They sit there. Arranged in "blister packs", brightly painted, and dangling from haphazard rows on the shelf. A small boy stands next to me, gazing up at them. He isn't tall enough to see the upper rows and on tiptoes, he cranes his neck to try to get a better view. His attempts are futile and frustrated he returns his gaze to the bottom shelf. He looks up at me and I look down at him sheepishly.

"Do you have a little boy?" he asks.

I shake my head. I do not have a little boy. At least, not one of my own. But I have several children that I buy toys for. Always the adopted "Uncle Tim", I come to this aisle every chance I get. And, if I don't shop for those children, I shop for me. It is an obsession.

This small boy looking up at me with wide blue eyes will not understand this or the complications that adult's face. For him, today's dilemma is one of logistics. The best toys are too far out of his reach or too high for his vision. His parents are nowhere in sight and the blond kid is one second away from potential disaster. Seeing him tentatively lift a leg, I visualize the kid climbing on the bottom shelf to gain elevation. I can also see toys flying in all directions, collapsing shelves, and chaos. Preventing a disaster in the making, I ask the jockeying, height handicapped six-year-old, "Do you want a lift?"

He nods, caution towards a stranger overtaken by his zeal to see better. Bending over, I grab him by his knees and lift him so that he can reach the higher elevations of this child's Nirvana. Now gazing at the elusive top shelf, he points at Hot Wheels, Matchbox, and Johnny Lightning miniature toy cars. Bragging proudly he says, "I have that one and this one. Oh cool…look at that! I haven't seen that one before. Look it even has a trailer hitch." Grabbing a Matchbox car, he holds it close to his eyes, studying it. The toy car is a miniature GMC 4x4 pick-up truck complete with oversized tires and a lift kit. He turns to me and exclaims, holding now another set of cars, "And this one has a horse trailer with horses inside of it!"

I nod. There is a lot of neat stuff on the shelves today and the store is well stocked with the nifty, the new, and unfortunately for this kid, the hard to get.

Putting the kid back down on his feet the boy says "Thanks Mister!" Still holding the GMC truck he boasts, "Mom says I could pick one new hot wheels! If I do all my chores with out being asked, I get two!" He looks down for a minute then admits sheepishly, "I forgot to unload the dishwasher last night. I only get to pick one today."

Brightening, as if he has an entire scheme worked out so that he will never repeat that mistake again, he smiles. Then, treasure in hand he bounds off down the aisle of the store, with its happy faces and dropping prices and made in everywhere but the USA big box feel.

Remaining in the aisle, I began studying all the die cast cars. I love all things die cast, too, and I have since I was a child. With the exception of my first collection, which was stolen when I was ten, my toy traffic jam spans 35 years. Originally, I collected because my parents and relatives thought that all boys should play with cars. I readily agreed. Now I collect because I am still in love with the hobby of miniature worlds where simplicity still rules.

Learning to build roads, create congested bottlenecks and have wonderfully horrible accidents with ambulances, tow trucks and no liability insurance or deductibles, my collection grew, as did I. Great and marvelous engineering feats and super highway projects were designed, constructed and paved utilizing my father's forever-disappearing charcoal briquettes. These projects, constructed in my father's horse pastures, consisted of complicated "adult" undertakings.

Horse pastures meant horses. Hot Wheels were never designed to come into contact with hooves. Precautions to prevent such tragic events involved herding the horses into another pasture. Once this was completed, and the gates shut behind them, out came the dump trucks and loaders. Enormous highways were bulldozed around manure piles. Two by fours created impressive bridges across the mud. These great highways gave me impressive status among the imaginary construction workers who cheered each dam, roared with each carved mountain, and held their breath through each bridge undertaking. To be cheered by virtual construction worker's is a very good thing. Inspired by their roars of support, every highway became better than the last. I knew nothing of environmental impact statements or wetlands mitigation. Mass transit was meaningless to me; the bigger the highway, the bigger the smile. Standing tall, surveying hundreds of cars and trucks spread out over acres of charcoal highway to anyone who cared it was elementary that I was born to be a republican.

