What Were My Favorite Toys as a Child

Toys as a child is a difficult question.

To tell you the truth, I do not remember many of these. Keeping my bicycle repaired and customized was an ongoing project for me.  I was always taking off the fenders and modifying the bike. As we lived in Ponca City on South Sixth Street, there was a downhill incline to the brick street. You could start two or three blocks up the hill and ride down. If you were not going too fast, you could turn into our driveway.

The backyard was twenty feet lower than the front yard. As you came down the driveway, there were bushes at the edge where you were to turn into the garage, which was under the house. 

We built a ramp to use to see if we could clear the bushes as we rode down the driveway. My mom was a bit miffed when she found out the plan. It seems that the bushes did not survive the trial and error of the process.

I lived there from the first to third grades, going to McKinley Grade School. It is now part of an environmental clean-up area because of underground leakage from an oil refinery. The school and the house I grew up in are now bulldozed and gone.

It was also fun to come down that street on sleds or cardboard. You do not see snow that often in Northern Oklahoma, so when it happened, it was quite a treat.

The other “toy” that I remember from childhood was a set of vacuum tube radios that were abandoned in the garage when we moved to West Elm in Enid. I had a blast trying to make it work by finding tubes from other radios. Thinking back, it was probably a miracle that I did not get electrocuted. I must admit, I was much more talented at tearing it apart than I was at making it work.

I do not remember Christmas being filled with toys. We were much more likely to get clothes or fruit as gifts. The toys that we had were hand-made or modified from something that we found. 

At least, that is what I remember at this point.