05/14/04’s illustrious band:

Catapulitzer Prize

Brought to you by the Chicken Step Lady.

For the first time in at least 25 years, I got TinkerToys for my birthday. Remember TinkerToys -- construction sets consisting of wooden discs with holes in the middle and around the outside, plus wooden dowels in various lengths to plug into those holes? Well, this year, CSL got me an “executive” set (thanks for the promotion!) for my desk. It contains just 10 rods (8 short, 2 long), 7 disks (6 regular, 1 with a center hole big enough for a rod to go all the way through), and 1 green fin-shaped flag. But it’s still enough, with the addition of a rubber band, to build a working catapult. Office neighbors, take cover!

I loved construction toys as a young ‘un, too. My friends and I spent countless hours building houses and towers and go-karts for our stuffed animals with TinkerToys and Legos. My crowning achievement was the TinkerToy turbolift elevator I built in my teens. Using a hand crank, I could raise my Star Trek action figures from the engineering deck, a Lego structure at floor level, past the Lego sickbay a few shelves up, to the bridge of the Enterprise, on a chest-high shelf.

Except for the bridge, a nonLego plastic model that came in a kit, we built the various rooms free-form. I never knew anyone who built the structures the Lego kits were designed to produce. The instructions were always the first things to go, and each kit’s contents was assimilated into the general population.

I loved Lincoln Logs, too. The logs looked like long, stale Tootsie Rolls with notches near the ends for easy stacking. I never had enough logs to build Johnny West (a cowboy action figure) his dream hacienda, but I stacked up an endless procession of little houses on the living room carpet prairie. They always reminded me of the Johnny Spaulding Cabin (click on "Area Attractions" and scroll down a bit), my hometown’s tiny log cabin museum, which I called the Sandwich House because the dark logs alternating with white chinking looked like slabs of salami on slices of Wonder Bread.

Although I never had an Erector set (whose complex metal parts were made obsolete by the introduction of high-tech plastic Legos in 1958, but which is now back on the market through Brio), I did have a Rivetron (apparently now defunct). The Rivetron was sort of the Erector set’s milquetoast cousin: It had plastic rods and panels instead of metal ones. You fastened them together with rubber pop rivets you inserted through the holes using what looked like an ear-piercing gun. Rivetron structures were always kind of floppy and disappointing, since the flaccid rubber rivets made for halfhearted joinery at best. As with Legos, I usually tossed the instruction manual aside and built carefully balanced, symmetrical monuments instead.

With that kind of construction background, is it any wonder I ended up working for a home-improvement magazine for a while? Of course not. But I had toy doctor’s kits, too, which explains my graduation to an award-winning health publication. And from where I sit now, I can use my TinkerToy catapult to lob used Post-It notes at Senor Editor, my colleague across the aisle, who now works for that handyman mag. You see, it’s all tied together as snugly as if I’d used the Rivetron gun.

Today around the world: May 14 is Unification & Integration Day in Liberia, where Legos and Erector sets now live peacefully side by side.

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