Shopping with the Sears Catalog

Christmas was somewhat problematic in a teacher household. There were no Christmas bonuses, we lived in a a very modest home in the suburbs of San Francisco. We had our Christmas delights. Most of them were pretty modest by today's standards.  

As kids we had very few objects of desire. Our needs were met at Christmas with the Sears Roebuck catalog. We truly used it as a dream book.

We waited for it to come out with poised anticipation. Each child was able to circle ten things from its pages in hope that Santa would see it and take head. Around each circled item we would put our initals. We never got all that we had circled but a good portion of them. It taught us budgeting in a rather unique way.

I think that it also provided a way for Santa to get what we really wanted without the countless trips to the stores.

It was a different era then. There were no big box discount stores. There were no stores devoted to just "toys". Certainly no black Thursdays or Amazon.

Some gifts come to mind as stellar growing up. 

Parking Garage

One was a gas station that now in retrospect must have required some agony in assembly.  It was a sheet metal garage that had a roll up elevator that took the cars from one level to the other. There was a ramp that had a curve in it that allowed the cars to roll down to the grown level.

Electric Train

One Christmas we went to Colorado in the snow on the train. The Christmas present that year was an electric train set that had a locomotive that spewed out a little smoke... from a pellet.  Grandma and Grandpa had a parlor area that no one used,. The parlor made a perfect train station for me and I configured that electric train in as many configurations as I could think for a kid of that age. I also learned that attention to detail was the only thing that would allow the train to go.  If the train wasn't perfectly aligned on the track there was no way the train would travel.

Slot Car

One Christmas I got a slot car set up.  It was before they called them slot cars.  It needed  a piece of plywood to set it up. It also required a space for a 4x8 piece of playwood, I bugged my dad get the piece of plywood that was required for it.  The slot car track was in the form of a figure 8.  It was great fun as the cars would have to slow down to miss each other where the 8 shape intersected or expect a giant crash. Crashes was more the common mode than caution. Later, when I grew a little older we would go to the sportsman club races on the filled in land in Brisbane and watch a figure 8 races set using real race cars.  The drivers were a little more cautious at the intersection than I was with my toy set still there were crashes.  It think that the demolition derbies grew out of this legit form of racing.

Glove
One year I  lwished  for a leather softball glove. It was a big deal as it cost 3 dollars.  I circled it in the wish book and it came.  It was a thing of true delight. 

Boy Scout Tie Tack

One year my sole delight was a Boy Scout tie tack. We went to church almost every Sunday over the hill at rock a way beach.  I thought that a Boy Scout tie tack with my skinny black tie would be the end all for the Sunday outfit.  I was so happy when it was under the tree. 

My Sisters

My sisters had the usual wishes too. One year, my eldest sister got a Chatty Cathy where you could replace the rugged plastic records in her torso and she would speak in different languages when her string was pulled.  She had jaunty outfits and was a little stiff in the joints.  Doll houses with its scaled down furniture were always in vogue. 

Big Events at Christmas Time

One of our big events was to drive down on the road in front of the Marina in San Francisco and look at all of the fancy homes along the bay that had their Christmas Trees "designed" by decorators.  Appropriately lit, they represented a style that we would never attain.  It some ways we thought it was an enormous waste of money. 

We found a Santa lap to get photos each year. One of them was in Hillsdale shopping center. Dad loved to take photos of us playing around the Bennie Baufano sculptures in the central meeting area.  As I got older this Santa ritual was more of a pain than a seminal event.

As a family and sometimes an extended family we took our turn to walk through the trail that everyone took through the Podesta Baldocchi floral arrangement store at maiden lane at Grant Street and Union Square.  Mom would get to pick her favorite ornament from the trees that adorned the store.  And the smell of that many fresh trees and flowers in the winter time made the trip a wonderful experience. 

We would always get a trip to the big stores in the City.  We would love the dioramas in the windows and the gigantic tree that reached up through multiple stores in the union square department store. It had huge ornaments on it... one year it had a genuine french horn and a tricycle hanging from its branches.  Macy's and the Emporium always were there to compete for our attention. A treat from Blums or Epplers bakery was a special delight.  I still have difficulty turning down a Neapolitan.

It was a different life at Christmas than it is now with our connections enhanced and denigrated by social media, 80 satellite channels and DVDs of all the latest movies.

Challenge for today:  Pull back an old Christmas memory!

Love, Pat