Toys 'R Me

Like any child, I was enamored with toys and a few I remember with great fondness. One was my portable record player. I don't recall whether it was a Christmas gift or a birthday present - generally, these were the only two times of the year any of us kids received presents larger than a small plastic piece of junk out of a Cracker Jack Box or from the Five and Dime, the precursor to modern-day discount stores. I was about eleven years old when I owned this magnificent piece of technology that came in its own maroon carrying case. I took tap and ballet lessons and was required to practice one hour every day after school, which left my mother free to do other things. To pratice, I hauled my record player into the basement rathskeller, which we all called the Rats Skeller. In German, Rath means "council" and keller is the word for cellar. Historically, the word defined a restaurant or tavern in the basement of a city hall and later became common usage when referring to a tavern, bar, or nightclub. In the 1950s, installing a knotty pine room in your home with a bar became popular and was referred to as the family's "rathskeller" but with the introduction of television sets the rathskeller was replaced with the "family room" or "den" to accommodate t.v. watching that so neatly tied in to runs to the refrigerator in the nearby kitchen during commercials. As the rathskeller craze died so did an affinity for rustic knotty pine and it quickly died under the raised eyebrows of interior designers. To this day, knotty pine remains a pariah in the resale value of a home. For the Oberlin family, however, the rathskeller came to serve many purposes: a hallowed place for (adult) Halloween parties, a kids' playroom when it was too cold or too hot to go outside, a whelping den for the Newfoundlands my mother and uncle decided to breed (this, turned into a disaster but that's another story), Mom's ironing space, and my dance practice room. Other than my parents' handful of parties, the grand bar and two wall niches with glass shelves and recessed lighting to show off dad's collection of beer steins were never used. Regardless, whether he wanted one or not, dad inevitably received a stein either for his birthday or as a Christmas present every year until we moved into another house. The rathskeller was built in one-half of the basement; the other half housed the washer and dryer and a dark, cave-like room where coal had once been stored to heat the house. No longer filled with coal, that space became a neat place to play "pretend cave dweller" or to hide from tornadoes.

The term rath was easily altered to rat, because none of us kids could pronounce it correctly and too, because it was quite a bit more fun to use, becoming the family's go-to name for the room: "Let's go downstairs to the RATS keller!" The truth be known, we kids were most likely the only little rats to inhabit the space, Mom and Dad now preferring to watch television in the living room after dinner. As for me, I found that the rathskeller was the best place to shuffle-ball-change or pirouette. The large space with its linoleum floor was the perfect venue for tapping the metal cleats and plates on the bottoms of my shoes, the resonation of their clicking and clapping sound disguising even the worst of my mistakes. By closing the door between the kitchen and the steps that led to the basement, I was able to turn up the volume of my little record player and pretend I was on a Broadway stage and with great gusto tore up the floor without bothering anyone else. My mother insisted I practice one hour every day to justify the expense of my lessons (probably to my father) - 30 minutes for tap and 30 for ballet. The large, long room also served as an excellent venue for ballet and with my little pink ballet slippers tied tightly on my feet, I could leap and twirl to my heart's content. Dancing in the rathskeller also provided me the freedom to goof-off when hard core practice became boring. No one other than my mother bothered to come downstairs to watch me, and she seldom did so. Thus, when inspiration struck me, I pretended I was in New York City and was rehearsing for a movie or Broadway show. At times, my imagination provided an audience and I was on stage, a regular Ruby Keiler or Pavlova, depending on which shoes adorned my feet. I did believe I was the world's next great choreographer. I knew who Jerome Robbins was and I knew I had that kind of talent in me. I wanted to be just like him: creating dances, ordering dancers around on the stage, basking in the limelight of an exquisite theater like the St. Louis Fox with its massive spiral staircase carpeted in plush red. I wanted to dress all in black with a long white cashmere scarf around my neck. Jerome Robbins. That was who I wanted to emulate, only without the beard. Although I did work hard on the steps and movements taught to me in dance class, when I took off on my own creations, my spirit soared. However, what I envisioned myself doing and what I looked like in reality were entirely two different things. It didn't matter; if no one saw me, I could be a legend in my own mind. In the rathskeller, the world was mine.

Another gift was a typewriter that also came in its own carrying case. Apparently putting things in cases and trunks with handles to transport them from one place to another was a popular feature at that time. Again, I don't recall the occasion of this gift, but I wasn't much older than seven. Of course, the typewriter was manual, and best of all, it was baby blue. My Ernest Hemingway hours were spent on the sunporch, which doubled as my brother's room and also housed his rather massive train board that dad built for him. I didn't own a train set but I did have a different kind of miraculous piece of advanced technology, and I began to understand the importance of the written word. If I typed out a word, and even better, a complete sentence, I could communicate a plethora of brilliant ideas without having to once open my mouth. I could make up stories! I could even type out nasty notes to my brother or sister, but unfortunately neither of them could yet read. Hitting those little keys and watching a letter, and then an entire word, show up on a piece of paper felt like magic. It also beat using a fat pencil with a chewed-up eraser. One day, I decided to write a book! A whole, two-page book! It was to be a best-seller and my masterpiece. I cleverly titled it: Hey, hey being one of the more creative words I knew how to spell. Retrospectively, I don't think I actually had a plot for this two-page novel. And at seven years old, what did I have to write about? After all, writing about Dwight Cole who lived down the street and who chased me all over the neighborhood threatening to kiss me did not sound like a promising story. Dwight was a couple of years older than I was. With uncombed, straw-colored hair, he always looked like he was peeping out from under a bale of hay. His eyes were forever rheumy, and his enormous, Dumbo-esque ears stuck out from the sides of his head like two translucent, pink wings. One winter, I smugly rejoiced he could not chase me for a while when he froze his tongue to a lamppost after trying to lick it on a bet. That must have been a popular dare in the 1950s. Many years later, while first watching A Christmas Story written by Jean Shepherd, I felt a twinge of compassion as well as guilt when on a day filled with snow and ice, Flick gets his tongue stuck on the flagpole outside of school. While everyone else I watched the movie with laughed, I remembered Dwight and wondered where the boy ended up as a man. Hopefully, not with his tongue stuck on a lamppost.