Wooly Mammoths Unearthed
Our monumental weekend snowstorm continues to deliver amazing discoveries. Impatient amateur archeologists are excitingly trumpeting the news that an out of work plumber claims to have uncovered the remains two wooly mammoths in the enormous pile of snow at the end of his suburban driveway.
“My shovel hit something,” said Barry Tukeman, “and I thought it was another filthy ice chunk kicked up by the plow. But when the snow fell away, I could see tusks.”
The mammoths are remarkably well preserved and fully intact, with two tusks each.
Tukeman, an instant paleontologist who has studied the science extensively on Wikipedia, theorizes that the animals became encased in ice during Saturday’s particularly vicious blizzard and expired standing up. He dated the find at a full 3 days ago.
“Saturday night the snow was blowing so hard sideways I don’t think I woulda seen the Titanic if it had come crashing into my front yard,” Tukeman remarked. “In fact, the Titanic might still be out there. I haven’t cleared the front walk yet.”
No one in the area recalls seeing the creatures before the storm hit, and many of Tukeman’s neighbors were skeptical that the mammoths wandered in by accident.
“His lawn was an eyesore last summer, that’s for sure,” said Sara Tonin, who lives two doors away from Tukeman. “My children claimed they heard strange rustlings and snorting when they passed by his place, so it’s not farfetched to think that he already had a Wooly Mammoth infestation going on. We couldn’t take legal action, but if I find any evidence that things with tusks have been digging in my garden this spring, he’s paying for the pesticide treatment.”
Dr. Dima Hannibal, an expert in wooly mammoth research in the Cryptozoology Department at the University of Proboscis at Durante, received images of the discovery by e-mail yesterday afternoon. Her immediate comment was, “You’re kidding, right?”
She was reacting to photographic evidence that the creatures are not wooly, nor especially large.
“They look like plastic children’s toys, and elephants at that. Not even related to the Wooly Mammoth. If they were biological creatures in the first place, which they’re not.”
Pressed on the likelihood of migratory, non-living plastic mammoths getting lost in this past weekend’s storm and winding up encased at the end of a driveway in Woodbury, Dr. Hannibal called the explanation a hoax, and not a very good one at that.
“My guess is that a child dropped some toys in the yard and didn’t pick them up. This find might date back to sometime last summer. But I wouldn’t go much further than that.”
What lost childhood toy would you most like to recover?
Trail Baboon 
Easy – my Chatty Cathy. I had the dark-haired version. She said a handful of fun things when you pulled the string at the back of her neck – the sound came from a small speaker embedded in her chest. When I was at school one day (first grade), my baby sister got ahold of Chatty. When Chatty said “Let’s have cookies and milk!”, my sister took her seriously and poured milk into her. My mom tried valiently to dry her out, but by the end of the day, all CC could say was “Glurg, bludgle, aargggh, glurg”. After a few weeks, I ended up giving her to my sister.
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“like”
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My sister had the blonde one! It drove me crazy. She was devestated when my twin cousins Bob and Dean pulled the cord until it did not play her voice anymore. I was secretly grateful!
BUt dolls were never my kind of toy. I spent my time pretending to be Annie Oakley with my six shooters and stick horse.
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I am not surprised that you pretended to be Annie Oakley, Jacque.
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Can you sing, Anything You Can do, I Can do Better-like Ethel Merman?
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I can sing it, but not like Ethel
Merman Alert! Merman Alert!
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my Dad. he was a crabby German to everyone else, but he sure like to play with us. when he shoveled the driveway he would heap the snow up to the sky so that we’d have a “hill” to slide on. my brother summarizes him – “he was a pest.” in the best ways
a good and gracious morning to You All
“only” minus 14 and warming to teens! yippeeeee
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Rise and Shine Babooners:
I would love to reclaim my two-record set of yellow Howdy Doody records that my mother threw away sometime after I abandoned them during elementary school. I played them on the red record player that Santa Claus brought to our house on a Christmas between 1956 to 1958.
I don’t want them for the music, which was pretty terrible. But they do sell well on the antique toys market!
Off to the day!
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We had a red record player, maybe like yours, kind of like a little suitcase?
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I still have my record player (with the giant, industrial grade safety needle), my records, my 8-track stereo, AND 8-tracks.
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Like a suitcase!
