Tag Archives: toys

Still Life With Lincoln Logs and Bottle Caps

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I call it “Still Life With Lincoln Logs and Bottle Caps.”Still Life With Lincoln Logs and Bottle Caps

Garage deaccession continues, if I can borrow such a tony word for the process of sorting and disposing and squirrel damage cleanup in the unheated structure toward the back of our lot. The other day I found a bag of Lincoln Logs. A bag of sad, battered logs. Many are cracked and chipped or even partly missing. Also, there are no roof slates. That’s an important thing to go missing.

I’m pretty sure they aren’t my childhood Lincoln Logs, since they were in better shape – I think — and anyway, this feels like a yard-sale acquisition that our daughters never took to, and was quickly forgotten.

Someone glued together two two-notch logs.Still Life With Lincoln Logs and Bottle Caps

If they were trying to get a four-notch log equivalent, they didn’t get it.

I built a simple structure (see above), for old time’s sake. The rest of the logs are now in the trash. Maybe I’ll add the structure to the broken mug and plate midden in one corner of the yard, and let the elements do their work.

Ollie Warhol

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Today was about as raw an April day as I can remember, with more cold rain and snappy winds to come tomorrow. This year it’s as if early February traded places with early April, though not quite. At least the snow melted.

With a digital camera, anyone can create Warhol-like images.

When Andy Warhol died in 1987, he was already playing with computerized images. What if he’d lived long enough to create web sites? What would he have done with social media?

All that occurred to me at the catch-as-catch-can retailer Ollie’s, though the thought could have been inspired by many retailers.

The last time I was there, more politically inspired dog toys had turned up.

I was tempted to acquire Slick Willie to go with Bernie. But no. Not because we don’t have a dog any more. She would have chewed such toys to bits, so it wouldn’t have been for her, but just a whimsy of mine. But I have enough useless items. Not, however, enough useless images, which take up a lot less physical space.

Somehow the Bernie Bros Missed This One

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A few weeks ago, I went again to Ollie’s, whose appeal is the randomness of its merchandise, and there he was, among the packaged foods and housewares and small appliances and furniture and bric-a-brac, no other stuffed politicos around, no tag or bar code.

“This the funniest thing I’ve seen all day,” I said to the clerk. “How much?”

I was only kidding. It was the funniest thing I’d seen all week, maybe all month. He spent a minute or so tapping into a laptop near the register, but soon gave up the chase. “How about $3.99?” he said.

Sold.

A product of Fuzzu, a Vermont designer of pet toys. I’d say maker, but for Bernie at least that occurred in China. Bernie isn’t alone — well, he was when I found him, but had he been separated, a la Toy Story, from the rest of the Fuzzu stable? Joe, Kamala, Donald, Mike, Hillary, Bill and Rootin’ Tootin’ Putin.

Mike? The former Mayor Bloomberg, it seems, since on his back is “Pop Cop.”

Now Bernie joins my small collection of presidential ephemera: postcards, a few buttons, my Franklin Pierce bobblehead and William Henry Harrison Pez dispenser and Eugene V. Debs ribbon. My definition of presidential is pretty broad, and certainly includes serious if quixotic candidates for the nomination.

American Science & Surplus

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Regards to all for Christmas and the New Year. Back to posting around January 3, when I will wonder, as usual, how we could possibly be so far into the 21st century. Which still seems like a new century to me.

On Sunday, I bought a rubber chicken from this plentiful stock, at a retailer I know. I got the regular one for $10.95, not the more expensive, fancy-pants glow-in-the-dark model. Bet a regular one cost $9.95 a year ago, but such is the retail economy in our time.American Science & Surplus

Why a chicken? (Why a no duck?) My old one must have worn out. Not because I used it for anything, just that rubber doesn’t last forever. Anyway, no household is complete without a rubber chicken. Words to live by.

Where? The truly wonderful American Science & Surplus, which has three stores, two in Illinois — Park Ridge and Geneva — and one in Milwaukee. None of them are particularly close to where we live, so we don’t go often. In fact, I think it’s been about 10 years. We ought to go more often.

