Your Gift - Army Truck or Eskimo Village?

While I will offer up a few drinks at the end, with the holidays upon us and many looking to find just the "right" gift for spouses, family members, significant others and friends, I thought I would share a few gift memories.

Black Friday and Cyber Monday have passed and, in fits of conspicuous consumption, the American public has spent money it does not have, for gifts. These gifts will likely be forgotten in the next year or two, perhaps sooner.  For those giving gift cards or cash, the gesture so appreciated when received, will almost certainly forgotten as soon converted into goods.

Looking back at over 60 Christmases it is amazing how few gifts are easily remembered, still fewer that call forth memories, and costliness is not a factor.

I have received the requisite numbers of ties, robes, slippers, and sweaters, though I remember none specifically.  Predictably, there have been cash and gift cards though I cannot remember exactly what was purchased with them.  Wait!  As I write, I  recall that one Christmas, the monetary gift from my parents went to buy a new steering wheel for the jeep I wrote of in an earlier blog.  I really wanted that steering wheel as the old one was badly cracked and worn.  Of the gifts I do recall, almost all are from my childhood.

$9.95 in 1958, $900 today

The first, best, and probably longest played with, was a trio (that's right, not just one, but three!) Structo Army trucks. Typical of the 1950's, they were heavy, olive drab painted steel.  Sporting a star on the roof, one had a battery-operated searchlight, the other a missile launcher.  I played with them years after the searchlight lens, the missile launcher broken, and the transport cover gone AWOL.  In fact, they were still in my old G.I. footlocker/toy box that Dad disposed of when I was away in college.  I can purchase the set pictured, and relive my childhood, for a mere $900.

The spiritual low in Christmas gifts received had to be about Christmas of 1959 or 1960.  This was rock bottom disappointing.  Much more so than my getting a Daisy pump BB gun when my friends all had lever actions. 

Picture a time when the ultimate Christmas reference for toys was the Sears & Roebuck catalog, Westerns reigned supreme in the movies and on television, and children actually went out of doors to play Cowboys and Indians.

I wanted a Fort Apache by Marx - an opus in brightly colored injection molded plastic. A  timbered cavalry fort with soldiers, cowboys, Indians, horses...I can still see that catalog page today.  Come Christmas morn, gifts under the tree, the smell of cocoa, what was in store---toy soldiers, model planes, Fort Apache?  No. It was Eskimo Village, a predecessor of the Arctic Explorer play set pictured above.

At that time, I was all about shoot ‘em up military and cowboy stuff.  An Eskimo Village?   Dad must have lost his mind or waited until there was nothing left to buy, or grabbed the first toy that came to hand.  He was in the army.  Why in God’s green earth would he pick Eskimo Village?  The box held igloos, sleds, dogs, walrus, polar bear, Inuits etc.  All foreign to my interests and world view - and such a disappointment.  It snowed that Christmas and I had a go at playing desultorily with the Village outside.  Later, on occasion, playing with my electric train, I would drag out the Eskimo Village and its minions.  Somehow, the Eskimo Village just did not feel right alongside my Lionel, my green Army men and those beloved Army trucks. The icons of the frozen North were soon relegated to the bottom of that old footlocker.

The last memorable gift was the Christmas of 1965 in Camp Drum, New York.  I had moved on to fishing, spending time in the woods, and wanting to hunt.  My parents gave me a shotgun. Now this was not an extravagant gift.  Not a Winchester, or even a Remington, it was a well-used Mossberg 12 gauge bolt-action shotgun with an adjustable choke.  It was about as close to the "bottom of the line" as you can get without being indecent in quality.  Never mind that.  I took a good number of rabbits with it and enjoyed it immensely.

As parents, my wife and I have managed to be spectacular failures in gift giving. We have heard more than once from our children that they never got what they wanted. Oh well.  As they say, "Life sucks, then you die."

As we mature (though many never do) gift giving and receiving becomes secondary to spending time with loved ones or, in my case, seeking a quiet corner away from loved ones.  My wife and I seldom give each other gifts anymore, preferring to get what we want, when we want it.  Perhaps that is best since there is never disappointment.  Like all things in life, this also has a downside; you also lose the chance to cultivate those memories of gifts - good, bad, or indifferent.

Today’s drinks are from Holiday Drink Book, by the Peter Pauper Press, 1951.  This book can be found, in its original box, for under $10 today.  It would make a cute stocking-stuffer for someone enjoying 1950's tchotchke's and some simple drinks.

Like those Army trucks, the Falernum Cocktail is worth trotting out repeatedly.

This basic Hot Buttered Rum recipe, just as that "plain Jane" old Mossberg, does its job. A no frills, no fuss, way to warm up on a cold winter day or night.

This last drink, a picker upper for that morning after, has to be the "Eskimo Village" of cocktails.  While I would gladly take eggnog or almost any other drink utilizing raw egg, the Nose Dive Cocktail would be far from my thoughts - and yes, I made one and quaffed it.