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I’ve got an 8-track player and some tapes… component though; not the suitcase… I remember an old record player though; blue and maybe gray, folded up, speakers attached to the sides…
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Jacque,
I remember the record player, too. But the Alvin and the Chipmunks Christmas records were my favorite. Mom gave the records and the clever little red record player that looked like a suitcase to our cousin Carol. Maybe she can help you can track down your Howdy-Doody Hoo-Hah.
My Chatty Cathy doll, on the other hand is gone forever. But if you want to shoot me with your toy six-shooters, I still do an exceptionally dramatic death scene.
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My mama’s “Big Susie” doll. She was a baby doll nearly as big as I was at the age of 3 and already quite broken when I played with her.
Looking forward to that high of 20. Why must it be accompanied by more snow?
Have a great day, all.
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I think I actually still have most of my toys (parents have been off-loading them to me on a regular basis every Thanksgiving), but the thing we all mourn the loss of must have been my brother’s.
A die-cast model of Chitty Chitty Bang-bang, with wings that popped out, removable figures and front and back fins. We loved that movie, we loved that car. I do not think any of it was broken when we left it. Parents are disavowing all knowledge of it.
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I would like my brother’s Erector set (which I played with when he wasn’t home, since I wasn’t supposed to touch it…and then carefully put everything back in the box before he returned). Also, my olive green Easy Bake Oven – the new microwave styles are just lacking in something (maybe it’s the sense of danger involved in poking a metal “cake” pan through a metal box).
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My sister always wanted an Easy Bake oven which my mother would not buy. Who knows why? So a few Christmases ago she bought one at a garage sale. At age 50. Why not?
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They were great for baking perfect sized treats for tea parties with my pals (and whatever stuffed animals showed up that day for tea). I had one friend who lived across the street who was usually my compatriot in these adventures – baking would happen in the kitchen (leaving a much larger mess, I’m sure, than one would think given the size of the oven and the cakes), and tea parties were on the landing going upstairs. We had a tall footstool that was just the right size and height for a tea table; it would get draped with a doll-sized quilt I had for a festive table decoration…as I recall once I ran out of mixes (and Mom gave up on buying more), there was an easy brownie recipe that got made a lot. Oooh….might have to bake brownies when I get home…think Daughter would be willing to have a tea party with me on our landing?…
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my friend had an Easy Bake – but we melted crayons in it instead of baking. didn’t please her Mom.
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My daughters had an easy bake oven, or something like it, and did bake some tiny cakes in it. It was a well liked toy.
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Y’know, they should really do an episode of Iron Chef where they’re only allowed to cook with an Easy Bake. Mmmmm…40-watt cuisine…
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I had a cowboy action figure called Johnny West who came with a fairly large horse, western accessories, and a girlfriend named Jane. She was quite ugly, but Johnny was a real rugged cutie. I think he had an Indian sidekick as well. The accessories were made out of some weird brown flexible plastic material.
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never had one of those, but had a friend who did. All those little bits of tack and accessories really appealled to me.
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two items. my baseball card collection went away in my mothers only known case of throwing anything out in her life . she decided i didn’t play with them everyday like i did for about 5 years there so she cleared out that 12 x12 x 24″ space in the floor of my closet and put the 2 pairs of shoes that had been stacked on them on the floor. i doubt if there would have been top value because i kept everything rubberbanded in groups and the groups changed from one day to the next. baltimore orieles to american league greats to shortstops of great achievement, i saved and worked and found pop bottles to grow that collection. walked a mile to the store with bottles in a coaster wagon to cash in and get 5 packs of nickle cards or 25 singles. more gum in the singles but greater chance of doubles. always looking for harmon killebrew and mickey mantle, willy mays and stan the man, great bond there. id like em back.
the other would be my tractor. not so much the vehicle but the feeling it gave me. other kids had trikes i had a tractor. like the bike with the pedals out front. like the ones your brother was into right dale? i’d wake up and it wasn’t required to ask or tell about the days activities. i would jump on that tractor and head off to see what the world held that day. visit friends check the neighborhood. forest gump ran for his chance to think , i rode that tractor. wore the wheels off it and the man at the store said he’d never seen one with the wheels worn off before. got new ones but i was almost too big for it by then. turned into a velvatine rabbit with paint worn off and the shiney new wheels on the old trusty dusty frame. if life were correct i would jump on my steed and go check out the world daily now. see what it held and report back in at dinnertime. wait a minute … that is what i do. there is some schedule crap that gets in the way but it is pretty much how i attack the world.
insights dale. this is the psychotherapy blog. i thank you all for another session. see you later
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You made excellent progress today, tim. I look forward to seeing you at the next session.
