It started with a witch's hat. Not the tall and black witch's hat like that from the Wizard of Oz, but instead, a tall rubber, bright yellow with black base, street hazard cone. Brought into the house by Hank, removed from the construction site created by the summer sewer pipe replacement, the cone was placed in the center of the linoleum-tiled closed-in porch by the front door. It was after 11 PM when Hank and Jay started this unique building project, and it would take them well into the early morning hours to complete it.
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"This is where we start," said Hank with a devilish grin. He then placed a small Pensie Pinkie rubber handball on the top opening vent to the yellow cone. "Let's go get the toys."

Totally excited, Jay ran upstairs to his room at the back of the house. Jay quickly opened the door to his bedroom closet and pulled out the gray suitcase of toys, the duffel bag of colored wooden blocks, a Matchbox car carrying case, and a cardboard cylinder filled with American Red Bricks. Following up from downstairs and entering Jay's room, Hank grabbed the bag of blocks, the tube of bricks, and the cars, as Jay dragged the suitcase down the stairs to the porch. The idea here was to build a city around the cone, as it would be the established center of the town Hank and Jay were about to create.
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Putting the suitcase down on the floor on its side, the suitcase was big, deep and had snap-in-place spring-loaded fasteners... click-click. The lid popped open, revealing it to be packed to the brim with all of Jay's favorite building toys, unsorted and ready to be dumped out. There was a variety of plastic toys, some large-sized uncolored wooden blocks, lots of Lincoln logs, and a bunch of green plastic army soldiers.
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Dumping out the contents of the suitcase onto the hard floor, making a loud crashing sound, the toys were piled up together next to the cone.
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"Where should we start?" said Jay.
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"Like any good city, we'll begin with constructing the roadway," said Hank.
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Separating out the track, Ideal's Motorific Torture Track was a gray, hinged-tongue plastic slot car track that came with a battery-powered car.
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"I Think the car is broken, said Hank.
 
"So who needs the car," said Jay. "We have a case of Matchbox cars ready to go,"
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Hank and Jay then began to lay out a complex roadway track system with ramps, bridges, crossovers, an elevated highway section, and steep spiraling turns around the cone, defining the town border. As part of the layout needed to be raised off the floor, Hank and Jay began using the uncolored large-sized rectangular wooden blocks for road supports.
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"Let's make the road higher," said Jay excitedly.
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To raise the road higher, Jay walked out of the porch and into the living room. He found a hardcover cookbook series from the living room bookcase. Opening the books slightly, standing them up and fanning them out, then placing the track on top, several volumes of "Culinary Cookery" were used as higher road supports. The hinged-tongue track system worked well as Hank and Jay balanced connecting stress-points for steep turning road drops. When finished, the addition of the books raised the precarious roadway a foot off the ground. The completed roadway twisted and snaked around the cone, creating an artful town layout.
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"We need buildings," said Hank with command authority.
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Another toy component to the center of the town was Jay's white plastic building set, Guidance Town USA. The set consisted of white plastic panels with front and side pieces that fit together with a tongue-and-slot system, creating a stackable square or rectangular framed floor. The side pieces were about two inches in length, one inch in height, and had a small plastic tongue at either end. The front pieces, with recessed right-angle slots on each end, were either two or four inches in length, same height as the sides but with window openings and doors that were cut and molded into the plastic. At the top of both pieces were small rectangular teeth that allowed building sections to loosely fit together either directly on top or at right angles. The set came with flat blue roofs and slide-on columns for supporting suspended sections.

Hank and Jay started assembling rectangular framed floors, with little concern for the appropriate placement of the front pieces. Office windows, swinging front doors, swinging doors with windowsills, and double garage doors were indiscriminately stacked together. Any pieces that could connect together just to add height and/or depth to the buildings, Hank and Jay used. Jay handed several completed multi-story building sections to Hank, and he placed them in strategic locations throughout the town.
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Turning to the duffel bag of colored wooden blocks, Jay dumped out the bag into a pile, revealing two long rectangular yellow blocks, a number of red rectangular blocks, many blue and beige square blocks, multiple yellow round pillars, multiple green rectangular columns, yellow right triangular blocks, and two orange bridge-shaped blocks with green half-circle inserts. All the blocks had the same half-cube thickness, making it interesting to stack and build.
