Home-Made Lincoln Logs

The other day after a piano student sibling had spent the lesson time playing with some of my toys, I got to thinking how great a treasure I really have sitting over there in my guest room.  Yep.  Home-made Lincoln Logs.

My dad made them before I can remember, and they were always a household staple.  

Which is why I rescued them from being given away after my parents' latest move, and began carting them around the country myself in that great trunk my dad and I found together at a thrift store.  You just don't give away the Lincoln Logs your dad made.

I asked him the other day why he decided to make his own Lincoln Logs, and he simply said, "The regular ones never had enough pieces, so I just thought it would be nice to have a set with plenty of everything."

That's my family, all right, always having bigger building dreams than the little box of store-bought Lincoln Logs will accommodate.

We do that with food, too.  When we're all in the kitchen making a mountain of a meal, someone inevitably worries there won't be enough food.  Then, as if in defense, one of us will say, "It takes too much to make enough."  Because if everything gets eaten, you don't know if everyone really got enough, of course.

Didn't that saying get handed down from generation to generation in your family?

But back to the Lincoln Logs.  I didn't expect him to tell me he had never finished making the set, and that's why he had thought of giving them away before I rescued them--an unfinished project he wasn't sure he'd get around to finishing after twenty-five years.  The roofing pieces, for example.  

It never once occurred to me the roofing pieces were missing, but if he ever decided to make some, I'd be in full support.

Meanwhile, I'll keep building big dreams and beautiful Lincoln Log cabins, dreaming  well outside your average store-bought box, just like my dad taught me to do.