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Hey! That’s MY LINE!
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I love this, tim — if life were correct i would jump on my steed and go check out the world daily now. see what it held and report back in at dinnertime. wait a minute … that is what i do.
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Good morning in Toy Land,
I think that my favorite childhood toy was my toy revolver cap gun and holster. That was in the early fifties when playing cowboy was a big thing. At that time no one was too concerned about kids paying with toy guns or firing off very slightly dangerous tiny explosives.
The holster was needed to practice fast draws like the heros in the cowboy movies and comic books. Another gun trick was spinning it holding the gun by a finger in the trigger guard. Also, we would wad up the rolls of caps and hit them with a rock to make a bigger bang. Of course, I had a cowboy hat to go with the gun and holster.
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Yes Jim! Caps were cheap; could hit the whole roll w/ the hammer… or even the left over roll out of the gun that didn’t fire all of them. I was so excited when those red plastic disc caps came out… and they didn’t work any better…
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Caps need to be on red paper – not plastic. The cap gun I inherited from my big brother (the same brother that wouldn’t let me play with his Erector set…not that I’m bitter about that…) never worked quite right with the caps, so I too used the “bang ’em with a rock” method Jim describes. Nothing quite like the smell of exploded caps on a sunny summer day.
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There always seemed to be some problems getting the caps to feed through the cap guns properly. I bought caps at the corner Mom and Pop grocery store. I don’t know if they are available any where now. Some kids also had B B guns which I wasn’t allowed to have. Too dangerous. You might hit some one in the eye with a B B.
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smells like victory……
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I remember an acrid, kind of firecracker smell with those caps.
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remember getting the sulphur under your thumbnail form scratching them to go off? ouch!
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What memories, Jim! Do you remember the wonderful smell of gunsmoke when you had banged off a cap (or hit a whole roll of them with a hammer like you did)?
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Yes, that smell was very distinctive as others have mentioned.
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the “smells like victory” comment actually goes here!
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Morning–
More years ago than I’d think it was I had one of these childhood toy experiences. I wanted a Verti-Bird again. It was a helicopter kind of thing. I got on one of those local AM radio call in shows and asked for it. Got two of them; one guy had even installed a jack for a wall wart instead of batteries! Then just a few years ago the toy was ‘Re-Introduced’ in a smaller, cheaper, ‘Safer’ version. Bah.
There was also a hand cranked airplane along the same princples of the Verti-Bird. But it was called the Hairy Canary if I remember right. It was blue. There is a picture of my brother and I playing with it at Christmas and then I don’t remember it anymore. Must not have survived the day…
Was just thinking this morning; remember how we all had the Penny’s and Sears Christmas catalogs? And now the kids look through the Fleet Farm catalog. Hmmm… the ‘Fleet Farm Catalog’…. I don’t know; I like Fleet Farm- was just there yesterday spending too much money, but it doesn’t have the same ring as the Penny’s Catalog does it? Or am I just being an old grumudgeon? Again?
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Ben, I remember looking through the Sears catalog for likely Christmas gifts. Of course the toys always looked better on the page than they did when they were on the floor in front of me.
When my family moved from New York to central Illinois, the local variety store was called “Cousin Fred’s”.
Try to get excited about that.
Fleet Farm is Sak’s Fifth Avenue by comparison.
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“Cousin Fred’s”???? Geez, even a Ben Franklin beats that…
Another establishment’s name was a source of profound amuseument to me was Darlene’s Beauty Barn. I always get this image of hay covered stalls alternatively occupied by holsteins standing with curlers around their ears and women sitting under those giant beehive hair dryers. I understand that the name of this long-running business (gotta respect that!) has been changed to Darlene’s Beauty Castle. Much better. I wonder if they have a dungeon?
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Luverne has Renfro’s Variety, still operated by its 95 year old owner. She goes in almost every day and sell things that you just can’t find anywhere else. MPR had a story about her recently.
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Oh the eager anticipation of the Sears Wishbook! We would fold pages over, circle, bookmark, whatever we could do to convince Mom and Dad that we *needed* everything. (And please Mom, please please please don’t order me pants from the “Pretty Plus” section this year…)
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My dad was of the generation where they would sit in the outhouse and read the “Wish Book” and then use the pages for toilet paper!