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"Let's be creative," said Hank with a laugh.
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Hank and Jay began by building a multi-story crisscrossing rectangular red block building with the two long rectangular yellow blocks for the roof. Then, stacking pairs of alternating blue and beige blocks, creating a tower, adding a yellow pillar to the top as an antenna. Other structures were built with more elaborate designs. There was a building erected on an all-block blue and beige checkerboard foundation with side walls made with red blocks and back walls made with rows of blue and beige blocks. At the front of the building, Jay placed two green columns on their side, then stood a row of four yellow pillars on the green columns, then placing two yellow right triangle blocks, creating a front peak like an ancient Greek temple. Hank then placed two red blocks on their back, side-by-side, placing four blue square blocks upright on either end. Hank then placed another two red blocks on top of the blue square blocks. He repeated this process, creating a three-story red and blue block building. On the top of the last set of red blocks, Hank placed two blue and two beige blocks diagonally, making a second foundation directly on top of the red blocks.
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"That looks strong," said Hank with a smile.
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He then stood four green columns upright like stilts, close enough to put blue and beige blocks on top of the centered columns, creating another floor. Hank topped it off with an orange bridge block and a green half-circle insert block as the peak. As Hank and Jay began running out of the red blocks, the structures became more like block sculptures. Small and tall block configurations were placed throughout the town using the remaining blocks, giving the block arrangements the look of modern abstract art. Suspended fences made with green tall and short yellow pillars, with bridge blocks surrounding the white buildings, produced an ornamental and contrasting artistic feel between the wooden blocks and the plastic buildings.
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"It looks like the center of the town is starting to take shape," said Hank, marveling at their work.
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Hank and Jay continued to focus their building talents within the shadow of the yellow hazard cone.
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Jay then opened the cardboard can of American Red Bricks by screwing off the lid and pouring them out onto the floor.
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"We should have a command center," said Hank.
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"Let's build the mayor's bunker," said Jay with eager determination.
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"You can build that," said Hank, "while I work with the Lincoln Logs."
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"Great idea," said Jay.
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Unlike Legos, American Red Bricks precisely fit together but not tightly. The walls to the mayor's bunker could easily fall in if not constructed properly. However, the loose-fitting bricks allowed for windows and doors to easily swing open and close. There were many styles and shapes of windows and doors in the brick pile on the floor. As Jay started on building the bunker, Hank announced. "I'll make some Lincoln Log cabins."
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They quickly got to work on the two building construction projects. Jay started with a red brick foundation, making places for two double-size picture windows, two side-by-side front doors, two single large windows on either side of the building, and a set of swinging windows in the back. Jay began to fill in the spaces between the windows and doors with red bricks. The two opaque rippled-cut picture windows proved to be a challenge. The basic rectangular American red brick had eight positive small studs equally spaced on the top of the brick. The positive studs would fit precisely into the bottom of the next brick's underside holes. The picture windows were the same length as the basic red brick and had only two studs in the center of the window, making framing the windows difficult and requiring a second interlocking brick layer. This held true for the swinging doors and windows as well. Jay completed his building by stacking smooth triangular bricks at higher and higher levels, forming the arc of the roof. Jay finished the roof by placing the long green wooden slats across the top of the building.
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Meanwhile, Hank built a full-size log cabin with open doorway, two open windows on the front and backside of the building, placing green wooden slats on the top for the roof, and ending with a red wooden chimney. Hank built several smaller wooden cabins in different configurations, placing them throughout the town. The thing about Lincoln Logs—although they used a top and bottom cutaway connecting system—the log structure was loosely fitted. In fact, the entire town Hank and Jay were constructing was extremely fragile and precarious. Overall, the town layout had a striking yet contrasting artistic look with the gray track, the white buildings, and the brightly colored block towers with green fenced-in sculptures.
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At this point, Hank and Jay both felt the town was nearly complete.
"Let's put the cars on the track and the green soldiers around the town, giving it a lived-in look," said Hank.
