Grandmother toys

I bought a box of tiny wooden nursery rhyme figures at the auction on Saturday. Nobody else bid on them, and so I got them for next to nothing. They're maybe three inches tall and made of a very soft wood.

They're the kind of toys I think of as grandmother toys, the kind that, years ago, an older person might have kept around to entertain a visiting child.

 
They're the kind of toys I'd have played with at my beloved great-grandmother's house. Nanny didn't keep a box full of toys for us. I remember just two playthings at her house: a plastic train with a small circular track, and an enormous teddy bear that sat on the bed in an upstairs bedroom. When we went to her house, we mostly did what she did: watched her sew, watched her stir pudding on the stove, sat with her on her front porch and guessed what color of car would come by next.

As these were the days of black and white television and three networks, Nanny did not have a library of children's movies with which to entertain us. Instead, I remember watching the Arthur Godfrey show and "Sing Along with Mitch."  I think they were on Friday night. She set up a tray table, and we ate peanut butter on Ritz crackers, and watched TV. It was pretty fabulous. If I spent the night, I'd sleep in the room with the big teddy bear. Saturday morning, I'd play with the train on the kitchen floor. She moved out of her big farmhouse and into smaller quarters when I was just three, so all of this must have made a pretty big impression on me.

I don't think anyone would dare to entertain a child in that manner now. I sure wouldn't. Expectations change. But when I see little toys like this, and I think back on all of the nights my brother and I spent with Nanny (which invariably ended with her telling our parents that we were "as good as gold"), I feel a little wistful.

And glad for the time I got to spend with her.

  

Comments

[Linda @ A La Carte]

That is such a sweet memory. I always had so many cousins around at my Grandmother's I never had a lot of one on one time with her. She gave so much love to all of us and was a very special Grandma!

[julie]

When my kids little guys, my dad played "guess the car color" with them too. Love this post.

[sue]

So sweet! I, too, remember doing virtually nothing at grandma's, except puttering around the farm, digging, picking strawberries, and begging for colored marshmallows, which she hid from my mom. Oh, and listening in on the party line. They lived in rural Canada, and had the party line well into the late 60s.....

[romanaggi4@aol.com]

What a wonderful nanny memory...love the story about playing what color car would drive by next! My grandparents had a old yellow plastic bin of misc. toys...they stayed pretty constant and nothing was ever added or taken away, but we spent hours with just a hodge podge of items. When they passed away I took a couple of those old toys. The little tin tea cup from the basket now hangs in my little display cupboard that I just made.

[judy]

I could learn A LOT from your grandmother.
There are more toys here for my three grandkids than my three children had when they were that age.

But I just keep finding the GREATEST things at the thrift store...

[Tina]

Aww, sweet! I'm missing my Grandma now. I got to do things like dial a bible message ( it took me forever to get the number right!) play with my Grandpa's typewriter and learn to crochet. There were many games of checkers, dominoes and rummy. So simple and I just loved being there more than anyplace else in the world.

[Martha]

I love this story...and the amazing Mother Goose figures, of course. It's wonderful you have such fond memories of visiting your great-grandmother -- she sounds like a sweetheart.

I remember sitting on our front porch with my sisters and playing that car game.

[Kim]

What a sweet post. It took me right back to my grandma's basement ~ the one with the wringer washer and small box filled with wooden blocks and a metal tractor. Happy memories. Love your little toys.

[nanette]

Funny. I'm nanny now to my own granddaughter. I remember playing with some very much like this at church when I was wee little. We had a box of toys in the closet where the quilting supplies were. When the women quilted, the children played underneath the quilts with a few toys. I didn't remember playing with them even until you showed these. Thanks.

[Janelle]

That is such a precious memory. Those definitely look like "grandma's house" toys. Sometimes us older cousins reminisce about the toys that our grandma had tucked away for us--all very similar in age and style to those blocks!

I'm having my nine-year-old niece come visit for the first time in a couple of weeks...she'll be with us for four days and then fly home. I've been thinking a lot about trips I made to aunts' and grandmas' homes and how little we really did (as you described) and wondering if Kylie will be expecting to go-go-go and be entertained the whole time. Should be interesting!

[Karla Nathan]

I actually have a similar set that my grandbaby and I play with. We get out the nursery rhyme book and match up the characters with the stories.

[HeidiAnn]

I have little toys just like that, only they are animals!! Yours are SO cute I can hardly stand it!

[Pam Fromuth]

Sweet!

[Carol @ Old Glory Cottage]

I loved this post Barbara! It reminds me of all the time spent at my grandparents' house. There was not a single toy in that house, but it's where all of my favorite memories are. Helping my Grandma do the wash in the wringer washer. Excitement and danger all at the same time! Or helping Grandpa pick peas in the garden, and a multitude of other chores that kept me fascinated all day long. When I have grandchildren, I won't plunk them in front of a TV. I'll let them help me with my chores!