Once the highways were complete, wonderful and marvelous traffic created endless opportunities for the imagination. I was the proud owner of the green Mercury matchbox car station wagon with the plastic dog hanging out the back end, the red Ford matchbox pick-up truck with the white canopy and I even had an original, the infamous Hot Wheels Red Baron's car. As kids go, I was set. Acres of roads set under a big western sky completed a miniature version of manifest destiny. Move em out, let em roll, as cars, trucks, and construction zones began to 'civilize' the godless horse pasture.

No picture is that perfect and neither was this one. I had siblings.

On occasion, my brother would sneak down to the lower pasture. He lived for evil. He breathed carnage. He is lucky that he survived those years.

Tiptoeing along the three rail white fence he would lurk around the perimeter of our farm. At the precisely the right moment, he would open the gate of doom, silently herding the horses back into "my" pasture. Thee sacred pasture. The one holding my innocent and unaware creation. A master-planned, now un-gated community. Unaware as I worked happily on my city under the July sun, I was presiding over my very own, future FEMA disaster area.

The first unsettling clue of calamity came when I felt the wet muzzle of a foal curiously nibble at my neck. I froze, a dump truck suspended in my hand. A chill ran down my spine as I slowly turned to meet the Godzillas sneaking into Timmyville. Not just one 1400 lb Godzilla calmly grazed outside of the city limits, but a whole family of them.

Catching a glimpse of my brother scrambling through the fence rails, I immediately understood how all of this came to be. I savored thoughts of bloody murder directed towards my sibling as he ran giggling toward the house. Visualizing my method of retaliation did not douse or minimize the fury that I felt. The little shit always ran to mommy and hid in her bosom. He the devil child of all devil children was a creature who somehow morphed into something my parental units saw as sweet and innocent and incapable of evil. I would deal with him later.

Anger threatened, overtaking self-composure, overriding my gut, as I futily tried to calmly encourage the horses to move away from Timmyville. I told myself that I could handle this crisis with a minimum of damage. Contain the emergency. This was not going to be another flaming, havoc wrecked Simm City 3000. Instead this was the Lutheran equivalent. Tim City. God would help those who helped themselves!

The horses were restless, almost as if they understood the danger. Hooves were within inches of inch-long Jeeps, Chevy's and V.W.'s. Resolving that no matter what happened I wouldn't spook them. I would be cautious and gentle as I approached them.

Smiling, I spoke quietly to the horses. Happy. Cheerful. No talk of rendering plants, glue factories, or dog food touched my lips. We could work through this misunderstanding. Their trespass, into my pasture, was simply an honest mistake and I wanted them to know that I understood how easily honest mistakes could happen. The horses had been mislead. We could work through this. No one had to die.

Slowly reaching out to grab the mane of the mare whose foal had just kissed my neck, I slowly reached out to her. Her ears pricked forward. She trembled. I almost had her mane. Another inch. Slowly. She watched me. Her gentle eye was smooth and steady. Slowly now. Steady. I twitched. Damn!

She reared up instantly and galloped right through the main street of Timmyville. The other horses spooked in unison. They were on to me. They could feel my fury and they knew that I was on the verge of going postal. Sensing the end of life as they knew it, the entire lot of them stampeded. I closed my eyes in a loud wail as I heard galloping, thunder, and snorts. Opening them, I saw hooves connect with roads, bridges, and Hotwheels. Paralyzed by my grief and loss, I watched as nickers, flying manes, and tails exited off Timmyville expressway and went the wrong way up Timothy Anderson Memorial Drive. I nearly blacked out, shocked when air born horse droppings buried my miniature Partridge Family Bus.

