First bike: about 1953 Schwinn (single speed). Developed legs and wind to stay with, and better than, an English 3-Speed a friend rode while we pedaled our butts (hey, that's pedaled, not peddled - we're guys - it ain't street hookers, okay?) all over Brooklyn, NY, in the mid-/late- 1950's. Day excursions over 25 miles were rare, but not that uncommon. In NYC traffic...
First car - a $15 1948 Ford Anglia (8HP by the British licensing stupidity of the day - considered number of cylinders and piston diameter.) Never licensed for the road after we (bicycle buddy, a cousin and I) started pulling ugly, heavy pieces off it, in eventual hopes of hanging a fiberglass body on the chassis. Turned out there WAS NO chassis, just a "keel" from which the various body pieces provided the rest of the supposed "structural integrity.(?)" (1948, remember: Dagenham UK was still rebuilding from that Hitler Unpleasantness.) Drove it up and down the Grandparent's driveway many times... (they had a garage, we didn't.) Learned that you do not put your thumb t'other side of the crank (no starter motor) when pulling it into life. What's left of the Anglia - the engine block - is still mooring a boat somewhere around Jamaica Bay, Brooklyn, NY.
Never had an American Flyer set-up - Lionel all the way! 2-track and 3-track...
Hot Wheels were barely invented in time for our son to get some time on one before Kindergarten. Never had a pedal-and-metal pedal car in the family...
Family never had a car until I was old enough to drive: - NYC in the 1950's! Parking (even then) was a hassle when someone invented alternate side of the street parking so the street sweepers could pretend to keep things clean. Several interesting stories about using mass transit to get from home to a flying site... Even remember riding the jump seat on a friend's MG-TC (actually the ragtop stowage area) with a field box and a couple of stunters hanging out in the breeze...
... And, when I was using occasional diesels, telling my flying buds NOT to flip the prop, NOT to mess with that "windup-key" on the cylinder head. ...Not on the Subway, anyway... Learned about that AFTER a bud (we divided the loads into guys loaded with field boxes w/fuel and others with models so we could all get on or off at the same stop in the time allowed by the conductor and in usable condition. One of the "model toters" pulled the 1957 David Andersen diesel on one of my models through and said "this has a lot of compression!" I was starting to tell him not to flip it, when BRAAAP, it ran off the memories of its last run. Good thing it was about 8:00 AM on a Saturday or Sunday, in December, at the empty Smith and 9th St station, on the way to a site at Red Hook Stadium (Brooklyn, of course.)
Ah, yes, diesels... Can you imagine a 16 year old wandering into an industrial chemicals supplier ,off the street, no "official courier" documents or anything, and asking if I could buy some technical ether. Guy said how many pallets do you want, and answered my question that a pallet was what they move with fork lifts, several hundred gallons. I told him I didn't need that much, so he quoted me a price for 4 or 5, 5 gallon cans. Again I had to wimp out - and asked him what the smallest size he could sell me was. ONE gallon - $3. Seemed a lot of money back then, but paid it anyway.
Took it home on New York Subways, in broad daylight, in our familiar handle-top gallon can, vividly labeled EXTREMELY FLAMMABLE, TECHNICAL ETHER -with 'flame' and 'skull and crossbone' images. Anyway, im \t worked well in the homebrew fuels I used over the next several years, .
I have a long memory, perhaps enhanced by the brilliant glow of years. So much else no one seems to care for in these days of the "toy-in-the-box" attitude. I can snap a double edge Gillette Blue Blade razor so I could cut parts out of the printwood in 10cent COMET kits, and can show the scars to prove it.