As a kid, I truly enjoyed playing with my Hot Wheels and Matchbox cars as well as any other cheap imitation. One of THE BEST toys I got was when my mother bought a big box of random orange hot wheels track at a yard sale. Track, connectors, loops, clamps for anchoring sharp drops, battery powered acceleration stations, etc. As excited as I was about her finding it on the cheap (well, she benefited from the cheap part), I was equally PO'd when she boxed it up and sold it. As I recall, she thought we were pretty well done playing with it. Our frequency of setting up the tracks may have diminished, but I still enjoyed it. Nonetheless, it was gone - hopefully to another kid whose eyes lit up upon receiving it.
Another great gift I received was from Santa one year. I got the coveted Thundershift 500 NASCAR styled track.
The track came with 2 cars - one of which was a late 70s Mercury similar to what Pearson and Bobby Allison raced. Best case scenario would have been for the package to include a 74 Dodge Charger. But hey, beggars can't be choosy. At least the cars included LOOKED like NASCAR racers vs. radical looking themed cars. I liked that kind too - but to have NASCAR-esque cars for a NASCAR-ish track was so cool.
Those days are long gone obviously. As a dad myself, I made sure my now college-aged son had his share of cars. He never quite enjoyed his the way I did mine though. (He was more of a LEGO boy.) Yet, I often wondered what happened to my cars.
My mother doesn't throw away ANYTHING. She might re-sell something at a yard sale that she bought at a yard sale. But rarely has she simply pitched anything - especially if it belonged to my sister, my brother or me. So I've been convinced for years that my cars were somewhere in her house.
She looked multiple times, and she always came back with the same answer and same apology. "They aren't here, and I'm so sorry." Then last week, she texted and said "Are these yours?" with a photo of 4 trays of 1:64 scale cars. I did the happy dance at my desk as I replied YES.
She and my sister had been re-arranging things in one of those pre-fab storage barns. They weren't tossing things - merely arranging them. So in some respects, my toy cars are a barn find!
I picked them up from her house Labor Day as I visited my folks. (I'm pretty sure I had my own version of the Southern 500 back then when we had an early day off from fall's return to school.)
I still need to go through each of the 8 trays - 4 double stacked - to refresh my memory of what I had (and have again). But a few immediately jumped out at me from the upper stack.
A Matchbox nicknamed The Big Banger - I'm sure that engine was a Hemi
The Mercury from the Thundershift 500 game - colored red similar to the CAM2 Penske Merc. It's pretty obvious the TS500 game awarded its share of Darlington Stripes.
A Hot Wheels Camaro (I think). It's missing it's hood and left side A-post, and the axles are bent all to hell. But looks like I repainted it with white paint and a blue 15. I'm laughing as I look at it and wonder why I created a Bud Moore 70s era tribute car.
Though I didn't know about the [ 73 Richmond race ] at the time, maybe in the back of my mind I somehow knew about DW's wrecking of Bud Moore's Ford that resulted in a big backstretch fire.
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Schaefer: It's not just for racing anymore.
updated by @tmc-chase: 12/05/16 04:00:58PM
