Top 200 Photos: #88

EricMesa

July 12, 2011 - 3 minutes read - 427 words

Nostalgia for today’s Top 200 Photo

photo #88 is:

I can’t do any better than the description I have on flickr: (Although I’ve made some modifications for clarity)

My brothers and I were avid LEGO builders/players. This was our city. Of the sets here (back when 99% of the LEGOs didn’t have much of a facial expression) most of them are mine. The gas station, race track, RV, and police station were mine. Dan had the fire station, pizza place, and underwater set.

This is the floor of my room in my parents second house in Hialeah, Fl. My mom required us to pick up our toys when we were done playing so I would put our lego sets, fully built into a cabinet (above which was my fish tank) and I would then put the “city” back together when we wanted to play. I had a map (that loose leaf sheet of paper at the bottom of the photo) that showed how we would arrange it all and we’d put the city back together and play for hours.

We had background stories for all the characters. And we continued the stories week in and week out. For example, from the race car set we had American something and Eddie Octane. And Eddie Octane was the jerk. He was always causing problems and being mean to everyone. Eddie, in all white, can be seen in the lower right house in a room with the girl in the red overalls. I forget if they were married or just dating. For the most part we were conventional LEGO users. We didn’t make our own stuff. The exceptions were the houses because (at least at that time) they didn’t have houses for the LEGO people. A major oversight, in my mind. We would also be a little more creative if we lost the instructions or key pieces - the pizza place is a key example.

I’m glad I took this photo so that I can always remember this part of my life. I took it because we’d be moving and I wanted to make sure we could still rebuild the city in Oregon. Unfortunately, two things put a damper on our LEGO play. First of all, we had carpet in the rooms which made it harder to connect the road pieces. Second, I really got into middle school, girls, videos and other things and all this fell by the wayside. We did still play for a little bit because I eventually got an airport set and that’s not pictured here.