Web Page  No 2278

8^th July 2016

Top Picture: A steering wheel just like daddys

Second Picture: Hopalong Cassidy Watch

Third Picture: The first of the Japanese Plastic Dolls

Forth Picture: The favourite a Meccano Set

1950's - Our home entertainment. No console Ganes, No PC and hardly any TV. entertainment                                                                       

Take away Computers, Consol Gaming, DVD's and the 100+ TV channels on 24 hours a day and you have the 1950's!

We had toys, but ours would fit under the bed or on top of the wardrobe and not need a separate room to put them in as today.

Our biggest toys were of a natural kind; trees, woods, the hill, the marshes and mostly our own imagination. Then we had dreams of being a Roy Rogers, Davy Crockett or Robin Hood, now it's celebrity!
But not so much of the now and then!

INDOORS
Toys were something you got at Christmas, Birthday's, possibly when you were ill or when a relation came to stay and that was it. They were often treasured items which you would carefully look after as if life itself depended on it! At a very early age, my entertainment was playing with toy soldiers or cowboys. I'd get a Corn Flakes Box and make a few turrets out of them, stacking cushions around them for hills etc. and play for hours.

Around the mid 50s I got my first Meccano Set, No.4 I think, but it was a large enough kit to make a bridge of sorts. I had a clockwork Hornby Train Set which always seemed to go so fast it kept coming off the tracks on every bend.

In a friends house there was a Bay Window to play in. There was space enough for it to be a Captain's Bridge and I'd sail the seas to all the parts of the World. It was a watch tower, a pirates lookout and all sorts of things.

When I first saw the story of Sir Edmund Hilary and Sherpa Tensing reaching the summit of Everest. I saw the pictures in a daily newspaper and it was the talk of grown-ups around me.
Instantly, my knees were suitably placed to look like the mountain itself and two of my toy cowboys became the first to climb the peak at least five times a day! We simply didn't have the distraction of other things, fewer toys but a lot of imagination !

OUTDOORS
An endless list of playtime items. The tree's in our garden were about the best thing for me. They could easily become houses, mountains, castle's and hideouts. The other, most important, thing they became were simply tree's! I soon found myself with twigs the shape of a Colt 45 or a bow to fight off the nasty Sheriff of Nottingham's men. If you were really lucky your Dad would make you a swing! Then of course you could eat the fruit, apples, pears, nuts and plums.

Normal things became something else; the wheelbarrow was the 31 bus or a Locomotive speeding its way from London to Dover for the Boat Train. Yes, the wheelbarrow then transformed itself into a cross channel ferry!

As the 50's progressed I got a few of the 'larger presents'. My first bicycle substituted the Wheelbarrow and before long the imaginary journey's of the garden were transferred to the driveway and pavement.

I was then lucky enough to get a Triang 'OO' gauge, three rail London Underground train set which ran off batteries. I'd find bits of wood and draw houses on them, make hills and tunnels out of a green tablecloth. Every Christmas and Birthday wish for quite some time was for something new to do with the Train Set.

All this carries on through your life. I'm sure that people in my age group are happier that something works than if it looks right or not.
Also an in-built desire to make your own and be proud of it, even if we can afford it.

The 1950's were hard years for many. People of my parents age had come out of a War in which they lost some of the most important years of their life and it couldn't have been easy for them.

But, if you couldn't find happiness in reality, you could in your imagination

Keep in touch

Peter

gsseditor@gmail.com

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News and Views:

On this day 8^th July 1960-1965

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