Now before this gets any uglier, I want to note that I am sure the whole scene was breathtaking to observe. To see such a herd of spirited horses galloping around must have been something incredible. The mare's frantic colts, trying to find their mothers. Bay and Gray, dappled and solid coated, Liver Chestnut, and Sorrel all becoming a blurred mass of horse fleshed motion. White blazes, and white stars, black socks and high gated trots, all circling a defenseless Timmyville. From a distance the commotion would be remarkable. Inspiring. A "true west" reflection of the wildness of horse.

And the wildness of man.

But not in my, town damn it!

Hooves pounded into the soil and kicked up dirt clods and bridges and OH MY GOD NO! Not my Shell Tanker truck with the real live fuel hoses. Horror befell the imaginary residents of Timmyville as horse met die cast. There was no time for evacuation or emergency contingencies. In seconds, what took days to build, was destroyed. All that remained in the aftermath was a lonely, solitary image.

Rising up from the scattered, hoof-printed remains of Timmyville was the face of the angel of death, my darling little brother. In my mind, I once again saw him, giggling as he fled towards mommy. Standing in silence as calm returned to Timmyville, I breathed slowly and collected myself. Reflecting on my little sibling's countenance, I charted my brother's future. It involved a long and painful death.

It was the most satisfying moment of my life.

Eventually my brother recklessly left mommy's protective side. I was there, ready for that special moment. Just us, the two of us, and our little reunion. A love-fest so to speak. Showering him with the kind of love that only brothers can truly know, he would never forget our time together.

When it was all over, I was grounded and he was missing some hair. But for a priceless moment, he really knew how I felt about him. Feelings like these sometimes come at great price and I was willing to pay whatever it cost me.

In the aftermath, I recovered my Hotwheels, bathed them, and mourned the ones that were forever lost. I rebuilt my beloved Timmyville down in the basement because afterall I was grounded for the rest of the summer. While visions of further revenge inspired me, I tried to reconstruct what had been lost. Unfortunately, such visions of equaling the score never came to pass. Although throughout the rest of our childhood, my little brother continued to delight in plaguing my Hotwheels collection. And me.

Vengeance is mine sayeth the Lord. I waited for twenty years for God to come through and teach my brother a lesson. Finally, God saw fit to give my little brother what had long been coming to him. A job in Vegas. A place where there is no master planning and sprawl defines open space. Oh yes and one other thing. My brother has wrecked as many big cars since those childhood years as he did my Hotwheels. Insurance companies, as it turns out, don't forget evil either.

In spite of the best efforts of my little brother, my collection continued to grow. I also learned cities are best not constructed in horse pastures and that if I simply stayed out of my brother's field of vision that his attention span was short. He quickly forgot about Timmyville and invariably got into trouble disfiguring my sister's dolls, which thankfully landed him on an all expense paid trip to his room.

For awhile, things got better until when at the age of twelve a woman in my father's church explained to me that upon my thirteenth birthday I would have to give up my Matchbox cars.

"Tim, You'll have other things on your mind by then. Like girls!" The gray haired woman told me after Sunday School one day. I was horrified.

"Girls?" I gulped.

"Yes, after thirteen big boys don't play with cars anymore." She said matter of fact.

I was crushed.

"You will be interested in girls instead!" She sighed wistfully.

I was seriously depressed. I began the count down, marking off the days on my calendar until I was 13. At 12 and 3/4's, troubled by dreams of die cast cities ruined by girls with Easy Bake Ovens, Shawn Cassidy Albums and Barbie, I lost sleep. For Christmas my grandma gave me a new matchbox truck as a reprieve from the execution. Obviously she did not know about the "rule of thirteens", the most unlucky rule I'd ever heard of. Hot Wheels gone! Replaced by Girls Galore. Nothing could be worse.

The birthday came, exactly one month after Christmas. Turning 13. I woke up early and went downstairs to survey Timmyville. The glorious city with miniature everything was still there, just as I'd left it. Picking up favorite cars, I looked at both the new editions and the old standards. Things in Timmyville were exactly as they always were. Nothing had changed. I laughed. I still liked the world of die cast.

