Where The Toys Are

Okay, okay... and just down the road from Sarris Candies is Where The Toys Are, an antique toy store. I spent a lot of time growing up at my grandmother's house, and she had a huge collection of toys from the fifties and sixties, so this was like going back there. The proprietor is happy to chat about everything in the shop. We picked out a couple cool things, and were getting ready to leave, when I saw something magical...

When I was maybe nine, and my brother was maybe five, we had a magical kite flying day. It was a windy day, and we were at a huge open field (Gardner Field, Denville, NJ), and we discovered an incredible game... if we let go of our kite string, the kite would start to fly away, but since the spool was unwinding, the spool would basically fly along a few feet off the ground. We would let kites go, and chase them as fast as we could, and it was so exciting to recover them! Anyway, we tried this with my brother's King Kong kite, and as we chased it, the spool started to rise! We tried to grab it, but soon is was out of reach --- we kept chasing it, but the spool rose higher and higher, and the kite just sailed off into space, carrying its spool high up over the river, and over the trees. We watched, helpless, as the kite flew higher and higher, up into the sky, becoming a tinier and tinier dot. We must have watched it for twenty minutes before we completely lost sight of it. We often speculated about how far it might have gone, or where it might have ended up.

Well, at Where The Toys Are, sitting calmly in the corner, there it was -- the King Kong kite we hadn't seen in thirty years, in pristine condition. I always felt bad that my risky game made Ben lose his kite. I made this note to go with it, and have mailed it to him with the kite:

Ben-
I had to look
for thirty years
but finally
I found
where it went.
Love, Jesse

There is something holy about antique toys. Be respectful when you go.