if one day I will open up my closet and find it propped up against the back, or inside my dishwasher between the glasses, or in a trash can, where I'll be able to rescue it at the last moment from certain destruction at the hands of the trash collector. Maybe a more realistic idea would be to find the same toy for sale some day in another Benjamin Franklin, and the whole story can be played out again. Except this time a 23 year-old wielding a toy gun may not elicit the same innocently-happy reactions from passer-byers.
T.
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