Toys from yesteryear

A recent post from one of the blogs I follow, Home on the Range, spoke of toys from another era.  That one brought back a flood of memories of toys you never see today.

Do you remember any of these?  If you are under 50, you probably don't!

I was a "Tomboy" - yeah, the younger readers will not remember that one, and if you do, in today's world, it is considered a bad word, like, well you know!  A Tomboy was a girl that pushed aside girly toys - dolls and tea sets - for things that were considered appropriate for boys.  I played cowboys and indians, riding an imaginary horse fashioned from a broomstick with a hole drilled in the top to hold a small rope - the reins for the horse.  I played with cap guns. . . even wore my new cowgirl outfit, complete with holsters and guns, the first day back to school after Christmas in the first grade for Show and Tell.  Try that one in today's world.

Going back to even younger days, I had a "putt-putt boat."  It was a small, tin boat, a bath tub toy.  You placed a birthday cake candle inside the boat, lit the candle, and the heat from the candle somehow powered the boat and it moved through the bath tub water making a "putt-putt" sound!

A trip downtown was a special event for me.  There were the street vendors with their carts selling wind up toys!  It could be a monkey playing a drum, a walking horse - those are the ones I can remember - I'm sure there were many more.

We didn't know what a TV was.  I think I was in the first grade before there was a TV in the house and it was a black and white screen that took five minutes to "heat up" before the screen came on.  We had one channel, the local television station.

Sometimes I almost wish we could go back to those days.