Dave Wood

I’m a sucker for watching cable shows like “American Pickers.” My sister-in-law assures me it’s a total fake. Nevertheless, I learn something every time I watch pickers Mike and Frank (who unfortunately, has dropped out of the show,) so I’ll ignore her warnings and keep watching.

Here's what I learned from a rerun filmed in Ohio. Frank Fritz is in love with two things: drinking beer at La Crosse’s Oktoberfest and antique toys. During the Ohio episode he discovers a miniature metal bus and goes nuts and offers the collector $4,500 for the beautiful toy—and is rebuffed by the owner! What I learned from Frank’s passion for old toys: Some kids during the Great Depression had fancier toys than we Whitehall kids did, even during the post WWII boom. Frank estimated that that toy bus sold in 1929 sold for $19, the equivalent of $250 in today’s money. WOW! 

Back in the 40s on Scranton Street, we had fun with toys much more modest than that bus. Chuck Pederson and I were experts in making “Tanks.” Not the Sherman variety, but like this: Find a wooden spool discarded by Grandma. Use a knife to make the edges rough all the way around—to make “tank tracks.” Put some melted paraffin into one of the holes and then pull a rubber band through the hole, leaving some rubber hanging out on each end. A wooden farmer match in the other end of spool. Wind the rubber band around it until rubber is taut. Place on sidewalk and let ‘er go. It’ll rumble clumsily down the sidewalk like a World War I tank.

That’s just one of many toys with which we amused ourselves in olden times. The tender branches of willow trees were painstakingly fashioned into whistles, the thicker ever-present “Y” branches into slingshots powered by dad’s ever-present discarded inner tubes. 

Encouraged by Miss Margaret Larson’s geography class we fashioned “adobe” bricks from mud and grass clippings, dried them in the sun and erected Mexican haciendas. 

Rich kids from Park Drive played a marble game called “Pot,” digging a hole in the end of a sidewalk. Each player anted several marbles then rolled a big steel ball bearing reclaimed from the junk yard, down the sidewalk, trying to hit the hole. Winner take all. Poor kids used an index finger to draw a circle in the sand. Each player anted one peerie, or one agate into the hole, lagged toward the circle, then knelt and squeezed the lagging marble toward the marbles in the sand circle. Anteing with commies was discouraged, not because of Sen. Joseph McCarthy. Our commies were handmade composition baubles lopsidedly made out of clay.

My grandma even got into the act of creating playthings out of not much. This one turned out to be absolutely the worst toy in my playpen. The year was 1945. The war was ending, cousin Bill who also lived with Grandma and Grandpa was looking forward to celebrating the Fourth of July with his father about to return from the Pacific. Bill and I figured we’d light rocket firecrackers like all the neighborhood kids. 

Alas, it was not to be. Grandma explained that Grandpa did not permit fireworks on the premises because of a childhood trauma he suffered many years ago. “Aw, gee, Grandma….”

“But I’ve got something just as good.” She took us out to the old concrete carriage step, gave us each a pair of pliers and a box of farmer matches. She demonstrated. Deftly snipping off the white tip of a match, placing tip in the jaws of a plier, and rapping the plier on the carriage step.  “PFT!,” said the tip.

“That,” she said, “should keep you busy, for a long time,” and returned to her kitchen. And so it was that Bill and I, surrounded by neighbor kids’ rockets’ red glares, Chuck Pederson’s bombs bursting in air, spent our Fourth “PFT”ing! our way through that day long ago.