Tinkered with.

 

      My wife and I headed over to Glencoe a few Saturdays ago to meet a lovely young couple at the Guildhall for lunch. I wasn't particularly hungry — eggs for breakfast — so ordered a cup of black coffee and a $7 bruleed grapefruit. I do love my grapefruit. Made with mint, quite good. 
     Social dynamics required that I pay the bill — $138 with tip, our guests were hungry. A tidy sum, but I only smiled, gratefully. I'm lucky to be paying for this as opposed to, oh, bail.
     Next door is a toy store, Wild Child, and though none of us have young children, we all headed inside to coo over the wares. My nostalgic nature was pleased to see a Fisher-Price Chatter Telephone pull toy, basically unchanged since introduced in 1962 as a means to teach children how to dial a telephone. 

    Rather an anachronism, like a toy butter churn. In Fisher-Price's defense, they did try to change the toy over to a push button phone in 2000. But change-averse parents pushed back. I understand sentiment toward vanished times, but have to wonder exactly what they think this rotary phone is teaching their children. Maybe it's just fun, which is fine. Not everything must have a practical purpose. They still sell hobby horses, even though few kids later graduate to real ones.

     My attention was caught by this big can of Tinkertoys. Invented by an Evanston stone mason, by the way. I took down the handsome can, examining it more closely and noticed the price: $75.  Quite a lot, really.

     "Must be expensive to fabricate all those little spools out of wood," I thought, still generous of spirit. Then paused, a suspicion dawning. Ohhhh. I popped the can and peered inside. Plastic. All the pieces are plastic. Somehow the Lincoln Logs folks manage to still use wood — also a Chicago toy, invented by John Lloyd Wright, inspired by observing the interlocking beam construction of his father's Imperial Hotel in Tokyo (in my recent book, I express that information in what struck me as a neat antithesis: "Frank Lloyd Wright learned architecture by playing with wooden blocks as a child. His son, John Lloyd Wright, learned wooden blocks by playing with architecture as an adult.")
    Back home, checking out Amazon, I learned a) you can still buy all sorts of real wood Tinkertoy clones, such as this Zanmai set, for a fraction of the cost; b) if you are so brand loyal that you just must get the retro Tinkertoys can, you can buy it online for $35.99, less than half the price of the Glencoe store.
    I know stores have rent. And the folks at Wild Child no doubt like to pop over to Guildhall for their $37 steak and eggs platter. People do order that, I can vouch from personal experience.  And I generally like to support bricks-and-mortar stores. Still. Half price online is a hard deal to pass up. When I needed a new speedbag recently — mine had been pounded to pieces — and stopped by Dick's Sporting Goods to admire a $60 black leather Everlast bag (punching bags MUST be Everlast, speaking of brand loyalty, in the same way that ketchup must be Heinz). I was about to go buy it at Dick's, when, on a hunch, I put the bag back and went home, castigating myself as I did. Jumped online, my hesitation was rewarded: the identical punching bag for $28.61, delivered for free. Less than half of what the store was charging. Works for me. Generosity has its limits.