This story goes with one about Chipped Beef on Toast (without the beef) in that it shows how kids can sometimes be oblivious to being poor.

Dollhouse

We kids (two older sisters and I) had toys growing up, but not many.  And toys as gifts only arrived on birthdays and at Christmas.  Some of those were home-made, which I though only made them cooler.  I remember my sisters getting a doll house that my Mother had made.  It was constructed out of cardboard boxes with tape and glue.  The outside was colored with paint left over from a school project.  Inside, the walls were covered with wallpaper samples you get for free at the hardware store.  The floors were carpeted with fabric scraps saved from the clothes Mom made for us.  The dollhouse was built to match the scale of dolls my sisters already had.  I thought it was amazing, and being about five years old, had no thoughts that making a dollhouse rather than buying it meant we were poor. 

Blocks

About that same time, I received wooden 2 by 4s as a present.  Not just any 2 by 4s. These had been cut into 12 inch and six inch lengths, sanded smooth and painted in primary shiny colors.  I don’t know where Dad got the wood or the paint, but it is unlikely he paid much, if anything for the supplies.  But that wasn’t anything I thought about at the time.  I just enjoyed having something unique to play with.  These outsized building blocks became roads when placed flat, end-to-end, or buildings or forts or towers or who knows what when stacked.  Our parents were intentional in making these toys such that they would be compatible with existing toys.  For the dollhouse it was the existing dolls and maybe some dollhouse furniture.  For the blocks, my toy cars drove along block roads, and green army men fought their battles amid the block structures.

1950s Recycling

I’m not sure where this idea came from.  It may have been my Mom’s way of inspiring creativity.  Or maybe just a way of keeping me out of trouble (more likely).  She started saving things we would normally have thrown away.  Things like paper towel tubes, tin cans, thread spools and cereal boxes that had been emptied of their original contents.  At some point the accumulation was so large that the living room sofa was set at a diagonal across the corner of the room in order to create a void in which the valuable cast-offs could be stored.  With scissors, string, glue, crayons and whatever else I could scavenge, I used these raw materials to make things such as airplanes, trucks, dioramas and miniature theater stages.  Maybe this was an ingenious way in which my parents compensated for our being poor, but I certainly didn’t see it that way.  To me it was a wealth of inspiration hidden in a secret behind-the-sofa cave.