My dad 1931
My mom and her new bike 1938
My family had 6 kids, 3 girls then 3 boys. As I looked through the photos I had and what I remembered, it seemed we went in different stages of toys.
The first 4 years seemed to be about dolls and stuffed animals. Many of them I still have, particularly my teddybear. But from the photos it seems like one of my favorite “toys” was my baby sister.
Then in 1960 we were given trucks. I don’t remember them or why, but there they are. My brother was born soon after and then there were lots of trucks.
The toys started to vary a lot as I was older and now there was a boy. Notice the abacus, floor sweeper, and red wagon. We got costumes that year and I found several photos with other costumes. And paper toys appeared, coloring books and crafts projects.
As I got older, I was given books, particularly books about horses. I also remember getting jigsaw puzzles, some of which I still have. (I have all the horse books!) And often there were clothes, particularly ones my paternal grandmother made.
And one can’t talk about toys without bringing up the danger aspects of a lot of what we had to play with. That rocking horse was a great favorite of all of us and you could get it to rock the base right off the ground, if you were big enough.
And swings with metal seats and the glider! I bet at least one of us got whacked with that thing!
We did have a black and white TV but we were only allowed 1 hour a day on it and we had to agree on what was watched.
But I think one of our most important toys was imagination. We played with all kinds of things, according to the photos. And I learned to read early on and spent a lot of time doing that. In the photo on the right I was reading to my youngest sister on the front lawn.
We were mostly told to go outside and play no matter the weather, so we all spent large amounts of time outside roaming the town we lived in. I remember collecting wildflowers to put in my room during the summer. Climbing to the top of a tall maple tree to watch people without being seen. And playing in the small brook that ran through the lower pasture or catching frogs at the pond behind the library.
When I was smaller, my first bike looked very like my mother’s new bike. Somehow there were 3 of these huge bikes and we all learned to ride on them. Later when I was in my teens we got regular bikes. I always wished for a sleek “English” bike with shifting gears and hand brakes like my best friend had. As my brothers got older, they got the fancy bikes with high handlebars and banana seats.
Life was very different for kids when I was growing up.