Trigger & Roy and Tonka Toys

We didn't have much when I was growing up as a kid, but the GOOD thing about that, was that nobody else in our neighborhood had much either, so nobody around there really knew how poor they were.

Most families lived on one income back then. For as far back as I can remember, my dad always worked on cars for some garage or repair shop. Although he worked hard all of his life, he never made a lot of money. Mom was a typical housewife who took care of my brother, sister & I. I was the oldest, being 7 years ahead of my brother and 9 ahead of my sister.

So, dad busted butt all day, mom did the cooking, cleaning, washing, etc, and the "little bazookaman" here, took up space in school and daydreamed about what kind of mischief to get into next, which wasn't a difficult proposition on Potrero Hill, a rundown area of San Francisco, where I grew up.

I'm always a bit hestant about telling ANYBODY these days about growing up in "San Francisco." Some people back away immediately, thinking you must be some gay, liberal freak. But that old town was a LOT different back in 1955, than it was in 2005. We played baseball in dirtlots and parking lots, just like the kids in New Jersey did. Mom baked homemade cookies just like some other mom did in Tennessee, and if you took the "rabbit-ears" antenna that was wired to our old black & white Emerson television, balanced it just right on the back of the chair, layed one "ear' down against the window shade and the other toward the front door, you could pull in KRON (Channel 4), and get a pretty neat Saturday morning lineup of cartoons and westerns.

Things we kids watched on television in those days, were never a concern with mom or dad. Our matinee idols were just fine with parents, and if you wanted to grow up to be like Roy Rogers, Gene Autry or Sky King, that was just fine. If you wanted to grow up to be a ballplayer like Willie Mays, an actor like Jimmy Stewart, that was great too. Celebrities in those times, were not being arrested every other day for meth, cocaine, wife-beating, etc. They were folks to be looked up to.

It was extremely admirable if you wanted to join the service and serve the country. I didn't have a buddy ANYWHERE who didn't have 2 or 3 bags of plastic army soldiers, or cowboys & indians.

And if you didn't have a CAP PISTOL............it wasn't even worth the time to go out and play!

No, we didn't get the high dollar stuff for Christmas the kids get now, but I think for around $15 or $20, "Santa" could bring you a cap gun, a heavy duty Tonka truck, some pajamas and a baseball bat (you might get the "Mickey Mantle" glove to go with it, on your birthday, if you were good---------not always easy for ME to do!)

I never remember anybody in our neighborhood having a bike. Much of San Francisco is built on one hill or another, and our neighborhood was no exception. Pennsylvania Street seemed to be straight up and straight down. (We really DID walk "a mile uphill to school in the winter"----------not BOTH ways of course!)

To own a bike WOULD have been interesting. You'd have had to walk the thing UPHILL all the way to school, (Daniel Webster Elementary was three blocks UP and one "across"), and then you'd REALLY have to be careful not to lose control, coasting back down.

Didn't take much to get something rolling. Some buddies of mine and I were out playing after school one afternoon, and one of them had found an old car tire. We "walked" it up to the top of Pennsylvania St, got out in the middle of the street and got it lined up where we figured it would miss the L-O-N-G rows of cars parked sideways in front of all of our houses.

When all looked "just right", we turned it loose!

It was beautiful! It rolled perfectly straight, past Richard's house on the left, Sonny's house on the right, and by the time it passed MY place, that tire was haulin' butt! Never veered either way!

There was (and still is today), a four-way stop sign at the bottom of that hill, to accomodate cross traffic coming off Sierra & Texas Streets. Some guy was just pulling through it, when that tire flew through that intersection and slammed into his left front fender, bounced over the front of his car and landed on the other side!

It's a long way down that hill from the top, and we saw the man get out of his car, look way up at us (still standing in the middle of the street), get back INTO his car and start roaring UP the street. He was probably pretty upset.

We immediately scattered like rats in all directions, and it was many hours later when we managed to re-group again, and while we all agreed it was pretty funny, we also agreed not to do it again, for fear of getting caught, because there was always a chance that some neighbor might see us and "fink" on us, as they used to say.

Looking back today, on things like that, it WAS pretty stupid. There were elderly people in the neighborhood who would frequently cross over from one side of the street to the other to visit "Henrietta" across the street, and getting smacked by a car tire at 30 miles an hour could have injured or maybe even killed somebody.