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if you ever gat a chance see kevin klings ” the under belly of the yule log” he does a 10 minute bit on the airplane with the strings on it. the show is priceless. i love kevin and this amy be his best. it used to play for a week or two after the regular play at 10 pm or so. the last ouple of years he does one show toward the beginning of december . well worth the price of admission. if you don’t laugh harder than you have ever laughed before i will pay for the ticket.
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When I was little I had a huge stuffed animal collection–at its height I think I had 70. A lot of the ones I couldn’t quite part with ended up in the basement as I grew older. Later they ended up in storage…and then the storage unit flooded. The friends who helped me clean up were terrified of black mold, so they more or less forced me to throw a ton of stuff away, including a large bagful of my old friends. I dumped it without looking to see who was in it, because I was already upset (some family antiques got terminally damaged too) and I knew that’d start me crying. It’s not that I want them all back–I don’t have room, and lingering in a plastic bag in a closet seems like a sad fate for a stuffie–but I wish I’d had the choice to give them away instead of having to heave a closed bag into a dumpster. RIP.
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Sorrow. RIP.
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Condolences on your loss. Faithful companions should not have to suffer such an end.
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Awww, Crow Girl, that’s sad. Do you remember having any Animal Fair animals? That was my dad’s company, and it was active in the 1960s and 1970s.
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I know I did, I remember the name, but I can’t remember which ones after all these years. Wow, a parent who worked for a toy company, that’d be any kid’s dream!
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Curious, CG – if you had a photo of them where you could identify them all by sight — would it help? I ask because I keep advising people to do that with things they are reluctant to part with, though I don’t really know if it works.
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I don’t know about things you are reluctant to part with, but I am considering asking cousins, etc if they would photo and send me a picture of things from our grandparents’ homes that they have. I don’t need to HAVE the velvet crazy quilt, e.g., but I would love to have something to remember what it looked like
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Yes, that’s exactly the idea.
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No, my problem is an overactive imagination, aka anthropomorphism, not ownership. A little part of me left over from childhood still suspects objects are “alive” and have feelings. So, I can’t help feeling I abandoned them, even if technically they’re just fabric and plastic. It sounds mental, but I figure it’s a side effect of the character-creating element of being a writer and usually enjoy playing around with it.
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velveteen`crow girl
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I was a tremendous comic book and action figure kid. I used to orchestrate entire stories with subplots, twists, cliffhanger endings…it was great. I was rather mortified with my Mom bought me one of the original Pet Rock’s for Christmas. But, to my delight, the Pet Rock’s leash end fit perfectly around my Spider-Man figure’s wrist…instant web line. In the end, I played them to pieces. I also had a little help…my dog chewed up Thor’s mystic hammer, Mjolnir. A rather ignoble ending to the gift from Odin.
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Does it cross they mythological streams to have Cerberus vanquish Thor by destroying his hammer Mjolnir?…
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Nah. Rockford was never very Cerberusian. He was a puppy that liked to chew and I left it out. I don’t believe that he was acting under the influence of Loki
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One of my dad’s jobs a St. Paul pharmacy/gift store was toy buyer. He would go to New York a couple of times a year to the toy shows. One year he brought me home this tall, skinny doll. She was really ugly compared to my beautiful collection of Madame Alexander dolls and I never played with her. She was pristine to the end. Turns out is was one of the very first Barbies, the year they were introduced or possibly even a “concept doll” from the year before they went on the market. No one knows what happened to her. She was around for years and then disappeared, but if she had survived I would have either a real collectible, worthy of awe on Antiques Road Show, or the nothing but memories I have now, because I’d have sold her and squandered the ensuing fortune.
Has anyone been down to Kellogg Minnesota to the Lark Toy Store and Carousel? They have a toy museum that has every toy that you, your brother, your cousins and all your friends ever had or wish they’d had. It’s a real trip down memory lane and the hand carved carousel is well worth the trip just to see it.
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Caroline — My dad was in the toy business too, so he would go to the same Toy Fair each year. What excitement for us! He would go with a huge case of samples of his toys (stuffed animals) and come back with that case full of toys he’d swapped for at the end of the Fair. Oh my! That was our second Christmas!
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As a father of two girls, I am aware that Barbies are one of the top toys of all time. I don’t know why they are so attractive to young girls. There seems to be more to them than their super fashion model appearance which some might find objectionable. I’m sure that early version of a Barbie would be very valuable is you still had it, Caroline.
