Seeing my old cousin, the one who sends Christmas letters written by his cats to one and all, reminded me of some toys he handed down to my brother , sisters and I when we were still small. Toys were very sex specific in those days so my brother and I were the ones who got the most enjoyment from the boxes my aunt and uncle brought one time when they came over to drink wine and gin with my mom and dad. He was an only child so he had lots of toys.
The coolest of the toys was the old table hockey set. We used a black marble for the puck. The men on the ice, from Toronto and Montreal, only span around but it was easily as much fun as the sets with Bobby Orr's name and picture on the side then popular. "You be the Frogs! I was the Frogs last game! Fucking Frogs. Ribbit! Ribbit! Ribbit!"
One of the boxes were filled with Classic comics. They were boring compared to the superhero and GI Joe comics boys read then. One of the comics was all about the Presidents of the United States. "How come all the Presidents are such a bunch of goofs?" We trashed them all which was too bad because they would be worth enough to keep me supplied with booze for a few months now.
Another box contained enough Meccano bits and pieces to recycle into several cars if they were not now rusting at the bottom of the Sliverville dump. We built all kinds of cool crap with the Meccano but we had the most fun using the 1/2" wide x 12" long pieces for hockey sticks on the basement linoleum. We had to tape up our hands before we played linoleum hockey otherwise the bottom side of your hand would bleed all over the place once you had worn it out slapping the puck. I can still hear dad yelling, "Who's been bleeding all over the rec - room?"
The rest of the toys were mostly model war planes. They were fun as we played basement war games with our already considerable piles of toy soldiers and infantry. Nothing livens up a war like some death from above. No one wanted to be the Nazis or the Commies in the years that led up to 1972. "You be the loser this time!"
3 comments:
For our Habitons vs the ROC game we had those pucks with the inner silver marble....
As for linoleum hockey, we called it flip disk.
Don't remember the blood though - think there may have been some carpet involved.
You think kids with I-Pods and Wii's for brains bother to play linoleum hockey these days?
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I like to think there are still kids out there who play makeshift games. One of my nephews used to stretch out his dork until it was just about as long as a guitar neck and play it like he was James Williamson. Could be the Makeshift Age is about done.
Crap.
They might be playing with guitar necks these days on that 'Hero' thing, but I don't see many actually playing them.
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