Growing up by pond, I developed a love of toy boats. It was a little bit too small for all but the smallest vessels, and although I occasionally enjoyed going for a row with my dad, it never held a thrill that toy boats did for me. With boat toys, I was captain. I was able to indulge in all kinds of flights of fancy. Sometimes, I would imagine myself speeding along in a racer. Other times, I was the proud admiral of a tall ship, sailing the high seas. No matter what kind of mood I was in, I could always find a wonderful game of make-believe to play with a boat toy.
Of course, back then radio controlled boats were not around. That doesn't mean that people did not like to race their toy boats! One of the most popular sports among the kids of the town was to build and race little pond boats. They had set keels, so you could control their motion with a relative degree of accuracy. The rules were simple. You put your boat in the water, raced from one side to the other, and the first one there was the winner. Although the toy boats sometimes got stuck in the middle of the pond, usually they would make it across.
One of my favorite memories from childhood was building a toy sail boat kit with my father. My dad wasn't much of a craftsman in general, but he did love building models. He had a little bit of child in him, as a matter of fact. He loved perfecting every detail on a model sailboat, airplane, or car. Our tastes were a little bit different. I was into the fantastic. I didn't particularly treasure historical accuracy. In his case, however, it was always better if he was building a toy boat that was proportional to an actual ship. The one we agreed on was a scale model of the USS Constitution. It took forever to put together, but it was worth it!
Nowadays, I get to play with toy boats with my own child. So far, we have only made one toy boat, but it was a lot of fun. It is a basic steam toy, something known as a pop-pop boat. It is pretty neat because, although it doesn't have any moving parts, it can propel itself from its own burner. Next time, I think we will build a radio controlled boat.
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