Bobbie Had a Nickel

Today for some reason I was trying to remember some of my favorite toys and books from childhood. I know that sounds like a strange thing for a 79 year old man to spend time thinking about when so many much more significant things are happening in the world at the moment. 

The inspiration, though, came from a Billy Collins poem I read. I won’t go into great detail about that—suffice it to say that he has a poem entitled  “Bathtub Families.” (By the way, I highly recommend his poetry as a way for sheer enjoyment and imaginative reflection on life.)

When I read this one, which I have read many times before, for some reason this time it suddenly inspired me to think about the joyful treasures of childhood even though he wasn’t talking about childhood.

My sister and I not too long ago were talking and reminiscing about our early years growing up at 77 South Main Street in Medford, NJ. She remembers reading stories to me (she’s 11 years older than me) and in particular, one that I constantly asked her to read: Bobbie Had a Nickel. 

(I didn’t buy it , but still available on eBay)

Of course I had a Slinky and ran it down the wooden front stairway. Then there was a Canadian Mounted Police costume I got for Christmas one year because I use to listen to “Sergeant Preston of the Yukon” on the radio and later when it came to TV. I think I was about 6 (Funny I almost wrote 60). 

I had a toy movie projector which actually showed cartoons and short 16m movies excerpted from feature length films. And I loved the board games that my parents and I played sometimes in the evening: Pahrcheesi, Checkers, Chinese Checkers, Old Maids, and of course, Monopoly, among many others. 

Not all things from my childhood belonged to me. One of my best friends had electric scissors. I was over at her house one day when it raining and she got out those scissors which I thought were the coolest things ever. I remember just wanting to keep cutting paper with no particular design in mind. (She was much more artistic than me.)

Probably my most favorite toy was my set of Lionel Electric Trains. My dad made a train platform for them to run on and we put together a village with a train station, fire houses, police station, hospital, bank, a diner of course and a few houses. That is also what our Christmas tree sat in the middle of (Plasticville). 

I’m sorry I’m rambling on, but if any of you would be interested, you could use the comment section of this blog to tell about any of your favorite childhood toys. I’d be very interested and would perhaps create another blog posting just about that. 

In the meantime, my reason for this whimsical, and I guess, sappy post is simply as a kind of distraction from other things going on in the world that I don’t always want to think about.