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 December 2006 Back to Table of Contents Back to Archives Main Page Section: Life & Leisure Look What Santa Brought! By Theodore Rickard
The Christmas presents have been stacked in clearly separated piles. This year, Missy’s doll wardrobe will not get mixed in with Bobby’s electric train. Holidays get testy enough as it is. Between grandmother and daughter, the wardrobe for Missy’s doll has been the objective of several shopping trips — including one to a particular mall that was actually in another state — and there have been half a dozen lunches where haute couture could be discussed adequately only over quiche and just one glass of white wine. The result on Christmas morning was a tiny-sized artist’s smock, easel and miniature canvas — something by Monet, complete with tiny paint smudges on the smock. This was joined by a spandex bicycling outfit with matching crash helmet, and a really tiny polka dot bikini that left Grandpa looking the other way, vaguely relieved that there was a matching beach robe that came with it, along with a miniature surfboard. The doll also gained a career woman outfit that literally screamed Prada and came with a toy Blackberry. Grandfather, would not have been a bit surprised if it came with Lilliputian pre-programmed hedge-trade analysis, or current ticker prices from the major markets. I couldn’t picture this as a purchase by either Missy’s mother or grandmother. Traditionally, both women keep track of family finances with an eyebrow pencil on the back of the unctuous “in case you have overlooked...” notice from the mortgage company. It must have been the wine. The electric train was a much more practical purchase, although it had taken an entire Saturday for my son-in-law and me to organize it in a businesslike fashion. First there was the question of whether or not a freight train was a better choice than a passenger train. I was astonished to learn my son-in-law had never been on a passenger train, and couldn’t see why the mini-silhouettes of the passengers in the club car had any significance. But he humored me, so I agreed that the freight train should definitely include the automatic loading and unloading accessories for the coal car, along with a full carload of miniature plastic coal. We were only vaguely aware that the two-train set-up entailed a great deal more track than we’d originally visualized. How much so came to light when we started setting up the layout on Christmas morning. While his father and grandfather labored like a pair of nineteenth century empire builders, or at least their track gangs, Bobby joined six track sections, put one end on a chair seat and ran the flat car like a missile launch in the general direction of his sister. This left his father and me free to set things up to include a mainline running as far as the dining room. The train headlights swept the track ahead, roaring along the straightaway, while the whistle echoed its lonely sound — or did so until the dog began howling back. Grandmother was afraid the neighbors might object. Bobby soon learned how to work the transformer and we found the cross track piece and put it into the layout so we could have wrecks. He thought it was pretty cool that Santa had thought of that. His father and I did, too. back to top back to table of contents Current Issue | About Forever Young | Where to Find | Advertise | Our Advertisers | Community Calendar | Contest | Clubs | Contact Us | Archives | Home |