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As the Motorific track had a center slot about an eighth of an inch wide, Hank and Jay could simply place one side of the Matchbox car wheels in the center slot in either direction, holding the car tightly fastened to the track. This allowed cars and trucks to be placed on steep and turning tracks without rolling off. An assortment of Matchbox cars and trucks such as the red Jaguar XKE, the blue Wagonaire station wagon with white slide-in back roof pulling a trailer with the blue and white cabin cruiser, the Fiat 1500 luggage-carrying sedan pulling the mobile home, the royal blue Rolls-Royce coupe convertible, the red double-decker bus, army vehicles such as the green jeep and covered troop carrier, the pickup truck, the milk truck, the Coca-Cola truck, the BP tow truck, the garbage truck, the pumper truck, the fire chief car, the police car, the Cadillac ambulance, and the blue Ford Zephyr sedan, were put on the track throughout the town going in different directions.
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Finally, Hank and Jay began to place the green army soldiers around the town.
"Let's set them up as if there's a war going on," Jay suggested.
"Okay," Hank agreed.
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Hank and Jay separated and organized the troupe of green plastic soldiers. There were five standing soldiers with their gun and bayonet in a ready-to-charge pose, three soldiers about to throw a hand grenade, six standing soldiers pointing a rifle, five soldiers laying on their stomach sporting a tripod machine gun, and one infantry soldier with a radio phone backpack. Jay placed two of the soldiers with machine guns on each side of the yellow roof blocks supporting the blue and beige tower, another two machine gun soldiers on two of the white plastic buildings with the blue roofs, and one hiding inside one of the colored block sculptures close to the mayor's bunker. Hank placed two of the soldiers with rifles in between the yellow upright pillars, two on either side of the double doors leading into the mayor's bunker, and two pointing out each window of the log cabin. The five standing soldiers with their guns and bayonets were placed under bridge supports and around the second large multi-story block building as defenders. The three soldiers with hand grenades were placed—one in front of the blue and beige tower building, one by the building that looked like a Greek temple, and one next to the log cabin. The soldier with the radio backpack was placed high on one of the cookbook supports, having an overview of the battlefield.
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Hank and Jay looked over the entire town layout surrounding the cone.
"It still looks empty," said Hank with a tone of frustration.
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"I know what we can do," said Jay enthusiastically.
 
"Let's look for interesting objects around the house to place in the town."
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Going back into the living room, Jay found the large conch seashell that rested on top of the television. Hank returned to the bookshelf and picked up the two upright bulldog bookends with marble base and brought them into the porch. Jay grabbed the shell and returned to the porch as well. The shell was placed between two of the smaller log cabins, while the bulldog bookends were used to reinforce the cookbook supports.
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"What else?" said Jay.
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"How about those four white plastic baseball celebrity statues on the windowsill over the TV?" said Hank. "We can place them as if they were military monuments."
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"That's a great idea," said Jay.
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They gathered the four baseball celebrity statues from the windowsill above the television and placed one by the mayor's bunker, one next to the Greek building, one by the full-size log cabin, and one in the center of a spiraling turn heading towards the white plastic building complex.
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"I think we're done," said Hank with a smile.
It was 4:35 in the morning.
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The center of the town looked amazing. White multi-story buildings with white baseball player statues, several brightly colored building block designs, gray roadways with uncolored wooden block supports, the brick red mayor's bunker in front of the tall yellow cone, green army soldiers peeking out from various hidden locations, Matchbox cars and trucks tightly fastened to the track that twisted up and down throughout the layout, the four cookbooks as additional elevated roadway supports, and the conch seashell between the two smaller log cabins providing an ocean element to the scene.
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"Now what?" asked Jay.
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Hank reached over and grabbed the rubber handball resting on the top of the cone, threw it up in the air once, and said, "Now, let's blow it up."
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Epilogue - After the total destruction of the town caused by Hank and Jay throwing the rubber ball at various building targets and roadway-supported sections while knocking over statues and scattering soldiers, the tall yellow witch's hat remained unscathed along with the bulldog bookends and the large conch seashell which Jay still has to this day.