The Giver

The little cone shaped game pieces, I have no idea what they were from, but they were red and yellow, and did just fine standing in for traffic cones for my Hot Wheels cars.

Man, I had SO MANY Hot Wheels and Matchbox cars.  And so much track!  Had them well past being a teenager. A large portion of my belongings were mixed with Mom's when we were married, but got left in a storage unit in Tacoma.  After a couple of years, I don't remember why, but we asked if we could have the stuff moved to Dad's for safekeeping.  He moved the stuff, but Grandma Billington basically went through it all and liquidated everything without him knowing.  I don't think I can ever forgive her for that, we both lost so many sentimental things.  Anyway, that's when all my original tracks and cars disappeared.  But you older kids will remember when I bought a bunch more again later, we had some epic tracks sets!  Starting in the upstairs of the Sunset Trail house in Plymouth MN, running down the stairs and all around the living room.  That set got boxed up when we moved to the Crystal house, and then got sold off when we moved back to Duluth and had to trim our belongings back again.

I loved my Hot Wheels collection, and Dad was always adding random cars to it, any excuse to snag another one at the store and sneak it to me. There's family pictures of me somewhere when we were on a vacation trip, at a campground.  There was a large tree trunk distended from the ground somewhat, and there were roots just barely poking out of the ground just so in a way that made ledges and ramps and platforms and nooks and crannies, and I had all my cars out all over that tree trunk and dirt.  I was 6 years old, it was heaven.

I still more or less remember the last BIG layout I built in the basement of the "L" Street house where I grew up, I was probably 13 or 14 by then.  It was a combination NASCAR style wide track, with different Grand Prix style routes out and about on the fringes, a couple of bypasses, and access tracks to the center "arena" where of course the dozen or so fire trucks and ambulances were ready to go!  There were an awful lot of bad crashes, seemed like those rescue squads were busy an awful lot.

One of the biggest Hot Wheels track hauls I ever got was, interestingly enough, from a collection that Dad found at the City Dump.  Of course I didn't know the source until years later, but remember being gobsmacked... who in the world could throw this stuff away??

All the way through my adult life, Dad still occasionally gifted me another Hot Wheels car.  He would squirrel them away and then later run across one and remember to put it in his car to give me later.  Most of those cars ended up in the hands of you offspring, and later, were passed forward to Nico and Jamie.  I still have a few around, unopened.

Dad was always giving. His love language was gifts. He would collect stuff for weeks/months or longer and eventually bring it all to you at once.  A lot of it was, to me, honestly clutter. I was pretty messy in my earlier adulthood but I really started to move towards being more orderly maybe 5-6 years ago, so I got rid of a lot of the things he gave me over the years.  Honestly I don't really regret that, although you might think I would.  The blown wiring that melted in epic fashion, the failed oven element with crazy char, pencils from a fire department open house in 2004, keychains from a towing company, bumper stickers, 10 back issues of QSL (ham radio magazine)... I mean, I would have boxes and boxes of stuff if I had held on to all of that!  I kept a few important things, though, to be sure.

Just unpacking.... more later....