Thursday Toys

Can you remember your favorite toys? Can you recall what toys you received on your birthdays and Christmas? Do you think you had too many toys or not enough of the toys you really wanted? Were your toys new or hand-me-downs? Did you respect your toys? Most importantly, did you save any of your toys?

In my husband’s and my side of our Family Museum, there are a few toys compared to our children’s side, where there is many times more toys. Now if you compare our side of the museum to the Grandparents Museum, there are virtually no toys. What kind of statement does that make? At first you might think sad, but it should not be presumed that they did not have toys. I am sure they had a few precious ones. What the sad aspect of this statement is that none of their toys were saved! 

I recall my dad saying he had a toy train. Where did it go? I remember my mom talking about a baby doll she called Teedle-Lumps. There is a poor photograph of it, but that too has disappeared. My husband recalls is father having sling shots and hunting rabbits with it. He remembers his mom had dolls her sister and she would play with, but not to be had now. However, in all this where-are-they-now, one toy was extremely cared for and given to my husband when his mom passed away at the age of 104.

This hand-made doll cradle was made of pine and fir wood and given to my husband’s Great Aunt Gitta when she was 4 years old in 1870 in Tromso, Norway. It traveled with her to the United States where the family settled in Artichoke, Minnesota. There it stayed until it was passed down to my husband’s mother in Illinois.  When she passed away in 2007, it was passed down to my husband here in Virginia. Can you figure out how many miles this cradle has traveled and how old it is. If you do the math, it traveled 5,194 miles and is 145 years old. WOW! Now that’s what I called preservation!

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