What did you play with?

Yes, JLN, now I remember playing a PI game. We would be private detectives, solving the case every time.

I was Peter Gunn and my brother was his dad... Pop Gunn

Nothing bad, you just have similar sense of humor and communication style. If it was bad, we would PM each other like a bunch of 13 year olds.

jll's post reminds me of one wartime Christmas. My one storebought gift was a train. It was made of a 2x4 board with more than a dozen washers on the bottom for wheels. It was square, with the only train-like features crudely painted on.

Ah memories. I don't have them without the stimulation provided here.

I had a sandbox. It wasn't some cheesy thing of plastic bought from Sears. My dad and his dad built it out of brick and mortar. It was round; perhaps eight feet in diameter with sand over a foot deep. It was quite aways across the yard from our house, but if I wanted to I was allowed to draw water from a spigot at the neighbors' house in order to make the sand wet enough to build with.
Once I designed an entire village or town with one and two story buildings along narrow, winding streets. Some of the buildings had roofs made of popsicle sticks. Many years later, when I visited Morocco, I thought of my sand city.
Anyway, my friend Bobby came over from across the street. He didn't share my interest in sand, so he just watched as I put the finishing touches on my imaginary town.
My mother came out and said it was time for me to get ready to go to some other kid's birthday party. Bobby hadn't been invited to that party.
The next day I came out to discover that the entire town had been destroyed by enemy planes shooting rockets. It looked liked the place had been hit hard; every building had a hole punched in it as if with a sharp stick.
I wasn't upset, as I recall. It was time to move on. But before I could level the town Bobby came over with his father. He was a very quiet person, hard to chat with my parents said, but a decent enough guy. He looked at the destroyed town and he looked at Bobby. And they went home.

Oooooh, I knew it! I just knew you guys w/ pm privileges all do that. I can just imagine the flurry of gossipy pm's and then you're all just stifling snickers about what you were whispering to each other and trying to keep a straight face while you post on the thread.

Good story, rjb.

But then, I've come to expect that from you.

collected wacky packs like there was no tomorrow...

had a Howdy Doody and a G.I. Joe (no kung-fu grip, i'm afraid to say)...

had this thing that you spun like a crank, and it shot out red white & blue sparks...

had a Funlight Projector, that displayed pulsating psychedelic images on the wall, man:




never had a Big Wheel, the coolest thing a 7 year old in the early 70's could possess: