Twigs, Trains, and Blueberry Trees

Yesterday, my father told me that when he was young, he had no toys. It was the Great Depression, you see, and they couldn’t afford any little frivolities. Instead, said he, he would make do with the scrap ends of the lumber his father was using to build their home. Poor, sad, little boy. Resourceful and plucky, but forced to grow up early, and put away childish things. Serious from the start, that’s my Pops.

Don’t you believe it.

We had been looking through some old photos from a museum, and one featured a wooden rocking horse, brightly painted, and built around some sort of gliding mechanism. Real hair for the mane, saddle made of leather, reins draping downward. This was not your typical rocker. But Dad looked at that for only a moment, dismissing it quickly. So, too, went the metal roller skates that attached over the shoe—“We lived on a gravel road! How would I roller skate without killing myself?” No board games, no puppets, and what on earth would he do with a stuffed animal? They did have a radio, but that’s not a toy.

Last night, my mother called his bluff. Of course he had toys, said she. It may have been the Depression, but that didn’t mean the kids lost their imagination or determination. For her part, she and her group learned to make toys, like dolls out of corn silk or rags, or find a rock to scratch a hopscotch pattern on the ground. At this point, Dad admitted to making things, too. He would take two bits of wood, and nail them together to make a gun, and go play War. Or find a twig on the ground, and chase the little girls with it.

Dad on his trike, looking for things to run into.

But of course he had some toys, manufacture or otherwise. When the family lived in Chicago, there was some money, and my dad was the first grandchild. You may remember his balloon-tire tricycle, with which he attacked neighborhood garage doors. There were always pennies to put on the railroad tracks, and the fence around the railroad right-of-way to clamber over and conquer. There was a frenemy who would scrap with him every day after school, just for the fun of fighting—or perhaps because of the pretty-boy clothes Grandma Lucille insisting on dressing him in.  

Dad looking fancy in 1938.

When not chasing little girls or fighting bigger boys, he could look forward to rides in the family’s new 1940 Ford convertible. With his father at the wheel, his mother up front with his baby sister, Dad had the backseat to himself, and he could stretch out and revel in the wind in his face. There was the small matter of his father’s chewing tobacco. Grandpa Tony would spit out the window, but right back in it would come, right at my dad. He laughs now, but I’m not sure that part of the ride qualified as fun.

And he had an electric train set.

Like most things in his life, he just had to push the limits with that train. Maybe three or four cars long, with a caboose, it was just big enough to have some real fun with. He would race it around and around the track, letting it gain momentum, trying to see at what point it would jump the track. It just wasn’t a complete session unless the train derailed. Much like how he rode his bike as a young teen—standing on the seat while racing down steep hills. Always live to the edge. Always see just how far you can go.

You can’t always stop the fun to think about the consequences. Once, he noticed a handsaw in their garage in Chicago. The Investigative Child immediately grasped the possibilities, as well as the handles of the saw. He trotted over to the blueberry tree his Grandpa Petrakovitz had planted, from which fruit he made his wine, and climbed on up. Once he was comfortably ensconced on a limb, about 4 or 5 feet from the ground, he began to saw. He just knew that limb had to come off—oh, the fun he would have with it then!

Well, he was sawing away, and sawing away, stopping every so often to check on his progress, when his father emerged from the apartment, camera in hand. He just stood there, close to the tree, watching his four year-old son at his play-work. Eventually, Dad noticed the camera, and asked what was going on. “Oh, said his father, laughing, “I’m just waiting for that branch to come down. Just keep cutting.”

“But why are just standing there, with that camera?”

“Just waiting for the picture to happen. Son, when that limb falls, you’re going to fall. You’re sitting on the wrong side of the cut!”

He stopped sawing. But the disappointment still remains: his adventure was cut short. His glory went unachieved. Unlike the time he borrowed a buddy’s motorcycle. But that, as you know, is another story, for another day.

Christmas, 1951. Back: Tony Sr., Rezie, John, Tony Jr.
Front: Lucille, Jim, Donna, Dad. There were toys aplenty,
but none for Dad (cue the sad music).