Tacks Toys (8/1/2015)

Our little rainstorm last night generated a pretty rainbow, but the guys' car race got rained out, so all they got to watch were the qualifications.

Today's adventure was a private tour through George Tackaberry's private collection of "toys."  I don't even know what to call it.  It includes big trucks, little trucks, cars (mostly Cadillacs), tractors, snowmobiles, pedal cars and pedal tractors, matchbox size replicas of about everything that moves, memoribilia from all sorts of genres, and on and on.  He has 12 buildings full of his "collectibles" plus acres and acres of additional vehicles, especially trucks and heavy equipment. Most of his vehicles inside the buildings have been completely restored, and are in "like new" condition."

George is a personal friend of Collins and Marilyn from their growing-up days here in this area, and was best friends with Collins' younger brother, Gordie, who passed away 8 years ago.  He has, I think I heard, 52 gravel pits or quarries in Ontario, and over 200 employees, some of whom are relatives of Collins or Marilyn.  We drove through some of the outside "collection" which was mostly old trucks that have not been restored, dump trucks, rock crushers, and various other kinds of trucks.  Then we met up with George and began our tour.  He has 12 buildings, very large buildings, full of his "collection,"  called Tacks' Toys, and many of the vehicles are used throughout the year in truck shows, even as far away as Salt Lake City, and local parades, etc.  He is just a very ordinary guy, nice as he could be, and spent almost all day with our gang.

George Tackaberry is well known throughout the "truck world," both in Canada and in the U.S., and his collection of International Harvester is phenomenal.  There were 11 of us, in addition to us 6 travelers, Marilyn's sister Sylvia, and another sister Sharon and husband Mike, and a couple of their friends, made up our "gang."

His collection is somewhat organized by type, but many of the buildings contained more than one type, e.g., there were Cadillacs in the same building as semi trucks.  We started out in the tractor area, but again, not all of these pictures are from one building:

He had several different cars, including one of President Reagan's cars, and one the Queen rode in when she was here in Canada.

Trucks were throughout, most of them shiny as brand new, although he also had some "originals" with original miles of less than 200.  Some of these trucks have only been on the road to transport from the lot to here, and at least one was "one of one" made.

Lots of heavy equipment and many, many firetrucks, ambulances, brinks-type trucks and even a SWAT team truck.

He even had one truck used by NASA to haul boosters for the space shuttle.

And he had toys-- pedal cars and pedal tractors. All very nicely displayed along the walls. And lots of cabinets with matchbox cars and trucks, and miniatures that were larger than matchbox.  He had over 200 snowmobiles, but I don't think Joe took a picture of those. 

George even fed us lunch.  When we had driven down to his "lake cottage," where his significant other had gone, he had her arrange for pizzas, which she brought out to one of his buildings a little later.  So we all shared a nice lunch, and a little break.

Collins had brought a gift for him, a sign that had hung about his grandfather's construction company, which he presented to George.

On to another building.  In this one, he had the Flintstones "car," and a "statue" of old Fred himself.

We skipped a couple of buildings and finished our tour about 2:00, but Joe and Collins hung around for another hour or so.  Then they drove into the town of Brockville, for Joe's soda.  That town is right on the St. Lawrence Seaway, and they got to see a sister ship to the one we watched go through the locks in Sault Ste. Marie.  Joe thought it was the same ship, but this one had "IRMA" on the front, and the one we saw in the locks had "ASA" on it (we had to go back to our pictures to check out those details).

After we fixed dinner, another rainstorm blew through, this time with some pea-sized hail.  But once that stopped, we played cards in the garage that Collins had set up for us.  With Collins' and Ronnie's assistance and supervision, Joe cleaned off the table and put on a tablecloth, and we were set to go.  Collins' brother Ronnie had stopped by, so he joined us in "99."  This time we played for keeps, so our big winners were Dave, Ronnie and Collins.  The rest of us went away 90 cents broker.