Fall - 2022

y first recollection of a toy in my childhood was a handful of arrowheads my dad found while for- aging in Northern California during the 1940s. The second gift from my dad was a card with tiny chips of semi-precious gems glued to it, with their identifying names beneath each. While these were technically not toys to play with, they were precious to me.They were for learning some- thing. The arrowheads were about early American Indian weaponry.The gems were a reflection of my dad’s love for what the Earth produces. They were tucked away in my under- wear drawer and resurfaced on diffi- cult childhood days, to ease away my cares and stress and to remind me that they were as old as the Earth. My father was a farmer. We lived in the countryside growing vegeta- bles in summer and harvesting his pumpkins in the fall. I can remember having very few toys. My sisters and I used our vivid imaginations to recreate characters from books we read and films we saw. In a vow of poverty, we surrounded ourselves with homemade utensils we fabricat- ed from humble materials found while poking around my dad’s work- shop. I can’t tell you how many summers we transformed our backyard into the setting we saw in the movie “Swiss Family Robinson.” That momentum carried over to the beaches in Bodega Bay during our sum- mer family vacations, as we pretended to wash up on shore from the sea, fleeing an imaginary shipwreck, and ultimately building our fantasy island home on the beach. It is generally noticed that chil- dren are attracted to toys along gen- der lines. Since my father had four daughters, with no sons, it was inevitable that his gifts to us leaned toward a masculine side. My mom, on the other hand, was a housewife who we learned to cook and sew and clean house from. Her gifts to us were feminine in nature, as were our “Santa” gifts, since she did the Christmas shopping. And, while I cherished the gems and minerals and fishing lures from my father, I adored the dolls from my mom and Santa.There was an ice skating doll in a red corduroy costume, a Madame Alexander doll in a floral blue box and a chunky Terri Lee doll and suitcase. I still have the small Madame Alexander in a frayed box with clothes, but wonder where the other two dolls disappeared to. While we think of our own toys when we were small, we often for- get the memories of giving some away. There was a summer in San Francisco while visiting our aunties, that we were taken to the board- walk to play arcade games. My little sister spotted a white fabric toy dog with polka dots and floppy ears that she wanted. I played and played 90 C A R M E L M A G A Z I N E • F A L L 2 0 2 2 COLLECTING T E XT AND PHOTOGRA PHY B Y MAR J OR I E S OW The Joy of Collecting Toys M Clockwise from top left, 1950’s Little Lulu rag doll with signature purse and a greeting card; an early German paper mache roly poly clown that jingles when shaken; a chalk Lone Ranger; and a rare rubber Charlie McCarthy figure with monocle.