On the bright side, Designated JJ and His “Real” Friends are back from their 7-rounds-in-5-days Golf Trip. Catch up — it’s good stuff — by clicking “ALL POSTS” at the top of this effort. And SportsTalk with JJ and Bonzai Ben, in tandem, are together again on 1130 AM The Tiger at 5 p.m. weekdays.

But…

On the not so bright side, Toys R Us will be gone by Friday. Everywhere. Maybe the store beloved by young and old will return in some form or fashion. But for now, pfffft.

The Fisher Price farm set was the first thing I bought from Toys R Us, the North Pole of toys stores designed for the crowd of 12-and-under, a bunch with major toy wants and needs — but not much of a wallet game.

Didn’t matter. There was always a sucker like me who’d whip out some loot to make a little boy smile.

The Fisher Price farm set had the cow, the fence, the barn, and the chicken with a square hole in its belly so it could sit on the square fence post. (Fisher Price thought of everything.) The whole farm outfit, roughly an acre, cost about 9 bucks, 12 bucks if you got the cow your kid could milk. (Joke. Not for reals. Although what does it matter now?)

I was a Rookie Dad then, and had no idea how inexpensive toys were. I could have stayed in there all day. (This was pre-video games.)

Bought Casey’s first bike there. The duck you pull and its wings go ’round and ’round and slap the floor as you walk. The colorful plastic telephone that talked back to you. The plastic golf cart and gas pump. The battery-powered Corvette, red — now we were getting big-time! — that we rode up and down the driveway. And up and down the driveway. And up and dow….

Bought a wagon there too, a Red Ryder, that I pulled my little man in, before he learned to “drive,” around and around the block. For the past several years I’ve planted flowers in it. Sadly, it rotted out. Early this spring, I had to throw it away…

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