Maybe that's why the kids today all have these computer games---------to try to keep 'em off the streets, where "idle" minds tend to INVENT things to do!

But even knowing what I know today, I'd still opt to be a kid WITHOUT the battery-powered crap that serves only to "entertain, and turn kids into couch potatoes"

Kids then, HAD to use their IMAGINATIONS, which HAVE spurred a lot of innonative inventions over these many decades. On Potrero Hill, it most often just spurred water balloons and stolen hubcaps, but I'll always feel like I actually got to BE a kid, with an UN-programmed childhood. Wouldn't trade it for ANYTHING, even if I could go back and do it differently.

One of my coolest toy rifles was a flat piece of board about an inch thick, broken off to a tapered end. I'd found an old cupboard hasp & deadbolt, tapped it into the side of that board with a couple of small nails, used two finishing nails for the "front and rear sights".........and I had my own little custom "bolt action" repeating rifle! Just wait till the next time we play cowboys & indians!

You know, just thinking about that right now as I write this--------that little wooden gun just MIGHT have been the spark, that is my real gun collection today. Maybe.

Discovered something else today too..............I'm not the only one around with a "soft spot" for the old days...........

If you haven't been in an antique shop in awhile or never been on EBay..............you'd be AMAZED to see the $60.00 price tags on old Log Cabin Syrup tins that "mama" used to throw away by the dozens. American metal holds up a lot better that Taiwan plastic and I have a pair of 50's Roy Rogers cap pistols that are worth more today than a lot of REAL guns. My wife collects antique dolls (you should see what some of the original Barbie Dolls are worth now!)

Ha-ha...........I need to close this post with a "doll" story...............

Around the very early 60's, they came up with this "Chatty Cathy" doll. My sister (who now lives in Meridian), got one for her birthday, and for the next couple of months drove me crazy, walking around constantly pulling that string that made it talk. It might have said other things, but the one I remember the most was "Hi, I'm Chatty Cathy, you wanna play with me?"

That's ALL I ever seemed to hear come out of that thing. My sister knew it "bugged" me and I often think even today, that she went out of her way to jerk that string in my presence every chance she got.

Finally...........like Popeye the Sailor.........."That's all I can stands, I can't stands no more!" While she was taking a nap, I snatched up that "freakin' little doll" punched a small hole in its mouth with a screw driver, stuffed 3 or 4 firecrackers in the hole. took it out on the back porch, lit a match and blew its head off!

Well, to cut to the chase, I got the belt to my butt when dad got home, along with the usual lecture in-between the swats, about how money didn't grow on trees, and so forth.

But it at least SHUT THAT THING UP!..........what I probably SHOULD have done, was to just pull that string all the way out, let it "talk" one last time, then CUT that string off at the BACK with a pair of scissors. Then just throw the pull ring OUT. Didn't think of it back then, though.

Fast-forward to 2006----------wife and I are in Mesa, Arizona on vacation. Antique shop---------Chatty Cathy doll that still works. Where I had once blown the head off a doll that the old man might have spent 8 bucks for, it's now around SEVENTY, and my wife is insisting that I buy THIS one for my sister to "make amends" for being such a "delinquent" when we were kids.

To MY mind, she'd had it COMING, going out of her way just to irritate me...........and with my dad playing the "Chinatown Boogie" on my butt with that belt, I figured I'd ALREADY "paid" for it way back when.

"OK dear.........I guess I'll be a good sport." And I bought it.

We got home, and the very next run to Meridian, we stopped by and I gave it to my sister, who was now in her late forties. She laughed and thought it "was so nice" of me to do that! She pulled the string............and yes........like the well built cap guns and Tonka trucks of that era, it STILL WORKS..........

"HI, I'M CHATTY CATHY-------yada-yada-yada".........."

Smiling at me, my sister motioned to pull the string again, and I just pointed my finger and said "DON'T EVEN THINK ABOUT IT!"

PS...........ya wanna see that hill we rolled that tire down? Rent or borrow "Magnum Force' (the 2nd "Dirty Harry" film). Near the end of the film, the rogue cops are after Eastwood. ONE of them is chasing him on a motorcycle. He's in his blue Ford, and the cop on the bike chases him down Sierra Street, hooks a HARD LEFT at that 4-way stop, and then right UP Pennsylvania Street past our old house and fires a shot through the window of Harry's car while he's on his tail.............THAT is the very street that where the "rolling tire incident had taken place about 20 years earlier.