Who knew processed plastic could hold so many memories? For just a glance down one of the hallways of the Sarasota Toy Museum, the light reflecting off a plexiglass case holding thousands of toys is enough to evoke a core sensory memory: one of running down the white linoleum tiles of a department store, tugging at your parent’s shirt sleeve, begging them to purchase the newest, latest action figure for you. Toys are and always have been a nearly universal presence in all children’s lives. From prehistoric dolls found at archeological sites to the plastic-wrapped action figures of today—toys have always had a place in the lives of their owners. As kids, we measure our height against them, smash them into each other, dress them up, dress them down and trade them amongst friends and although many grow out of their childhood toys, or simply replace them with golf clubs, baseball cards or other material possessions, their significance does not wane over the years. They are timestamps for different moments in our lives.

Richard Pierson knows this. That’s why in August he opened the Sarasota Toy Museum, a 6,000 square foot mecca of all things toys. The museum, which also includes Moose Head Toys and Comics, a retail shop for vintage, well, toys and comics, is home to thousands upon thousands of toys ranging from the late 1800s to today. “I curated the collection in a chronological way. When you first come in you’re going to find toys dating back to the late 1800s and early 1900s. A lot of tin toys, metal dye casts, very old dolls and that type of stuff. That was the start of the toys era,” says Pierson. “Then we move into different display cases starting in the ‘50s, which was the boom of television licensing and toys, before moving to cases filled with toys from the ‘60s, ‘70s, ‘80s and ‘90s. I also have about 800 lunchboxes, pretty much every metal lunchbox that you can think of.” Much of the museum’s collection is sourced from Gary Neil, the owner of the now-defunct Vermont Toy Museum who Pierson met while vacationing in the Green Mountains. Neil, who had amassed a toy collection over 40 years, was looking for someone to carry the torch. Pierson, who was already a comic book aficionado, had recently retired from a career in the fashion industry and wanted something to engage both himself and his family, was happy to oblige. “I started to become really invested in the idea after hanging out with Gary at the museum and seeing people’s reactions when they came in, how appreciative they were of his collection and the joy that it brought them. I began to think that this would be something really cool to have in my life going forward,” says Pierson. While it’s impossible to try and describe all that is a part of the museum’s vast collection of toys, some of the highlights include an entire section dedicated to 1960s Space Age toys (Pierson’s favorites), roughly 100 different cap guns and holsters dating back to 1880, period. G.I. Joe action figures, Hot Wheels, Barbie Dolls, 1977 Star Wars action figures and perhaps the crown jewel—a massive model railroad, replete with a full replica of Vermont’s Green Mountains and five toy train tracks. The model, which is roughly 30 feet long and 20 feet wide at its widest point, was deconstructed, shipped from Vermont and then reconstructed on site with the help of the Sarasota Bay Model Railroad Society is just as impressive as everything else in the museum. What’s more impressive, however, than just the sheer scale of the museum’s collection is what it stands for. It’s a family-run, multi-generational memory bank, meant for all to come and enjoy. SRQ

“I was a city boy who was born in Chicago and grew up in New York City,” says Bob Linde. “When I was eight or ten years old, my mom sent me to summer camp in Maine and I hated it. I didn’t like the woods. But the camp nurse took us for a hike and said, ‘Look, here are some wild blueberries. You know, we can eat those.’ Then there was a wild strawberry, and then it was a flower we could eat. For me, food was something that came as a TV dinner. I didn’t know food could literally grow wild like that.” Now an acupuncture physician and registered herbalist with a BS in Education and an MS in Oriental Medicine, Linde runs a clinic called Acupuncture & Herbal Therapies (often referred to as AcuHerbals) in St. Petersburg, FL. He is also the founder of the Traditions School of Herbal Studies which shares space with AcuHerbals. That childhood hike was the first step down a long and scenic trail that would bring Linde to this eventual destination. The next leg began when Linde returned from summer camp and made his first forays into the study of herbalism, foraging for what edible plants he could find in Manhattan and throughout New York City.

