Welcome to Elfland

Like most kids, I was fascinated by all things miniature.

Toys are, of course, for the most part life writ small. They need to be scaled down so that kids can actually play with them. Most dolls aren't life sized. Good thing, because then they wouldn't fit it a doll house. Toy cars and trucks aren't life-sized, either. Kids play with miniature pots and pans, tiny bats and balls. They build mini-villages around their mini railroad tracks and mini trains. That stuffed hippo? Not exactly hippo sized. 

Merry Toys were popular in the 1950's and 1960's. They were miniatures within miniatures: tiny little stores selling tiny little products: supermarket, drugstore, hobby shop... I adored Merry Toys, an endless source of fascinating and delight. 

And who didn't love charms? No, not the fancy silver ones you wore on your charm bracelet. The ones you got, if you were lucky, when you put a penny in a gumball machine. That teenie-tiny mirror, that teenie-tiny drum...

Apparently some things don't change.

Which is how Elfland came about.

Elfland is the brain child of an eight-year-old boy from Somerville, Massachusetts, who spied "'a bunch of invisible things'" pottering around an abandoned lot in his neighborhood last summer. 

Those invisible things, as it turned out, were elves. 

And those elves wanted help from the local humans to build their village.

And so became Elfland:

In August, the boy and his parents started building Elfland from the ground up, giving new life to a vacant dirt lot filled with chunks of rock and overgrown

weeds. But a month later, as word of the fairytale village spread, neighbors who discovered the secret realm started quietly making additions of their own. (Source: Boston Globe)

The lot was formerly occupied a gas station and repair shop. "An eyesore", the boy's father dubbed it. And while it will no doubt be developed - they aren't making any more land in Somerville and demand for housing there is extreme - the boy's family decided to have some fun. 

They started small, with a few houses. Then added birdhouses, a hospital, a library, and a wondrous dinosaur farm. 

Then other folks started adding things. More houses. A skating rink. Solar lights. A swing set, a water town, a garden, a church.

Sure, it's not going to last forever. Land in Somerville is just too damned valuable. But how wonderful while it does. 

Wish we had an Elfland in my neighborhood!