HELLO, DOLLIES ...; AND YO-YOS AND GOLDEN BOOKS; ... AND SLINKYS AND MODEL TRAINS; ... AND CAP GUNS AND BLOCKS AND ...

Byline: Carol Bidwell Daily News Staff Writer

It's every little kid's dream - if the kid was raised in the 1950s.

Model trains, Golden Books, an early Duncan yo-yo, a metal Slinky, cap guns and cowboy boots, dolls bellied up to a tiny table for tea, a kid-size ironing board and iron, spinning tops, jacks and balls, Pick-up-Stix, wooden alphabet blocks.

They all belong to Monika Poe. And she doesn't have to share.

``It's such fun,'' said Poe, 56, of Northridge. She began collecting toys after she retired several years ago from selling real estate and after both her daughters married and moved away from home. ``I was a kid in the '50s, so I remember all these things.''

She haunts flea markets, thrift stores and antiques shops, buying a piece of miniature china here, a book there, a doll dress over there.

``One thing begets another thing,'' she said, almost apologetically. ``What's fun is I come home with it all, and it all kinda works.''

What does husband Terry think about the toy museum at the end of the upstairs hall?

``It's her fun, and I'm happy she has a good time with it,'' he said. ``She gets so excited about her toys.''

Poe's toy-collecting instinct was triggered by the departure of younger daughter Rachel four years ago.

Her husband, a marketing and sales representative for a publisher of religious books, collects rare books, which line shelves throughout the house and fill a tiny upstairs den and a large downstairs family room. Shortly after her daughter moved out, Poe noticed that several of his books had somehow crept onto the empty bedroom's bookshelves.

``I said to myself, `He's going to take this over. I've got to come up with something quick.' I did this'' - with a sweeping gesture, she took in the entire room filled with toys - ``to save myself from being destroyed by the books.''

Hurriedly, she staked out her territory by hauling one of her daughters' old doll houses in from the garage. Then she remembered that she had saved a few of her own toys - a baby doll and a set of jacks - and searched them out. One of her brothers contributed his old baseball glove. Rachel bought '50s shoulder pads and a football helmet at an auction. Then the search started for more toys, from the Rose Bowl flea market in Pasadena to antiques stores in Arkansas and Texas, across the Atlantic Ocean to Germany and Austria.

``All these are from jillions of antiques stores,'' she said, looking over rare aluminum cookware and a priceless set of miniature Blue Willow china, all acquired a piece at a time. ``On our vacations, we do a lot of antiquing and looking. The fun is in the find, like any hunt. And now the chase is almost over because I don't have any more room.''

Poe's not into pop psychology, but she thinks maybe the drive to collect toys came from her own childhood.

Born in Germany to a Jewish father and a gentile mother, the Nazis put her father in a concentration camp and confiscated their property in the final year of World War II. At age 5, she, her older brother Peter and her mother became refugees, walking and pushing a tiny cart filled with the necessities of life from one town to the next as they fled the Nazis and the constant Allied bombing. When they were hungry, she remembers, they stopped along the road and dug in the fields for potatoes.

There was no room in the cart for her toys, which were left behind.

After the war was over and the U.S. Army liberated the concentration camps, her family was reunited. Because her father had a sister living in Little Rock, Ark., they sold the few possessions they owned and headed for America, settling near her father's relatives.

Poe remembers her aunt handing her the sweet-faced baby doll that is the centerpiece of her toy collection.

``That doll was the first gift I was given in this country,'' she said.

``Maybe these are the toys I never had,'' Poe said, gesturing toward her collection. ``Maybe that's what's going on here.''

Actually, what's going on in Poe's back bedroom is fun.

The room is divided into loosely organized sections - one for trains and train books; one with Mother Goose stories and alphabet blocks; one for Louisa May Alcott books; one for Golden Books and records; one for cap guns, cowboy hats and tiny spurs.

In one area stand a tea cart and wrought-iron table holding doll-size china. A kitchen corner nearby includes a wood-burning stove she lugged home from Nashville, an ironing board and tiny iron.

A school corner holds a tiny, old-fashioned desk, a spelling board with movable letters, McGuffey's readers. The sewing circle includes two child-size sewing machines and a rack of handmade doll clothes. A games area includes early bingo and Pick-up-Stix games, a tiny piano, a checkerboard, jump ropes.

In the center of the room is a multistoried Victorian doll house - a Christmas present a couple of years ago from her husband - crammed with dolls, furnishings and miniatures, ranging from watermelons to knickknacks.

A frugal collector

Poe admits to paying as much as $100 for a couple of the half-dozen christening gowns that hang on one wall but says she's generally a much more frugal collector, buying books and records for a nickel or a dime when she can negotiate a good price.

``I told my kids, `You may think this is silly, but this is valuable stuff,' '' Poe said with a laugh. ``Somebody once told me you get it all, and then you start your own antiques store and sell it all. But I'm not getting rid of any of it.''

Poe took a break from toy collecting in March to travel to Lincoln, Neb., for the birth of her first grandchild, Rachel's son, Austin, born March 1.

And what if a big earthquake comes along and rattles her collection into rubble?

That's OK, Poe said philosophically.

``I'll just go out and find it again.''

CAPTION(S):

5 Photos

Photo: (1--Cover--Color) The Joy of Toys

(2--Color) ``It's such fun. I was a kid in the '50s, so I remember all these things,'' Monika Poe says of her roomful of toys.

(3--Color) Monika Poe's collection started with one of her daughters' old doll houses, a baby doll and a set of jacks. Then she began searching in flea markets and antiques stores for more toys.

(4--Color) ``Maybe these are the toys I never had. Maybe that's what's going on here,'' says Monika Poe, sitting next to a multistoried Victorian doll house, surrounded by a tea table and music area.

(5) Monika Poe began toy collecting to keep her husband's books from taking over their home.

David Sprague/Daily News