Saturday, January 4, 2013
"There's Oil in His Veins"
I was visiting ebay few weeks ago, when I was attracted to a toy listing. It was a wrecker that looked like a Wyandotte (USA) toy, but it wasn't - it was Canadian, eh! As Canadians, we say "eh" at the end of sentences, compared with "huh" for Americans. Nevertheless, I was attracted instantly.It turned out that the Canadian company was an Otaco Minnitoy. It manufactured pressed steel toys in the 1950's in Orillia, Ontario, Canada.
But the story didn't simply stop at the toys! When I've asked people if I might use their toy photos, there were always interesting antiques that weren't toys and I left them out. This was like mining for gold and throwing away silver. So I decided that in 2014, I would add some of the most interesting item that were not toys,but antiques or old items to each post.
Of course,you're wondering what I was going to add for today's post? It's vintage and antique car
literature. The collectible word for this in the collector's world is ephemera. I wrote to the owner of the store and Mr. Ken McGee write back. We communicated back and forth , an d said to wait until this week, when he'd have more items to list on ebay. Okay! How much better could it get.There were already beautify Canadian Otaco toy, several old American toys, and car literature that could keep me in a library for months! But I waited ,since the old expression always comes into play when writing and using other people's photos - "the customer is always right".
As it turns out, Ken McGee comes from a long line of car people, and he'd been in the business for a long time, before he retired from that. He's still in cars, but in a different way, as I introduced you to him. He also
"Ken McGee's entire life has existed around the automobile. Eighty-five years ago his parents started up a Dodge-DeSoto dealership and Ken, who was the youngest of four sons, spent every hour after school and weekends at the garage. At the time old Packards, Buicks, Cadillacs, and Model T's sat all over the place. Ken would brush paint them, paint on whitewalls, etc. just for something to do. At 12 years of age he sold his first car and has never stopped since. Ken started into the dealership on the washrack, then lube bay, then parts manager, eventually becoming service manager and then sales manager. When his father passed away in 1960 four sons took over the dealership and in January of 1962 changed to a Pontiac-Buick-Cadillac-GMC franchise and have never looked back. Over the years, the other brothers were bought out and Ken became the President of the dealership, working along side his son Darcy McGee and nephew Martyn McGee (third generation). In April of 2006 McGee Motors had to opportunity to buy out the local Chevrolet Dealership, then, with the reorganization of GM in 2009, we became a Chevrolet-Buick-Cadillac-GMC dealer with a greatly enlarged territory.
In late 2011, after lengthy arrangements and with some mixed feelings, Ken retired from the dealership. He continues to manage his collector car and literature business, and remains active in the car hobby."
Ken also has several vintage cars in his newly built building where he, his wife Sylvia,and staff mage this fabulous business. If you visit his website, you will find much more of this fabulous story than I have space for. He lives in Goderich, Ontario, Canada.
I'll just add a personal anecdote to tie into Ken and Sylvia's fantastic journey. When I was in Providence,Rhode Island,USA to study professional photography, I needed to decorate my walls. I visited a yard sale (garage sale is the term in Canada), and came across a big pile of 1920-1030's of old magazines. They were filled with fabulous had-drawn colour illustrations of cars of that era. I cut out a few of the photos and used them as wall decor. Wow!
I'm only presenting one Otaco Minnitoy today.
For sure, I will be adding another post for these fine and rare Canadian toys!
I like the way Ken places some of his toys on a vintage car set to use as a foundation.
I removed the colour as I recently started to do, in order to emphasize the toy.
So that's it for today, and I hope you liked today's post as much as I enjoyed writing it.
Google, Blogger,and Picasa seem to be having some problems lately, as I've read on the Google company of forums, where Google product users can go for help and advise. I added a post earlier in the week, and later removed it. Some of the problems that I was having seemed to have been corrected.
If you do find that you cannot see the photos for posts from today until September 14, 2013, and they're replaced with grey ovals with grey lines inside, then please visit any post earlier than this timeframe. Those posts work without any problems.
Thanks for visiting,
and as always, have a great part of the day,
wherever you may be.
Stacey
toysearcher@gmail.com
