Say what you will about the frivolity of the holiday buying season, Minneapolis poet Todd Boss has discovered a new reason to indulge in mechanical marble-tumble toys.
Say what you will about the frivolity of the holiday buying season, Minneapolis poet Todd Boss has discovered a new reason to indulge in mechanical marble-tumble toys.
TODD BOSS: Marble tumbles are no minor marvels, as minors and seniors alike by their rapt attention repeatedly prove. And as much as I tend to nag my wife for bagging up more and more battery op making toys at Toys R Us, I must admit I'm a bit of a sucker for the cyclical, metrical ritual of a mechanical redundancy.
Drop a ball and watch it frustrate gravity's pull upon it till it fumbles to the carpet, I'll find it's taken all my wits along with it. And even a tin ear for music can appreciate the kilter, clavier tickle, the zig zag and fickle clockwork of a cat's eye as it stumbles through a mouse trap rigging down, down, and down.
Tell me, honestly, which of us, what saint, what sinner doesn't love to lean out over the blinking inner din and karin of a pinball machine to see a steely strike bumper after bumper, spinner after spinner, or hear a bell clang when a muscle man loosens all hell on the midway with a hard haul on a ball peen hammer.
Or feel as if by force of will the call of a winning number in the somber lull that falls after the metal hamster wheel of a bingo Creole squeals to another stop. Step right up, folks. Every player is a winner.
And me, uptight about the steady toy-sized leak in my wife's wallet, at last I said, what the heck! Let down my rinky-dinky guard like a gate, got a little bit tipsy on a low ball full of Kentucky bourbon whiskey like a frisky suburban cowboy, sat up late on eBay and bought my wife a blast from her past, the 1976 Schaper game Tumble Bug mint in the box.
The UPS man brought it yesterday. Let me tell you how it works. A half dozen multicolored and off-balance beans filters nimbly down a jump studded track to a plastic tray. It's oddly pleasing, I've got to say. And you should have seen her face light up.
Love too clicks neatly when give and take are calibrated correctly. Along my own rickety boardwalk of a romance, for instance, my embarrassingly rocky history of finding my groove seemed ill fated last week, yet at midnight last night I got lucky.
Digitization made possible by the National Historical Publications & Records Commission.
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