Toys have certainly changed since I was a boy. Everything is electronic today – and expensive.
I was thinking back about Christmas toys I have received over the years and one of the first I can remember was a Slinky. Slinkies were wire coils that – if you started them off just right – would work their way down a flight of stairs. I expect I sent my Slinky down Mama Ida’s stairs a thousand times before someone stepped on it. Bent Slinkies, I would later find out, were not of much value. They just sat there.
Another really early toy was a View Finder. This was like a set of binoculars that you looked through and could see very clear images. I think mine had amazing shots of the Grand Canyon. Another early present from Santa was a little snow man who was confined to a glass bubble, but if you shook the bubble, it snowed.
At around age 7, I got the toy every boy dreamed of– a genuine Red Ryder BB Gun. My trusty rifle spent as much time in the closet as it did in my bedroom because Daddy was quick to take it away if I made even one careless move – like pointing it at Billy Richmond. But I loved it when I could shoot it.
The next big gift came the following year – a Lionel Train Set. Mine was not very fancy, a simple oval layout with one track switch, but I spent hours on hands and knees watching the little engine tug the 3 cars and the caboose.
One of my all-time favorite toys was a Fort Apache set. This was one of my first true “imagination” toys. The set included a fence to protect the little plastic cavalry soldiers against the Indians. There were canons and rifles and bows and spears and some incredible skirmishes in my bedroom – which the cavalry guys always won.
Later, I converted the fence around the fort to a baseball fence and used the little kicker from my Tudor Electric Football Set (another all-time great gift) as the batter. I spread baseball cards in the imaginary field and played thousands of games by myself. Duke Snider, by the way, led the league in homers, RBIs and batting average. I made sure of that.
Another amazing gift came when I was in 4th grade. I had asked for an English Bike but didn’t really expect one. They were pretty pricey. But on Christmas morning, stuck in a corner behind the tree was a 3-speed Schwinn English Bike with gears and hand brakes. I was on it and out the door in a flash. It was so much lighter and easier to pedal than my old clunker. I went everywhere on that bike – highways, downtown, to school and back, everywhere. It was great, great present.
Other nice presents followed – watches, cameras, chemistry sets, board games, shotgun shells, hunting coats, and then on a snowy Christmas morning Day in 1961, I got the best Christmas present of all time. It was a black 1949 , two-door Pontiac sedan with three-speed transmission. Daddy bought it for $100 from the warden at the Women’s Federal Penitentiary in Alderson. It had 18,000 miles on it. The lady warden only drove it from one side of the prison to the other. I loved that old car. I would not have been more pleased had it been a Jaguar. XKE. My buddies liked it, too. We drove it all the way to Myrtle Beach, twice.
I have been blessed to have lots of Christmas memories – gifts given and received.
Christmas, for me, has always been a special time. It is the season to remember the Christ Child – the ultimate gift of all.