{"id":2746,"date":"2007-06-27T02:44:00","date_gmt":"2007-06-27T06:44:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kitfoster.com\/carport\/2007\/06\/few-of-my-favorite-things\/"},"modified":"2010-12-30T12:00:59","modified_gmt":"2010-12-30T17:00:59","slug":"few-of-my-favorite-things","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.kitfoster.com\/carport\/2007\/06\/few-of-my-favorite-things\/","title":{"rendered":"A Few of My Favorite Things"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Kit's<\/a><\/p>\n

On my third birthday, September 9, 1947, I was given a bright red Radio Flyer wagon<\/a>. It was not my first wheeled vehicle – I had a stroller-turned-kiddie-car<\/a> when a toddler, but after my sister was born my Dad put on a rumble seat<\/a> so I had to share it. The Radio Flyer, though, was all mine, and I used it for hauling, for downhill coasting, for learning to drive – at least I pretended to do so.<\/p>\n

Although the first of the Tonka toys<\/a> debuted shortly afterwards, I never had any. A few years later I was given a Doepke toy, the Adams road grader<\/a>. Doepke made a whole series of construction toys as well as a few large-scale cars. My grader built miles and miles of roads<\/a>, and looked something like this<\/a> afterwards. My real workhorse was a Smith-Miller<\/a> short-wheelbase rack body truck like this one<\/a>. When I bemoaned the fact that it wasn’t a dump truck<\/a>, which I needed for roadbuilding, Dad made an ersatz dump body out of an old turpentine can and it worked fine. I was proud of my Doepkes and Smith-Miller, looking down my nose at other kids’ Tonkas and Marx trucks<\/a> because they were not as realistic. When I was about twelve, an older friend gave me his Doepkes<\/a>, including a Wooldridge earth mover<\/a>, a cement mixer and another Adams grader, ones that had rarely, if ever, been outside. By that time I was spending more time on my bicycle than building roads, so they remained in good shape.<\/p>\n

When our children reached toy-playing age, we bought them Tonkas<\/a> and I kept my treasures in the attic. So today, my Doepkes, the Adams grader<\/a>, Wooldridge earth mover<\/a> and cement mixer<\/a>, are still in pretty good shape. My favorite is still the Smith-Miller GMC cab-over truck<\/a>. For all the work it’s done it’s in remarkable condition, largely because it’s mostly cast aluminum. Of course I needed cars to drive on the roads I built. I don’t remember what happened to the third-birthday cars<\/a>, but I had several generations of others. Some<\/a> lasted better than others<\/a>, but that’s a story for another time.<\/p>\n

The Radio Flyer<\/a> is still with us. It graduated to gardening duty, was repainted many times and eventually advanced wear required a bit of reinforcement<\/a>. We still use it for chores<\/a> around the yard, and on occasion I reminisce about its role as a scooter<\/a>, for parallel parking<\/a> and for speedy<\/a> downhill rides<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On my third birthday, September 9, 1947, I was given a bright red Radio Flyer wagon. It was not my first wheeled vehicle – I had a stroller-turned-kiddie-car when a toddler, but after my sister was born my Dad put on a rumble seat so I had to share it. The Radio Flyer, though, was….<\/span>
Read full article<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2746","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.kitfoster.com\/carport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2746","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.kitfoster.com\/carport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.kitfoster.com\/carport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.kitfoster.com\/carport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.kitfoster.com\/carport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2746"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.kitfoster.com\/carport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2746\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3328,"href":"http:\/\/www.kitfoster.com\/carport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2746\/revisions\/3328"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.kitfoster.com\/carport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2746"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.kitfoster.com\/carport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2746"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.kitfoster.com\/carport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2746"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}