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The joys of being a Boy
If you want to lay the blame somewhere for what is about to follow then Fay Stuart is your girl.
As you all know, I am a Trans-lesbian-bar hopping-party girl-tart with a heart…but once upon a time, before killer heels and silicon accoutrements dominated my thoughts, I was a little boy.
I was wandering aimlessly around the corridors of Facebook last week when I read a post by Fay inviting anyone who may be interested to a model train expo she was attending (and I think even exhibiting in or at least manning a stall). Now I, like many of you, have an endless fascination with model train sets. I have never owned one nor ever intend to but if I happen across one I can quite happily waste hours minutely examining the landscapes and streetscapes of them and watch the trains traversing across their scaled down country sides. There is a scaled down Volkswagen Beetle that I always look out for and it never fails to appear – oh how I wanted one of those as a child! I have even owned several full size Beetles and yet this little toy one has always enchanted me and when I see it I am once again 8 years old.
It got me to thinking, which dear friends as you know can often lead into Dangerous Territory, about the things that thrilled me as a child which still thrill me today. I shall list a few for your amusement and would welcome your contributions:
• THE CISCO KID – I LOVED watching Cisco and Pancho! It is probably my earliest TV (no pun intended) memory seeing these two amigos rounding up the bad guys on a weekly basis. I have since read that Duncan Renaldo had written in to his contract that Cisco was never to kill anyone and only used his six-shooter to disarm a bad guy as he didn’t want to set a poor example for his legions of fans.
• THE BATMAN – Yes, firstly it was the TV show, but then I found out that you could actually buy comic books of the Caped Crusader at the local newsagent! They were black and white reprints of 1950’s American issues but I didn’t care. I blew all my pocket money on this monthly extravagance and when I think of Batman he is always drawn by Dick Sprang with that rock solid profile and battling villains who always seemed to have giant typewriters or kettles to threaten the good citizens of Gotham City.
• THUNDERBIRDS – This show was so cool. Every Sunday afternoon I would have a date with my Uncle George to watch the latest adventure of the Tracey family and their incredible machines. All the lead puppets were named after the astronauts involved in the Mercury Space Program at NASA but I think by far the most popular character was Parker, Lady Penelope’s former burglar Chauffeur.
• THE SAINT – I loved this show and have all the episodes on DVD still. Roger Moore did for turtle neck jumpers what Adam Ant would later do for ripped jeans in the 1980’s. My dad made me a bike for my 9th birthday – and painted it in the same livery he had just painted the house/bbq/lawn mower/outdoor furniture/birdcage in. But on the crossbar, in sharp accuracy, he drew on the Saint’s stickman emblem. I thought I was it and a bit.
• ANNUALS – Now there was a plethora of boy’s Annuals around. I had the Buffalo Bill Wild West Annual, The Daily Mirror Book For Boys, several Rupert The Bear Annuals, and Batman and Superman Annuals. Each would be read and re-read until the ink would almost fade from the page.
• MATCHBOX CARS – There was something classy about turning your Matchbox car upside down and reading those words “Made in England By Lesney”. They were the most durable of toy cars and you could not kill them no matter what disasters happened during play time. Only the outside drain seemed to be impervious to their charms and swallowed them with alarming regularity.
• LEGO – I would spent hour upon hour playing with Lego, or Lay-Go as we pronounce it here in SA for some reason. Back then there were no kits to make with minute instructions – you used your own imagination to build whatever you liked. I always knew that the old man had had a win at the races if a new parcel of bricks made an appearance on my bedroom benchtop. I am really pleased that Lego is bigger than it has ever been these days as it probably trumped everything in the 1960’s as well.
And………………………..go
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6 Replies
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. BAYKO BUILDING SETS These were sets of parts to construct buildings on a green plastic base by inserting metal rods then sliding tiles of bricks, windows, doors and architectural shapes between the rods to form houses and other buildings. I used to spend hours playing with these in the 50’s.
. MECCANO Again a construction toy of metal strips, sheets, wheels and pulleys that you could assemble working and moving models.
. HORNBY 20 volt, 3 rail, O gauge train set. Used to have a lead fuse wire that burnt out whenever a train shorted out the rails when derailing. Hours of fun that lead to my passion for model trains.
. CLASSIC COMICS Comics of the literary classics such as “”Tale of two Cities”, “Moby Dick”, “Robin Hood”, “The Three Musketeers”, “Gulliver’s Travels” and of course some of the Shakespearean titles that were great to brush up on before English exams.
. TV SHOWS such as 77 Sunset Strip, Have Gun Will Travel, Bonanza, The Rifleman, Perry Mason as so on. Also some of the old cartoons Mighty Mouse and Popeye come to mind. Probably very politically incorrect these days and would be unable to be shown.
. DRESS UPS Then of course there was the other game with my 2 sisters but most of us know about that one.
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“Have gun will travel reads the card of a man…a knight without armour in a savage land….”
I always thought that Palladin’s first name was “Wire” because on his business card he used to hand around it said:
WIRE PALLADIN – SAN FRANCISCO HOTEL.
Clearly I took things too literally.
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One of the early ‘adult’ westerns. Factoid, (dare I?) The star, Richard Boone was descended from Daniel Boone.
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SOLID FUEL ROCKETRY
One of the later outcomes of being given a chemistry set when I was 9 or 10 . Abandoned further “research” in this activity after a launch resulted in the rocket hitting the roof of the local high school a few hundred yards away (pre metric times!)HYDROGEN BALLOONS
Much more interesting than Helium, I discovered a way of making them explode in spectacular fashion at a fair height above ground.AIRFIX AND REVELL MODEL KITS.
Absolutely loved these . Of many, my Favourites were a model of an Avro Lancaster Bomber and the USS North Carolina a ship whose sailors called it ShowboatMATCHBOX CARS /MECCANO
I echo the comments of Emma and Fay on these.BATMAN, THE AVENGERS, STAR TREK etc.
Shows that had beautiful women in clothes I just fantasized over being able to wear.Interesting lists from those above in this thread.
Anyone got more?? -
Caroline.
Airfix, Revell and later Tamiya kits were a favorite of mine too. Had many, many Airfix mainly 1/72nd, Revell USS Missouri and the Cutty Sark were probably my largest projects. Still have dozens unmade in their boxes…one day!
Another favorite of mine was the A4 Skyhawk as I worked on these for many years. Have several in all scales.
The things we girls get into! -
Hi ladies, read your posts with interest and was transported back to the 70’s, yes I had the usual assortment of boys toys, Meccano, Lego, Matchbox cars, but who else out there had a Scalextric set. For some reason I didn’t go down the road of HO/OO model trains but plenty of friends had some very impressive layouts. Mum wouldn’t let me collect GI Joe and all his accessories because he was a doll and boys didn’t play with dolls. Whilst memory lane is revisiting the toys of our youth gone by, I have over the last 2 or 3 of decades continued to collect a large number of electric and air, power toys as well as the unpowered ones. All the projects done at my present house, bought brand new off a builder, were constructed by Rosemary, several garden bed, 3 decks and a load of other small projects. I’ve renamed what some may have called the man cave to the TGS, Trade Girl Studio, I’ve attached a photo of the last deck and garden I finished with spring planting, go the trade girls!!!