This is the AS&S in far west suburban Geneva, which we patronized just around sunset.American Science & Surplus American Science & Surplus

As you can see, the store promises rubber chickens.American Science & Surplus

But that’s only the beginning. AS&S has a retail selection unlike any other in my experience. Toys and toy-like items, but also electronic parts, lab equipment, optical gear, craft items, camping equipment, tools and hardware, militaria, office goods, novelties and more. Much, much more.American Science & Surplus American Science & Surplus

The place was fairly busy, with people probably doing what we were doing. Looking for oddities for presents.American Science & Surplus American Science & Surplus American Science & Surplus American Science & Surplus

You can also buy Teslas there.American Science & Surplus

Affordable Teslas, that is, though at $20, I took a pass.

Pirates Ahoy, Sydney

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Another postcard from a time when that was a more common way to send a short message from afar. In this case, pretty far. I picked up this card in Sydney on Dec. 22, 1991, and mailed it from Canberra the next day.

I’d wandered into a department store in Sydney that day, which I spent walking around the city: Circular Quay, the Opera House, Sydney Tower, the Australian Museum, the Royal Botanic Garden and more, such as the (to my ears) amusing Woolloomoolo district, which I’ve read has gentrified since I was there.

I don’t remember going into a Sydney department store, or seeing the Lego exhibit. Yet the card documents the visit. Lego called it “Pirates Ahoy.”

Jim has a longstanding fascination with pirates — mostly the lore, though I’m certain he’s read some genuine histories. Apparently Lego was setting up pirate-theme displays at the time to promote its Lego Pirates set, which was fairly new at the time, launching in 1989.

The genius of Wikipedia is that there are entries like Lego Pirates. It’s an astonishingly long article, documenting in incredible detail the byzantine history of a children’s playset.

Thursday Debris. Literally

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Over Memorial Day weekend, I started cleaning out the garage. Or, as I told Ann, go Marie Kondo on it — getting rid of a lot of the contents, one way or another. Ann said she thought that might be a misinterpretation of Ms. Kondo’s ideas, but I don’t care, since I have no intention of watching her videos or TikToks or however she gets her message out. Call it willful misinterpretation.

The process continues, sometimes on the weekends since, sometimes in the evenings. I’ve made some progress. Besides simple decluttering, a lot of dust and leaves and other debris has been swept out. The worst of it involved removing boxes torn by an invading squirrel in winters past.

So far I’ve filled our 90-gallon trash can three times, along with the 90-gallon recycle bin, and I’m working on a fourth for each. Other items have been given to a resale shop. A small number of things have come into the house, since I’ve deemed them too useful to be in the garage.

I’ve found things I’d forgotten we had, and which should have gone long ago. Such as items from earlier years in the lives of my daughters. This box and its contents, for instance.

It moved with us from the western suburbs. I know that because I wrote which bedroom the movers were to take it, in the new house — this house — nearly 19 years ago. Ann used it in those days. Ann, who’s in college now. Lilly probably used it before that. Lilly, who’s a grown woman in Seattle.

Did I feel sentimental about it? Slightly. Very slightly. Enough to post the picture here. But that’s all. Knowing that absolutely no one would want the dirty old plastic within, I emptied the box into the trash can, and then (after taking the picture), broke the box down for recycling. Whatever sentiment I felt ebbed away as I inhaled some dust.

Further Considerations About Sock Monkeys (And Long Grove Community Church & Cemetery)

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Rockford, Illinois, is generally credited with creating the modern sock monkey, and more recently fiberglass sock monkeys were put on display there. There are even sock monkeys at the Midway Village Museum in Rockford.

So how is it Long Grove is getting a sock monkey museum? I’ve only done cursory research, the kind the subject deserves, and I haven’t found a connection. I like to think the Long Grove museum will be run by a breakaway sock monkey faction, rivals of the sock monkey orthodoxy in Rockford, but that’s just me amusing myself.

A short distance from Long Grove’s historic downtown is Long Grove Community Church, which is historic in its own right, built by Evangelical German immigrants in the 1840s.Long Grove Community Church

Long Grove Community Church
“With a new century, came many changes,” the church’s web site says, referring to the 20th century. “The church widened her circle of ministry to include local people who were not German-speaking. Two denominational mergers took the church away from her Evangelical roots.

“By 1950, the church had grown so small that the denomination recommended the doors be closed. But God gave the people a vision. Instead of closing their doors, they built Sunday School rooms for children. As people migrated from the city to the suburbs, the area grew and so did the church. By the late 1960s, we had transitioned from a small rural church into a suburban church.”

