It wasn't just a city phenomenon.
Department-store toylands and window displays, once such a vital part of the holiday season all over America, seem to have gone the way of the Triceratops. And we are all the poorer for it.
When I was a kid during the Fifties, we all eagerly awaited the opening of the third-floor Toyland at Miller Hardware in Huntingdon, Pennsylvania. In spite of its name, Miller Hardware was actually a well-stocked department store where you could find anything from a new washing machine to the latest record albums. But immediately after the arrival of Santa Claus during the annual Huntingdon Christmas Parade, the Miller management would open its legendary Toyland on its third level.
During the off-season, I think the third floor housed the carpeting and home furnishings department. I'm not entirely sure, because I never went up there during the off-season. But at Christmastime, it became a kid magnet, a kaleidoscopic vista of every colorfully dazzling toy we could imagine, and a lot more. When my friends and I ventured up there, it was as if we'd been elevated to some higher plane of existence. We'd spend hours, gazing at the displays of things we knew perfectly well our parents could never afford. That was what dreams were made of, and how we did dream!
There was, of course, an operating Lionel layout, where all the ingenious marvels we had only seen on catalog pages were brought to mesmerizingly noisy life. I know some of the Plasticville on our own Christmas layout came from there, but not much else. As much as we might have lusted after Lionel F-units, they were high-ticket items that only the offspring of the very well-heeled would ever see under their trees.
Nor did Miller's skimp on its window displays. All of those glittering toys, trains included, danced before our glazed eyes in the store's big glass facade. Seeing such treasures shining in the winter night on Washington Street, how could anyone resist going inside? And resist we did not.
Huntingdon -- not where I was born, but where I did most of my growing up -- was a small town, but a busy and prosperous one in those days. Across the street from Miller's was the much smaller Corcelius Hardware -- which actually was a hardware store. But at Christmas time, the basement floor was turned into a small but well-stocked toyland of its own. What made it even more unique was that the Corcelius toyland was dominated by American Flyer. There was an operating Flyer layout with working accessories (I was particularly fascinated by the Oil Drum Loader, with its little fork-lift that dumped shiny little aluminum barrels into waiting S-scale gondolas). And the tiered shelves where the Flyer locomotives were kept on display seemed strange and exotic to my Lionel-acclimated eyes.
My father worked in the Corcelius toyland one Christmas season, and he was always bringing home American Flyer catalogs, which I studied in scholarly absorption.
The town also supported two busy five-and-ten stores, G.C. Murphy and McCrory's. Both of them sold Marx trains and accessories. Murphy's was where my parents got the extra 027 track and switches for our Christmas layout. The Marx operating crossing gate and Marx hot-air-operated beacon were also Murphy's purchases. Come to think of it, our Marx plastic water tank very likely came from there, too.
McCrory's Marx stock was a bit more limited, but still of considerable interest. McCrory's was where I first saw a Marx 333 locomotive and its lithographed streamlined NYC passenger cars, shiny and new in their original box. I was impressed.
So although we didn't live in or near a large city, Christmastime brought plenty of toy-train action our way, as we made our way from one store to another, breaths billowing in the chill December air. And always in the background was the thunder and clatter of the 4-track PRR main line that ran along the edge of town. How could we have imagined that within a pitifully few short years, all of it would be swept away, to live on only in memories?
I'm sure this scenario was repeated in most small towns across America. We'll never know how many future model railroaders owed their first inspiration to those tinsel-covered toylands and gaudy window displays.
