Sinclair, and Other Toys
It was an exciting day when Dad brought the dinosaur home from the Sinclair station across the street. It was a bright green dinosaur, the kind you blow into to inflate. The gas station owner, who worked across the street from the Oxnard Hotel in Norfolk, had given it to Dad just for us!
Most of our books were borrowed from the public library, although a few were purchased at school, for a quarter, from the Scholastic Book Club. We also had a full set of Collier's Encyclopedias, which Dan read from cover to cover before he finished grade school, and a well-loved, accompanying set of Junior Classics, filled with children's poetry and fairy tales and other interesting stories.
For our birthdays, we got one gift from Mom and Dad, and one gift from each set of grandparents. Once, on my seventh or eighth birthday, I was hanging from the stair railing in front of the Oxnard, when Grandpa Vawser walked by. When I let him know that it was my birthday--he had too many grandchildren, even then, to remember all of our birth dates--he pulled out his wallet and gave me a crisp, new, two-dollar bill. As soon as we shared our good-byes, I ran inside, in great excitement, to show Mom and Dad.
I remember having, at most, two or three kids' birthday parties, where we played musical chairs, and ate confetti angel food cake and sliced, Neapolitan ice cream, the kind with equal stripes of chocolate, strawberry, and vanilla. I don't remember what kinds of presents I received for those kids' parties, but they were fairly insignificant trinkets.
We knew better than to beg for anything from the store when we went shopping, because we were there to buy some specific items, and that was all. (We were more likely to come home with "new" toys after a trip to the dump, but that's another story.) We did not ever come home from the store with new toys, but Grandpa Vawser always filled a little brown sack with penny candy for each of us whenever Mom shopped at his grocery store.
Our bedrooms were never cluttered with toys. On the farm, my toy box was kept in my bedroom, but once we moved to the hotel, the toy box was kept in the over-sized laundry room. We played Monopoly and checkers in the living room, but otherwise, our few belongings were kept out of sight in the laundry room.
The Sears catalog was a real treasure. I spent hours looking through each new catalog, circling the things I liked. The out-of-date catalogs were Dan's and mine to use however we wanted. I usually cut out "paper dolls" from the old catalogs, making whole families with complete wardrobes, who lived on my bed for the rest of the day.
That green dinosaur stayed around for a long time, as did most of our toys. When you have only a few things, you take care of what you have. But, the toy box is gone now, along with the toys that used to reside there. All that's left are the Junior Classics, sitting on my family room shelf. They have been read and re-read by all four of my children, and I suppose it won't be too long before the grandchildren read them, too.
And then, there is that Barbie doll, with all of her clothes, except for the wedding dress and veil, which were loved and used and tearfully discarded, ages ago. But I still have the rest, stowed in an old shoe box in the guest room closet.
Back then, we didn't have too much stuff. Most of our toys, Dan's and Laura's, and mine, fit into one old, metal, brown trunk that we called the toy box. We had trikes, and then bikes, but they were kept outside. My treasured Barbie doll and the clothes Mom sewed for it at the front desk when she worked in the evenings, after we were asleep, were kept in a shoe box in the bedroom I shared with Dan.
Most of our books were borrowed from the public library, although a few were purchased at school, for a quarter, from the Scholastic Book Club. We also had a full set of Collier's Encyclopedias, which Dan read from cover to cover before he finished grade school, and a well-loved, accompanying set of Junior Classics, filled with children's poetry and fairy tales and other interesting stories.
For our birthdays, we got one gift from Mom and Dad, and one gift from each set of grandparents. Once, on my seventh or eighth birthday, I was hanging from the stair railing in front of the Oxnard, when Grandpa Vawser walked by. When I let him know that it was my birthday--he had too many grandchildren, even then, to remember all of our birth dates--he pulled out his wallet and gave me a crisp, new, two-dollar bill. As soon as we shared our good-byes, I ran inside, in great excitement, to show Mom and Dad.
I remember having, at most, two or three kids' birthday parties, where we played musical chairs, and ate confetti angel food cake and sliced, Neapolitan ice cream, the kind with equal stripes of chocolate, strawberry, and vanilla. I don't remember what kinds of presents I received for those kids' parties, but they were fairly insignificant trinkets.
Christmas was an exciting time when we each received a gift from Mom and Dad, and another from Santa. Grandma and Grandpa Vawser gave one gift to each of their (eventually) twenty grandchildren. Grandma and Grandpa Wegner had only three grandchildren, so we got a few more gifts from them, and from Aunt Ellen and Uncle Gary, who had no other kids to spoil.
Our bedrooms were never cluttered with toys. On the farm, my toy box was kept in my bedroom, but once we moved to the hotel, the toy box was kept in the over-sized laundry room. We played Monopoly and checkers in the living room, but otherwise, our few belongings were kept out of sight in the laundry room.
The Sears catalog was a real treasure. I spent hours looking through each new catalog, circling the things I liked. The out-of-date catalogs were Dan's and mine to use however we wanted. I usually cut out "paper dolls" from the old catalogs, making whole families with complete wardrobes, who lived on my bed for the rest of the day.
That green dinosaur stayed around for a long time, as did most of our toys. When you have only a few things, you take care of what you have. But, the toy box is gone now, along with the toys that used to reside there. All that's left are the Junior Classics, sitting on my family room shelf. They have been read and re-read by all four of my children, and I suppose it won't be too long before the grandchildren read them, too.
And then, there is that Barbie doll, with all of her clothes, except for the wedding dress and veil, which were loved and used and tearfully discarded, ages ago. But I still have the rest, stowed in an old shoe box in the guest room closet.
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| Thanks, Mom! |
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