With the 2001 holiday season drawing near, toys again figure in our thinking. Playthings of all sorts let us shower affection on our children, and in some cases offer a route to learning. As I think about this, I can't help but muse about how times have changed since the formative days of my boyhood back in the 1950s.
As for us adults, some say that the only difference between men and boys is the cost of their toys (I suspect this maxim applies equally well to women). I admit that I fully subscribe to this adage.
What's more, my own toys have a decidedly retro aspect to them. My spouse claims that's how I relive a part of the past that was especially good to me. Judging by the Chrysler Group's success with its somewhat nostalgic -- yet contemporary -- PT Cruiser automobile, I know that I'm not alone (by the way, have you seen Chrysler's latest Crossfire prototype?)
But my wife doesn't understand. You see, the reason I like my ancient toys is that they speak to me about an era where things were less transient and ephemeral. I view most of today's toys as momentary diversions; many appear to be widgets that become obsolete before you can bat an eye. That rubs me the wrong way. I like things that last--whether it's a relationship with an employer or lover, or a toy.
Admittedly, these days my toy collection includes items that I couldn't afford when I was an adolescent in the 1950s. For example, today I own a Rolleiflex twin lens reflex camera, replete with a Carl Zeiss Jena lens. This pre-WW-II camera never fails to amaze me with its utterly silent shutter and silky smooth manual adjustments, to say nothing of the edge-to-edge clarity of the images it dishes up.
The camera's ground glass viewfinder includes a pop-up magnifying glass that fairly speaks to a shutterbug, telling me to slo-o-w down and carefully focus the instrument. It also makes only 12 exposures, a feature not conducive to shooting snapshots. Although some of you may say this camera is ponderous compared to today's pocketsize automated point-and-shoot cameras, I like the deliberate mentality the old Rolleiflex engenders.
I enjoy like spirits when I use my Collins R-390 shortwave receiver, a genuine circa 1953 boat anchor. Restored from the ravages of a house fire, this vintage vacuum-tube military radio is as sensitive and selective as today's best microprocessor and DSP-based radio receivers---and it's utterly stable.
Manually tuned, the R-390's Veeder-Root mechanical counter displays frequency to a fraction of a kilocycle (oops, kilohertz), and is highly repeatable. The temperature-compensated variable tuning oscillator in this beast (the set weighs 80 pounds) is also extremely linear. Best of all is the old set's implausibly mysterious electro-mechanical design, mute testimony to concurrent engineering---1950s style. I waste countless time watching the set's cams and gears go through their motions.
My collection also includes a few things that I could afford back in the days of my youth. By saving my meager allowance and newspaper route earnings, I scraped together the $29 needed in 1959 to mail order a Heathkit AR-3, a five-tube shortwave receiver. (Don't you wish the Heath Company was still in business making electronics kits and ham radio gear? Alas, these days I guess it isn't judicious to sell a kit that includes a home-wired 800-volt 500-mA power supply!)
Then there were those wonderful gifts. I'm still fond of the American Flyer model trains my father gave me on my eighth birthday. Back in those days just about every middle class kid owned "electric trains." The now famous Lionel Company made most, but I preferred the more realistically styled American Flyer sets made by the A.C. Gilbert Company of Erector Set fame.
I still have my original S-gauge American Flyers; they're all set up and running in a Fifties-appropriate basement layout. Remarkably, their locomotive's universal motors run as well today as they did nearly a half-century ago, despite unceremonious drop-testing from a height of four feet to a concrete floor.
I also recall making toys when I was a kid, and wonder how many of today's youngsters do. Some of my childhood contemporaries built foxhole radios, for example, winding oversize tuning coils on used oatmeal boxes. Over one long winter, I remember constructing a steam engine, carefully filing and drilling its tiny reciprocating piston, cylinder, valve, and flywheel. Everything came from pieces of copper pipe and scrap metal found in my dad's home workshop.
I also recall putting together a large---and dreadfully dangerous---Jacob's ladder, using a heavy neon sign transformer for its 25-kV spark source. Later, I added a Leyden jar to this setup. This capacitor was kludged together from aluminum foil lining an empty mayonnaise jug. One of my boyhood chums helped me lash up a Morse key in the 110-volt primary circuit so that we could transmit coded spark messages around the neighborhood. Lord knows how many radio and TV programs we interfered with!
Speaking of danger, in the post-Sputnik years many of us kids were inspired to build rockets. These weren't the sanitized kinds made with prefabbed rocket motors either. We built ours from scratch, mixing volatile chemicals and packing the stuff into paper cores wound from old Life Magazine covers (we had the good sense to steer clear of metal pipe casings).
The more I think about these now astonishing feats, the more I remember others. But I won't bore you with more details. I'd prefer to hear about your toys and accomplishments. Tell me what you experimented with as a kid.
Do you think today's programmable Leggo Dacta robots, plastic radio-controlled race car models, digital cameras, Nintendo games, GHz computers, and the like can compare with the activities my contemporaries and I unwittingly enjoyed so many years ago?
Are today's kids enjoying far more enriching and exciting (and safer) toys than we had? Do the best of these cultivate learning and experimentation, or do deceptively alluring LCD veneers shield kids from knowing---or caring---what makes them tick inside?
Nostalgia geeks like me wonder if the toys of today will be saved and cherished in the future. Will they be handed down or become collectibles? Will they stand the test of time and still be functional or even relevant four decades from now?
