111922b

When I was a kid, I lived in one small room for 10 years (ages 7-17). I had one small bookcase (full), one small set of shelves (also full) a closet, and a small square red desk in the southeast corner of my room. That was the sum total of my storage facilities. Naturally, anything not already on the shelves went on the floor of my closet, or under my desk. By the time I left home, I had a cube of miscellaneous toys the top of which met the underside of the desk. This consisted of broken plastic Xmas presents, yo-yos, model planes, and pretty much anything else that wasn't a book. I had to clear out my room, and (fortunately) I had outgrown any interest in most of that stuff. I don't have any of my childhood toys, except family toys that I inherited from my mother (wooden trains--a big hit with our kids and niecephews, and a few other things). I do still have some of the books: The Hobbit, The War of the Worlds, Arthur Ransome's 12-volume Swallows and Amazons series, and The Pogo Party, The Jack Acid Society Black Book, Ten Ever-Lovin' Blue-Eyed Years with Pogo, and Uncle Pogo's So-So Stories, by the inestimable Walt Kelly. My first copy of LOTR, the Ballantine edition with the wild colors, fell apart long ago.