“I found that not only were some of these plants food, but they were also used for medicine,” Linde says. “I learned the very basic stuff, like this herb is good for cold and flu and this one is good for pain and infection. Beyond that, my mom was a medical writer who was essentially writing medical books for the lay public. When I was around 11 years old, she got a contract to write Dr. Robert Atkins’ second book with him and there was a shift in our household from a standard American diet of junk food to one that was more health-focused. It also changed her writing from mainstream medicine to more alternative medicine and exposed us both to those ideas. As I started to learn independently about vitamins, minerals and nutraceuticals, I related those back to the plants I was already learning about.”
When he was around 13, Linde and his family moved to an Out Island of the Bahamas, and by the age of 14 he was half-owner of a commercial fishing boat with a Bahamian man who shared wisdom about physical and spiritual medicine while they sat on the shore cracking conch together. “I didn’t understand the term shaman at the time, but now I would call him that,” Linde says. Linde went on to graduate high school with a full academic scholarship and briefly attended college as a biochemistry major with plans to move on to medical school—he soon dropped out after becoming frustrated by the amount of rote memorization. Next, Linde enlisted in the army and spent two years there, then cashed in his army college fund to buy a sailboat of dubious quality. He lived aboard the sailboat for three years, and spent part of that time living off the land in the Everglades, putting his knowledge of edible and medicinal plants to good use. Linde made it as far as Key West before his sailboat sank for good and he wound up re-enlisting in the military. He was stationed in Germany for a period which gave him the opportunity to explore a lot of European plants he’d only read about before he was deployed again to Desert Storm for six months. After another short stint in Germany, Linde finally ended up back in Florida.
Using the words “long and scenic” to describe his journey may have been a bit of an understatement it turns out. A self-described workaholic, Linde often found himself working two or three jobs at a time upon returning to civilian life, mostly to keep himself busy. In time, he began feeling so sick and run-down he could barely function. After traditional medicine offered no solutions, someone urged him to go to the local acupuncture school for treatment.
“My first experience there was horrid,” he says. “I’m scared of needles but their response when I told them was ‘you’re a big, tough army guy, you can hang.’ But I went a second time and saw a different student who took the time to explain to me that Chinese medicine had a different way of understanding the nature of disease outside of the Western medical construct. Acupuncture and herbs were part of this system that was based on something other than symptom suppression.” Acupuncture and herbal medicine helped Linde physically recover and also reawakened those dormant interests in plants and medicine. He enrolled in acupuncture school, originally intending to learn the practice as more of a hobby to use on friends and family. He also heard about the American Herbalist Guild, a professional organization for herbalists, and attended one of their conferences in the late 1990s.
“I walked in the door and here were the people whose books I had been reading and I saw that everybody there knew way more than I ever could,” Linde remembers. “They were quoting the Latin binomials, they were rattling off diseases I’d never even heard of. But what I saw was they didn’t have the clinical experience I was getting in acupuncture school. It was that weekend I decided that even though I hadn’t finished my own training, I wanted to start my own school. I wanted to make it very clinically-focused. I wanted to provide that opportunity for herbalists to get that supervised clinical attention that I think really makes the difference between somebody who’s just smart and good at memorizing and someone who works with living beings and the complexities that come with that.” When Linde isn’t teaching or treating patients, he might be found recording episodes of his Mastering Herbalism podcast or giving one of his popular guest lectures. Some of his favorite events to host are herb walks, where he takes people around to point out edible and medicinal plants growing in neighborhoods and parks. These herb walks sometimes take place in the Sarasota area, like the one Linde held last November at Ringling as part of the SunHAT Eco-Performance Fest.
“The idea of an herb walk, of course, is I hope everybody becomes a crazy wild forager and that it becomes their gateway into herbalism,” Linde admits. It wouldn’t be that unheard of. After all, once upon a time there was a young city boy who hated the woods until a single hike sent him on a long and scenic journey down an unexpected path. “I wish I could remember that nurse’s name from back when I was a kid,” Linde says. “I’d like to tell her thank you.”