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Yes, The Lark is a favorite of one of my book clubs, and I agree – if you haven’t been there, it’s worth the trip.
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The carousel is wonderful! Being a child of the 70s I didn’t see as many things I remembered as my older friends, but it was still a great trip. Next time I’m riding the carousel, I don’t care!
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Oh my. I need to come back later to read all the posts carefully. I had several toys that I’d love to have again now. And even if I didn’t feel a surge of emotion about some of those things, when I watch “Antiques Roadshow” and see my old toys in their original boxes commanding prices of several hundred dollars, I get nostalgic for the toys I used (and destroyed) so long ago!
I had many cap guns in my years as a young cowboy, but one was a magnificent example. This was a full-sized replica of the Colt .45 single action gun you see in cowboy movies. Most real cowboys had dorky guns that had no style, but the Colt .45 single action pistol was a work of art. My cap pistol had six bullets that you could load in just the way a real Colt worked. You had to take the bullets apart and stuff a piece of explosive cap in each and then put it back together. Most cap guns fired continuously (like the guns of faux cowboys in Western movies!), but the replica gun I had needed a good ten minutes to load just for six shots.
Since my firepower was so limited, I would sit cross-legged in front of our console radio and listen enraptured to the shows (the Green Hornet, Hopalong Cassidy, Sergeant Preston of the Yukon, the Lone Ranger) until the action got hot and heavy, about 22 minutes into a 30-minute show. And then I would bring out my Colt and blaze away in support of my heroes. I would be all reloaded by the time the next big moment came for the next show.
We had a sort of Village Idiot in Ames, a Greek kid (in his 20s) named “Spaghet.” He roamed the streets of our town drssed in chaps, a vest, a cowboy hat and a six-shooter in a holster at his side. In fact, it was the very same cap pistol I had, the replica of the Colt .45 single-action. Everyone knew him and knew that gun. If you came up behind him and called, “Draw, kid!” Spaghet would spin and shoot you with the cap pistol, fanning the hammer with his off-hand. He lived in a sort of fantasy land.
One day he went in the Phillips 66 station with his gun and demanded all the money in the cash register. The clerk turned it over, going along with the joke, but when he asked for the money back, Spaghet blew two holes in the ceiling of the station. He had ditched the cap pistol for the real thing. He eventually turned the money over, and the whole incident was kept quiet, with no jail time involved. I used to be proud to think that the clerk saw that real gun and thought it was a cap gun like the one I owned.
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Steve – I was SURE the possum rug was going to show up on this list.
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I was waiting for that too, but I’m guessing the possum rug existed on an even higher plane of reality-maybe a totem or relic-what is the word I am looking for?
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The possum rug wasn’t a TOY!!
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so what IS the word I am searching for?? icon, trophy, grail????
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Where do I go for the history of the possum rug? Sounds fascinating. Any idea of the month to search the archives, or was it pre-Trail?
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The possum rug made an appearance fairly recently – within the last month I think. Steve — do you remember when?
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Caroline, I can fill you in a little about the the possum rug. Several months back there was a discussion about things that had been thrown out that we would like to get back. Steve’s rug made from a possum was one of those things. As I recall it was not a beautiful thing, but something that he treasured for some reason.
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OK, I haven’t “ferreted” out the origin of the possum rug mystique yet, but in perusing the archives I had tears rolling down my cheeks reading “Steve’s Real Life Mystery” from the October 22 edition. You baboons are hysterical!
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Caroline…. it was Trashcan Mystery… October 21.
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the storwas an adendum to the blog in an article steve wrtoe called ” take that bird and stuff it”available from mr grooms. madislandgirl and i requested it i think it was earlier this week.
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Great images – I like the one of you sitting in front of the radio fully armed…
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Aaaah…. I see.
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I had a Dale Evans watch that I remember being really sad about when it stopped working. And cap guns, as playing Cowboys was a big deal with us, even though we were girls. But the toy I wish I still had was a set of blocks my dad had made and painted red or yellow. He was at the time a high school shops teacher, so had access to all the woodworking machinery. Lots of shapes and sizes, including an arch… kept them in a mesh potato bag.
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There’s how you know Lyle Lovett is young(-ish). I thought Dale Evans was fabulous.
“If I were Roy Rogers I’d sure enough be single I couldn’t bring myself to marrying old Dale … ” From: If I Had a Boat
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Careful, folks, that Chatty Cathy commercial box is a time warp…
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