Christmas Stories

~Ace, Mick and me with our dog "Dusty" Christmas Morning 1969

Once again the holiday season is upon us. Each year when I drag the decorations down from the attic, it seems like I just finished putting them back up there. As they say, where does the time go?

As a kid, Christmas seemed to last a long time, probably due to fact we were off school for two glorious weeks and didn't have to go back until after New Years. I think we started thinking about Christmas as soon as Mom brought home the current year's "Sears Wish Book". We were the envy of the neighborhood kids in the Christmas catalogue department. Mom worked for Sears, so she'd bring home our copy before the ink was dry. As a back up, Dad worked for the post office, so it was safe to assume our home had one of the very first copies of that full color retail book of dreams, filled with all the latest toys and assorted Christmas trinkets that all kids highly coveted in the 1960's and 70's. What a wonderful time to be a kid!

As I look at this photo taken in our rural Rolla home on Christmas morning 1969, I recall vividly our gifts that year. Ace with his Sears and Roebuck acoustic guitar, Mick with a doctor's kit, and as you can see, a new football helmet for myself. I believe that was also the year of the Feely Meely game, Creeple People, an erector set, the farm addition of See and Say, and of course Mick's famous red cowboy hat. There were other assorted toys and trinkets to be sure, most of which were ordered by Mom from the Sears Wish Book. I still vividly recall going through that catalogue day after day and wearing out the pages between late summer and the cut off order date for most items contained inside. My brothers and I went over and over each page of that catalogue with a fine tooth comb, making sure we hadn't missed anything and fantasizing about what we might actually get for Christmas. Well, not every page: we spent most of our time in the section that contained "boys toys". That's right: there was a section for boys and a section for girls. The concept of gender neutral had yet to be invented. I'd like to see Walmart or Toy's 'R' Us try to pull that off today. 

Anyway, we'd circle the items we hoped to get and write our names next to the corresponding pictures. We knew we wouldn't get all of the stuff we asked for, but figured the more we circled the better the chance we'd have of maximizing our individual hauls. 

Mick would have still been fully on board the Santa Claus program that year, and was under the impression the Wish Book was just for generating ideas that Mom and Dad would then pass along to Santa. It must have worked, because I seem to recall little bother usually made the biggest haul between the 3 of us. Dang-it Ace: why did you have to go and spoil it for me when I was still in the first grade! You always did like to be the first to pass along shocking information (glad I don't harbor any ill feelings about that).

Where was I: oh yeah...as it relates to Christmas in the 60's, I'll keep you posted.... 

~Putting up Christmas Lights 2014