Thirteen came and went. My teen years passed quickly and the die cast world that I'd created became a safe refuge from other more troubling realities. When I left for college, the cars were gently packed away and they remained hidden in my parent's attic for several years. Somewhere along the way the innocence of youth was displaced by the hard realities of adulthood and although I didn't know it at the time, one of those lessons would rear its ugly head years later. Greed.

For some reason, an unwritten rule states that the better things in life, those things that we take for granted when we are young and naïve and unappreciative of their simplicity, will eventually "get discovered". As value soars in a free market world, value is ultimately lost. Ruined. Such is the case with hot wheels.

Die cast cars purchased at Walmart for sixty-eight cents remain simple and inexpensive treasures. Every year new models come out and every year older ones are retired. Some Hotwheels are rare while others seem too plentiful. If Hotwheels are kept in their proper perspective, as mere children's toys, they are a wonderful hobby.

But nothing stays in its proper perspective very long in the new Dot.com age. Mattel, the parent company behind Hot Wheels has not escaped the pressures of corporate buy-outs, mergers, and takeovers. Toys are a big, cynical, dog-eat-dog business. In the last few years, Mattel acquired Corgi and Matchbox. Dominating the die cast market Mattel began marketing products geared specifically towards the toy collectors. Releasing limited edition vehicles called "Treasure Hunt Cars", these cars and other limited production runs, turned toy collecting into a cutthroat sport. What could be purchased at a discount store for under a buck, often skyrocketed in value, sometimes bringing two or three hundred dollars over the list price on the secondary market. Wall Street moved into Main Street and the chase was on. Sometimes, it was a wild chase where adults trampled kids all in pursuit of Hotwheels Cars.

Speculators scouted retail locations. Arriving every morning as soon as the stores opened, they looting all the new products off the shelf. Regular kids with working moms and dads didn't have a chance. Arguments broke out between aggressive enthusiasts and angry parents valuable Hotwheels cars were ripped out the hands of their children. At one store in Spokane, two collectors ended up in a fistfight over an unopened case of Hotwheels. Bribes were offered to retail store shelf-stocker's. Distribution center employees became favorite targets of overzealous collectors. All of this attention dedicated to the pursuit of a toy that cost under a buck.

I still venture down toy aisles and my eyes still light up when I see something neat, new, and nifty. I suppose that I always will. But several years ago, the greed and the selfishness infecting the hobby changed Hotwheel's wonder and innocence, possibly forever. I blame some of it on the greed of corporate types who recklessly fuel demand by creating artificial shortages and hype. But I also look at the motivations of anyone that collects toys. Are they collected for value? As an investment? Do these collectors leave the toy "in the box", banking that someday, if its untouched and never played with, that it will skyrocket in value?

I wonder, looking at today's children as they excitedly march down the aisles of the big box toy stores what kind of world are we creating? Toys made for children that are to valuable to play with? Too sacred to be touched? Toys that will never know the wonder of a horse pasture. Or, the sounds of a young imagination at work. Is that the point of toys? Do we invest in the pleasures of youth and innocence or do we invest in toys as commodities?

This last Christmas marked a financial crisis in my life. Finishing my last quarter of college and desperately trying to keep up with the ranch mortgage, I did not have much money to spend on gifts for the special kids in my life. Yet, there were several children on my gift list. Strolling down the enormous toy aisles of the big discount stores, I saw previous years "hot toys" now cast away. Furby's, Tickle Me Elmo's, and Cabbage Patch Kids all stuck in the second class status of come and go fad toys. Toys that a few years ago were "in", were now "out".

Watching as frustrated parents reined screaming children through Barney and Barbie aisles, overwhelmed children soon lost track of what they hoped Santa would bring. I chuckled, watching eager grandparents attempting to "outdo" other grandparents. The competition of getting the best toys for their grandchildren carried an enormous price. This tradition being among the first of many subtle ploys to court loyalties. The entire scene seemed surreal and calculated. I became discouraged myself as I tried to find toys that would stay within my budget. Toys bound for a few special kids that held a place in my heart.

