akro mills vintage steel drawer cabinets...

By far, the best storage solution for my lego room is the akro mills vintage blue pull drawers!...I dont know why but they look so cool and are steel and durable...the new plastic ones are nice in terms of clean and ready the minute you buy them but they are so flimsy when you dont have them full. 

These needed a ton of goo gone and razor blades to get the labels off and dawn detergent to clean and Clorox wipes!

The drawers look so neat though when full!

Thru pure luck I came across these at flea markets and usually they are full of bolts and nuts...everything that I have no useful skills or talent to use for real world tasks and repairs...I'm only a lego mechanic at best and that only entails changing a 1x1 round red light on a headlight brick at best.

So after removing tons of misc nuts and hardware, the rust has to be removed.  Sometimes I've had to throw out the drawers or entire cabinet because of grease, severe rust or oil

This is the car I changed the headlight on.. very difficult for me being non mechanical.:) :(

Favorite classic space sets part 2.

X1 patrol craft...I think this is pretty high on my favorites list.  I remember this set was when I seriously wished as a kid I could get multiples!!!  This set has everything one could want including:

Potentially dischargeable missiles (although the back was actually the engine for the ship too-slight problem)

Translucent pieces that gave both red and green...the red used to create the illusion of an afterburner...I still think 4 more on each large cone would have been more cool!

Detail that I think was one of the first creations with "greebling" created by different diameter round parts.  For as quick to build as the model is, the detail and appearance of complexity is amazing.  I think it's the emerging of round and block and angled pieces all together

Brackets that allowed sideways building...usually models built upward but the rocket parts were made with brackets horizontally

Pieces that could in my opinion the best ever alternate builds on the back of the box...there were so many options with the bricks that allowed detail and sideways building.  And the alternate models could all work together, the x1 patrol as a fighter and another that looks like a tanker/transporter.

The last 2 models arent my favorite...but still show options this set could do

I wish lego sets could go back to the alternate models and pieces that were so versatile with endless possibilities (although the creator sets have done this and I think lego has done great with this).

best places to buy lego (in 80s)

Above from https://danniebspeaks.com/2016/09/02/columbus-history-graceland-shopping-center-named-after-well-known-madame-i-live/

Photo below from google photos 5122020 Mark Davis@Digg.com on pinterest

Photo from wothpoint.com catalog picture 1985-86 found 5122020 on google

Thank you to the people who took these photos as there are few records on internet of these places!

If I could go back in time, I'd go back to when classic space sets were on the shelves 1980-83...in my opinion the best lego sets ever.  I actually never liked classic space until going to a friends house in 7th grade and he had an entire room at his grandma's with every lego set from classic space...the radar dishes were so cool, and essentially unlimited.  Another friend had the Galaxy explorer...I had the mobile transport set from a gift and on one birthday 1982 I went to kiddie corner in columbus and got the surface explorer and space baseplates with the cool yellow stripes lining the road to make a base...then I got the mobile transport set...those were really the main sets I had.  Then I got the people pack of extra minifigs at gold circle...there was even a mistake on the price on the last one on the shelf..1.99 for 6 minifigs.  I did get some other small sets from lawn mowing $ but that was the majority of space legos I had.  I think the thing I loved was actually having  one color...gray to make models with..they looked so real compared to red white blue black hodgepodge bricks put together as a model.  The only thing you could make without 1 color that looked real was the partridge family bus :(. 

The best places to buy legos as a kid were Kmart, harts, gold circle, kiddie korner, service merchandise, kb toys and jc penny.  Until I got the classic castle and knights tournament, going to the mall while parents shopped was me staring at the castle on then 2nd floor of jc penny followed by 15nmins of staring at the same thing at kay bee toys...the dollar price difference made the castle look so much.more affordable at jc penny!

So my early collection ended up with space gray and eventually yellow from the yellow castle....then a bunch of other colored bricks

and mini figs, some with no arms and some with arms after 1978!

Legos were so much cheaper in that era!

But no matter how exciting, I'd get home and play but then catalog would always have the massive chassis models on the last page that kept me wanting more!

forklifts of our lives

Today my nephew graduated which got me thinking about growing older and how complex the world is now.  I was born in 1970 when the first lego set I saw was a simple forklift

Pretty simple, just 1 job play all day lifting a simple brick...not much change thru elementary school except slightly more complexity of the.model

Then as life got more complex in the 90s to 2010s, the forklift got more refined...an actual seat and curved pieces...the rough corners were more refined and the model itself was more complex with forks to handle bigger loads that life throws at it...

But NOW DAYS...

15 pieces from the model in 1970 became much more complex to 2020...the purpose of the forklift and metaphorically my life is the same..to lift the loads live gives...but the inner working and knowledge of putting everything together is so complex...so heres to a graduation day when one looks back at where we start and how complex we've become now...not just at a graduation point...but in life