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LEGO’s provides hours of entertainment

ESCANABA -- Is it a treasure, a toy or a device for torture?

Tucked away, in the basement of my parents' home is a large wooden chest that my Dad made many years ago.

All the kids and grandkids in our family beam with joy when that big box is taken out. It contains something more precious than gold!

The treasure chest holds heaps of antique LEGO!

Blue, white, red and yellow-little plastic bricks fill container just waiting to be sorted and made into something.

Most of this "Rose family LEGO collection" once belonged to my oldest brother Jim. Santa Claus is responsible for much of it. Starting back in the early 1960s, Jim always got a set of LEGO to add to his collection.

The LEGO sets were much simpler back then as I recall, more like a bunch of pieces, and less instructions to build one thing. Kids had to use their imaginations more to come up with creation ideas. Jim made cars, trucks, pyramids with hidden passages, airplanes and buildings.

My brother and his friends, who were also big into LEGO, had each of their blocks counted. They knew how many six stud, four stud and two stud pieces they had!

In the summertime sometimes they'd get together on our front porch and play with LEGO for hours constructing towns and cities. One of Jim's friends enjoyed creating meteor showers with the LEGO pieces. This usually meant it's about time to call it quits for the day.

I was never big into the LEGO thing like Jim and my younger brother, but I did make dozens of square looking dogs out of five pieces of LEGO.

Over the years Jim's LEGO set included more things like gears, wheels axels, windows and for a while he had a motor to make his LEGO creations move!

As the years went by, my Mom saved most of this LEGO in the treasure chest so when other youngsters visited they had something great to play with.

When my son came along, LEGO was still awesome. He started out with the bigger Duplo blocks and soon graduated up to all kinds LEGO vehicles, characters, spaceships and towers.

There is only one bad thing about LEGO and I'm sure every mom will tell you this, all those little pieces... always a few like to avoid being picked up.

No matter how careful or neat your family is, there is always a piece of LEGO just waiting to be stepped on with bare foot! And that's the torture part!

LEGO comes from Danish words meaning "play well." The LEGO group was founded in 1932 and the present plastic brick form was launched in 1958.

So this learning toy, this treasure has a long history.

Last weekend the hit movie was "LEGO Batman Movie." Tons of kids of all ages from 6 to 86 swarmed to see their favorite LEGO action characters on the big screen.

Right now at the Escanaba Public Library there is an awesome LEGO display put together by Kate Oman.

Kids, (parents and grandparents) faces light up when they see the colorful, action figures in the display case.

If those little LEGO people could talk, I'm sure they'd say, "Play well, smile and stay young!"

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Karen (Rose) Wils is a lifelong north Escanaba resident. Her folksy columns appear weekly in Lifestyles.