The Long Grove Cemetery is next to the church.

Long Grove Community Church

Long Grove Illinois Cemetery

Long Grove Illinois Cemetery

There isn’t much information on line about this cemetery, despite its clear historic aspects.Long Grove Illinois Cemetery

But I don’t need a web site to tell me it’s another of the many cemeteries in the Chicago area with immigrant German stones, many dating from the 19th century.

Return of the Zhu-Zhus

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“A line of severe storms slammed through downtown Chicago and surrounding areas Monday, downing trees and power lines, which sparked fires in the city, officials said,” CNN reported last night. That, and there was some riotous looting too.

“More than a million homes and businesses in the Midwest are without power, including a third of all of customers in Iowa,” CNN continued. “The wind was so strong when the storm passed through Perry, Iowa, it blew pieces of boards from other buildings into the walls of a house.”

So we lucked out. As I mentioned, the winds were fairly tame in my tiny corner of the world. After such wind and rain as we had had passed yesterday, I went out in the yard to pick up items that moved around a little, such as one of the deck chairs. The sun had returned and I noticed the rain-speckled hibiscus picking up the light.hibiscusToday we opened up a box that has been sitting in our laundry room for a good many years, tucked under a few other boxes. I call it a laundry room, but being home to the washer and dryer is only one of its functions. Crap we don’t want to put partly out in the elements — in the garage, that is — goes there.

On Saturday, since this is a Summer of Nowhere, I spent a fair number of hours in the garage, till the trash bin was mostly full and garage crap had been rearranged somewhat.

Back to the box. Among many other things, it contained five Zhu-Zhu Pets. Mechanical hamsters, since I’m not sure they rise to the level of robot hamsters.

Ann marveled at them. Her 17-year-old self reflected on how important they were to her seven-year-old self. She got her first one for that birthday. Like most toys, they were important until they weren’t.
What amazed me was that the batteries have held out on all of them. They all still move around and make various preprogramed noises.

That’s about 20 seconds of randomly selected Zhu-Zhu Pet sounds, squeaks and whirs coming directly from 2010 to you in 2020.

Watch the Reindeer Melt! Days of Fun

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Ann brought this to my attention earlier this month, at a crafts superstore I rarely go to, but from which she wanted something. On display was an item that seemed to be sold for Christmas, but which by January was at a deep discount.

One of the stranger holiday items I saw this season, or any holiday season, really. A reindeer figure. Build it! Watch it melt! Watch it melt? Watch it melt?

Walmart’s marketing text about the item is positively demented, which I guess is fitting: “Build the reindeer and watch it melt magically! Fun for days. Completely reusable. Keep building and watch it melt over and over! Perfect stocking stuffer! Miracle Melters! Reindeer! Build it and Watch it Melt!”

Sure enough, someone has made a video about this — toy. I can’t say that I watched all of it, skipping around some, but the point of the item still eludes me. Do reindeer melt in dark Sámi folktales?

Paper Purge

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Not long ago, I decided to purge some paper around the house. Specifically, user manuals for machines that are long gone. You’d think that those would have been tossed along with the items themselves, but that’s not how clutter works, unless you’re Marie What’s-Her-Name.

Papers like this.

In the same vein, I had setup instructions for iMacs, a reel mower that now has vines on it, landline phones long junked, defunct cameras, a previous dishwasher, clothes washer, clothes dryer, and oven, and a few odds and ends I don’t even remember owning.

From a bilingual food processor manual, I learned the amusing fact that the French for food processor is robot culinaire.

Also: Woody warnings. We took the actual toy to Boot Hill long ago — well, metaphorical boot hill — after the dog did him bodily harm. Somehow, the pamphlet of written warnings was left behind.

Warnings because the only instructions involve replacing the batteries that power Woody’s voice box. The rest of the text lists warnings about the batteries: keep them away from small children, don’t swallow them yourself, put them in correctly, including the correct polarity, don’t mix different kinds of batteries, or old and new batteries, and don’t let the damn things leak, but if you do, throw them away — in a locally acceptable manner.

Pedestrian stuff. Not a single warning along the lines of: If you see Woody walking and hear him talking, you are not having a psychotic episode. Woody is a sentient creature with a secret life.