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One of the most popular boys toys of the 'teens was the Meccano and Erector sets with which you could build all manner of models from wheelbarrows to steam shovels to bascule bridges by assembling various metal components of which the sets were composed -- wheels, pulleys, beams, braces, axles, levers, shafts, etc. Of course, the larger and more expensive the set, the more and the more complex models you could produce. It really was a fascinating pastime, giving a boy a feeling of having created often quite realistic appearing working models of all manner of devices, structures and machines. I had an Erector set which, although producing more realistic looking models of certain things such as bridges and structures, wasn't as handy as Meccano to put together, and I had a secret yearning for a Meccano set instead. But I believe it was that sense of being able to create things that worked that was the basic fascination. I don't know whether they still make such sets; if they do, it might be fun to get one and go to work again even though I went through a period of helping to create full-size locomotives.

Another pastime was "camping out" in the backyard in Indian wigwams. I can see mine yet, made of a dirty-brown canvas and hot as the devil, erected on collapsible poles. I never went too strongly for this and, in fact, I never was much for camping or Boy Scout activity although I did participate in the organizing of a scout troop when I was 12, but never got even to be a tenderfoot because the troop folded rather quickly. Our headquarters was in the log cabin in the backyard of the Dutch Reformed minister, the Rev. Hobbs, whose son, Beardsley, was a friend.

For those who liked to draw, another device we used to make was a pad on which was drawn a series of pictures, each slightly different from the preceding one, so that when the sheets were flipped rapidly, you got the illusion of a moving picture, the idea, of course, coming from the principle of the movie film. Which reminds me that to possess a piece of real movie film was greatly coveted. There was a boy named Blume who worked as a projection machine operator evenings at the neighborhood movie theater on Park Street and since the early films broke quite frequently and had to be spliced by the operator, "Blumey" had access to various odd pieces of 35 mm film and would pass out a few frames now and then to his close friends, to be cherished as something very remarkable and choice and exclusive. It was especially thrilling if you happened to get a piece of something as famous as the "Million Dollar Mystery" or the "Perils of Pauline" or "Lucille Love."

The Penrod stories by Booth Tarkington were very popular, being published in Cosmopolitan I believe, and later they were made into a play as was "Seventeen", another of Tarkington's creations. In the play, "Seventeen," some child refers to "that damn boy" and this created a sensation, [[handwritten]] ^juvenile [[/handwritten]] profanity just not being used on the stage during that period. Penrod had three little colored