The most troubling scene of all that I witnessed occurred when a well to do woman chided her daughter as the child debated a choice among Barbie dolls. A near endless assortment of beautiful tanned, happy faced figures with their accompanying dream houses, Mercedes, and outfits.

"Honey, now you know if we get you that limited edition Holiday Barbie, you won't be able to take it out of the package and play with it. That doll is a collectors item and will be worth a lot of money someday…" The mother's voice became lost in a wail of screaming children.

Looking at her daughter I saw the child's confusion. A doll that wasn't for play? What was the point of that?

That night, leaving the store with the gifts I'd purchased, I hadn't spent more than twenty bucks on seven different kids. Wrapping their presents at 2 am in the morning, I wondered how they'd be received. These toys weren't spectacular. They weren't tickle-me anything's, and they weren't on the hottest everything list. The gifts that I'd bought were simply ordinary Hotwheels cars. Purchased for sixty-eight cents each, a college student's bargain.

Over the next few days, I presented the gifts to the kids. Their responses were varied. Sure, not every kid went ballistic with excitement but they were still happy to receive the gifts. Knowing the toys they'd received from me would likely get as much action as the other presents the kids received, I was grateful I was able to afford anything at all. I wanted to be a part of the season and contribute despite the artificial hype of the holidays and the pressure to give the coolest gift.

A little boy raised by a single, struggling mother drove that point home. I almost missed his message. A lesson regarding priorities and the honest wonder of giving. Arriving at their home a few days after Christmas, I rang their doorbell holding a small package. A small, 6-year-old blond bundle of energy cautiously opened the door as he waited for his mother to appear by his side. Not well acquainted, he shyly recognized me and grinned. Generally he was a good kid, struggling to laugh and play in normalcy as his mother attempted to provide for him as best she could. I didn't have long to stay. I myself was between my two jobs and frantically trying to accomplish more than was reasonable for my schedule.

His mother arrived and opened the door wider. "Tim, what are you doing here? Oh my god, what a great surprise!" She smiled, although she looked as overwhelmed as I felt.

Presenting the brightly wrapped packages to the boy as his mom looked on, I bent down. "This is for you Trace." He took the package from me jumping up and down. I stood and watched as the child tore into the wrapping paper. His mother closed the door behind us and laughed. "Slow down Trace, its not like they're going anywhere!"

Five wrapped Hotwheels cascaded onto the floor. Less than three dollars total worth of expenditures but from the jumps of joy and the shrieks one would guess that I'd spent hundreds. Two of the cars were very rare and I knew that collectors would scream as Trace ripped open the blister packs to fetch the cars enabling him to play with the vehicles.

"You're ruining their value!" I could just hear toy collectors that I knew cry.

The boy began running the vehicles over the carpet and across the couch. "What do you say?" his mother asked him. The boy stood sheepishly behind his mom and for a moment concentrated on more than his toys.

"Thanks Tim" he said politely. Then in a flurry of motion he was back down on the floor. Making big truck noises, honking sounds, and screeches. As I watched him, I thought about the speculators. The torn cardboard blister packs remained scattered on the floor, tombstones marking the end of those Hotwheel's collectible value. But looking at the boy, as he rallied around on the floor, I saw the joy that a simple toy can provide. It's original intent was to be played with. Scratched-up. Wrecked. Towed. Jumped. Drowned in the bathtub. Attached to cats. Ran through the dirt. All created to inspire a young imagination and brighten the face of a child. From my vantage the goal was achieved. I witnessed a grin that was unending.

As I drove to work that night, I thought of the value of those inexpensive toys. From the speculator's position. From the collector's. From mine. And from the child's. To whom would the car's value matter more? Comparing our perspectives, I realized the priceless nature of the moment I'd just witnessed. The answer was beyond a dollars and sense proposition. The answer was obvious but would escape nearly all concerned with all things Hotwheels.

To Trace, the toy in its current state was invaluable.

As it was to me.