Building up and Tearing Down

The smokehouse and stable

I inherited Lincoln Logs from Mom. Mom inherited Lincoln Logs from Grammy. I know that some Lincoln Logs were received as gifts for Christmas at least one year. The upside to this is that I have a LOT of Lincoln Logs. Enough Lincoln Logs to make a village.

I don't know if Lincoln would recognize these logs. They are all very regular in appearance and size. The wonderful thing about Lincoln Logs is that they are very easy to build with. As we were putting the town together I thought of real logs. Real logs are not even in appearance or size. Anyone attempting to build with real logs has to deal with one end tapering, the other end being fat. You have to muscle and hew and shape real logs. Lincoln Logs are 'logs lite.' They are nothing like real logs, but you get a great rustic looking building out of them. At least they would be great buildings if you were about six inches tall and into drafty windowless houses.
Caleb really likes building with the Lincoln Logs. I don't fool myself that he's a budding Frank Lloyd Wright, (he's not into form or function right now, focusing on making as many buildings as possible with limited resources) but he's getting the hang of it. He built most of this town. There's even a bridge across the "river" indicated by the floor between the rugs. So that we aren't confused by some of the houses that are built on the wood floor ("water" in Calebtown), he also built moats and dams. These are not to be confused with the pastures and crop areas that he has also designated. "What crops?" I wanted to know, idly helping build what later became known as the stable. "Corn." He thought for a minute. "And soybeans," he added. "Oh, and strawberries." Because if you're going to farm, you'd better grow stuff that you want to eat.

There's also a lumberyard, but he included that because he didn't want to clean up the logs he didn't use. I know this because when I told him to clean up the mess, he told me so.

Bridge and dams in Calebtown

He also included jail, because in any town, tiny or not, you are going to have bad guys. Caleb found this to be the most fun to make and spent a lot of time on it blocking up the windows and doors, and there's nothing like walling up prisoners to make you feel like you're accomplishing something. Then again, maybe he liked it because we had a wanted poster to put up outside, and a sheriff's sign to put on the top.

During the night, the kittens destroyed Calebtown. They were looking for things hidden in the buildings. That's the cat way of thinking: why have a box if you don't hide things in it? I can kind of understand.  Maybe one day soon we'll build Hannahtown, or Momandadtown one of these days.

But I can't help but feel sorry for the residents of this tiny town who got attacked in the middle of the night by large, wild animals. Kind of like a Japanese horror movie, except instead of Godzilla, you have large domestic cats slinking about and poking their heads through your roof. All we need is a hero to save us, but we'll do superheroes another day. Right now, we're cleaning up three generations of Lincoln Logs.