We were very poor growing up, even more so than I am now. My father had the equivalent education of going half way through the fourth grade. He was a hard worker though and sometimes made as much as $6 per hour. In later years, when Martha (the oldest girl) was old enough to care for us my mom worked at Peddler's Village restaurant in Goshen IN. There were eight of us kids to feed, a scene somewhat like a mother bird returning to her nest with a worm, the babies all crying with their mouths open wide.
Christmas was sparse at our house. I don't remember ever getting a Christmas gift that was just for me from my parents other than a small bag of peanuts or an orange maybe; in later years there may have been gifts for us each but I don't remember them. There was usually a gift to share among the four boys and then a feminine gift for the girls. I don't remember the Christmas clearly when we got the jeeps. I don't remember the actual moment when we got the jeeps, but the memories grew as time passed. There were two little jeeps, for the boys. Girls didn't play with trucks, they played with dolls and miniature tupperware sets. Trucks were for boys. The jeeps were tougher than Meg, minimal in design, painted green which was soon chipped all to pieces. A small die cast metal with a few plastic parts, wheels and interior, about 3" long. The little jeeps were my favorite toys; since there were two, I could usually have one to play with on Sunday afternoons. I had hundreds of hours of fun with one of those jeeps. Nobody knows whatever happened to those, but they are gone.
Last week I was thinking about that jeep. I had no idea of the manufacturer and just Googled "small toy jeep". Of course with billions of hits I had no chance of finding one like we used to have. Friday I was looking for some stuff on Ebay and did a search on Ebay for "small toy jeep". I looked through several hundred pictures before I saw one like I used to have. It was labeled as "Tootsietoy Jeep". I googled "Tootsietoy" and came up with a very interesting history of the company that made the jeep, began in the early 1900's and still in business today. They have had to adapt drastically to the marketplace but they used to make millions of very minimal die cast toys, very high quality. People collect them nowadays, especially the pre-war models.
Once I began searching ebay for "tootsietoy jeep" the little jeep popped up all over the place with a large variety of prices. I had to have one of course. I settled on an auction with an opening bid that looked high at $12.99 but you always look at the shipping on ebay and this shipping was free. At 8:58:24 last night I won that auction. According to ebay I should have the jeep on Wednesday. I will look a little strange crawling around on the floor playing with a jeep at my age but I am looking forward to it.
Tootsie Jeep single.jpg
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toys, games...worth every penny I spent on them too 
