A few months ago I went "home" to the house where I grew up in Glendale, California.  My Mom's time to be able to live alone is nearing it's end and so I spent some time out in the garage sorting through stuff and consigning large parts of the past to the garbage can.

Then I found this photo of me with my Allstate Fort Apache.  Suddenly, I really was "home" again.  It was Saturday morning and I was ten.  I had a new playset and a hundred stories in my mind to play out.  Out there behind the garage I was in my own little world...and my Father was still alive to take a picture of me.  For me, that image is the essence of my concept of childhood joy....my "Happy Thought" that lets me take flight.*

Now I live in Northeast Wisconsin.  I am blessed with a wonderful wife who has put up with me for 23 years and, no offense to any of you, but the two best kids in the world.  "Professionally", I wear many hats.  I am a Pastor by training who has a love/hate relationship with the institutional church.  I am currently employed as a full time chaplain at a Maximum Security prison in Green Bay.  (I've discovered that the only institution more disfunctional than the church is the state!)  Before taking the chaplain's position, my wife and I operated a Restaurant/Custard Shoppe  located on the scenic route from Milwaukee and Chicago to Door County, the "Cape Cod" of the Midwest.  (Anybody know which restaurant it is?)  Now my wife, saint that she is, runs the restaurant.  We've been hit hard by new competitors and so it's not often a joyful thing for her.  My Mom, she of the missing memory, lives with us six months of the year. 

I've been a "collector" for about 11 years now.  Prior to that, as a pastor, I often would take my box of cowboys and indians with me to camps and such places.  I had a great time using the kids for reputational cover as I got down on my hands and knees and  set up the figures and then threw rocks and dirt clods at them. 

One day in 1990 I saw an advertisement announcing a toy show at the Sequoia Athletic Club in Long Beach. I put a couple of Marx figures in my pocket (At that time I didn't know they were Marx...just that they were my favorites) and hit the road.  I eventually found the place, and wandered in.  I asked someone if he had ever seen figures like these.  (I didn't know anyone else felt like I did about these little lumps of plastic magic).  He pointed me to a table in the back of the hall...and I couldn't believe what I saw!  Hundreds of figures!  There were the flat yellow indians I so loved!  And there were Civil War figures and Mexicans...and what's this?  60mm indian poses.  I've never seen those before...Five bucks Apiece? and O my Gosh!  New Civil War figures? by Accurate? My heart beats fast again just remembering that moment when memories of the past and dreams of the future first collided in my mind and exploded like matter meeting anti-matter.  I think I spent about fifty bucks that day and was afraid to tell my wife what I had done.  I didn'tknow it...but I was hooked.  The Playset Addict was born!

*Did anyone get my reference here?  "Think of losing your marbles..."