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I grew up in a town on Long Island that had been around since 1665, when, the story goes, settler Richard Smythe made a deal with a Montauk chief that he could have all the land he could ride in a single day on a bull.

In the heart of a bustling, sprawling downtown was one particular block with a beauty parlor, barber shop, movie theater, shoe repair shop, and a variety store called King George, which is sort of what this column is about. That, and my early flirtation with petty larceny.

Mom would get her hair done every so often at Joseph’s, leaving me, at age 5 or 6, bored out of my mind. If I nagged enough, she’d let me go to King George to browse and, after a time, return to the beauty parlor to negotiate a purchase with her, one that usually started at a several-dollars toy, whittled down to a 55-cent Matchbox car, and invariably ended up at a penny for one of the gumball machines. Mom was especially resistant when it came to my asking for a nickel or a dime for the higher-end machines that held those tiny toy treasurers inside hard plastic containers.

One day, though, a highly coveted toy of my childhood appeared in one of those luxe machines — a tiny version of those wild-haired trolls that were a rage in the early ‘60s.

I went back to Joseph’s and asked Mom for a dime. Naturally, she said no (quite possibly adding something about wasting money on dreck, Yiddish for “junk”),........

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