21st Century Hustle...

I've noticed a practice by my Ford dealer that I call the "21st Century Hustle."  I doubt very much if it's unique to my particular dealer.  It goes something like this.

I take my truck in for an oil change and ask them to rotate the tires.  I did my own oil changes until I was 70.  Then I decided I was too damned old to be crawling around under vehicles, so now I take my truck to the dealer.  All I want is an oil change and a tire rotation.

I should mention that I'm kind of a maintenance geek.  When I served in the navy, I was a ship's Chief Engineer.  I was elbow deep in the navy's preventive and corrective maintenance programs.  When I worked at Ingalls Shipbuilding in the early '70's, I was a Project Engineer for Maintenance in the Integrated Logistics Division.  When I get a vehicle, I actually read the maintenance schedule.

I marvel at how infrequently we actually have to do things to maintain modern cars.  On my 1932 Plymouth, the manufacturer recommends an oil change every 1,000 miles.  Nowadays, with synthetic lubricants, some cars go 15 or 20,000 miles between changes.  Advances in metallurgy, lubrication and technology have dramatically altered the landscape when it comes to taking care of equipment.

When I took my truck in last week for its regular service, the odometer was showing a little over 29,000 miles.  I figured the service representatives might suggest that we go ahead and perform the recommended 30,000 mile service items.  On this vehicle there are only two items recommended every 30,000 miles:

• Replace engine air filter. 
• Replace the engine-mounted and frame-mounted fuel filters. 

Sure enough, while the truck was being serviced, the service rep suggested that we go ahead and put a new air filter on the vehicle.  Oddly, no mention was made of a fuel filter.  Shortly thereafter came the 21st Century Hustle.  It went down like this:

"Mr. Mead, you know that with nearly 30,000 miles on your truck, we strongly suggest you get that transmission serviced.  We do a complete change of fluid, flush the transmission, and change the filters for about $230.00.  Then we also suggest you probably need the end-to-end fuel system servicing.  That will run you about $240.00.  You'll notice the difference, Sir."

They then provided me with a formal "Repair Estimate" sheet prepared by my "Service Advisor."  There in black and white were the "16 QT LV/SP TRANSMISSION FLUSH -- $229.95" and "COMPLETE FUEL SYSTEM TREATMENT -- $239.95."

As soon as my truck was back in my hands, I got my owners manual out of the glove box.  No matter how hard I tried, I could not find either of these descriptions in the scheduled maintenance recommendations.  There is a recommendation that at 150,000 miles, I change the automatic transmission fluid and filter.  There is no mention of a flush, although I suppose that is harmless and might actually be beneficial.  I'll probably consider it in about 6 years when I've accumulated 150,00 miles.

In the meantime, I'll simply listen at each service interval for the Hustle.

A New Breakfast Experience...

A few weeks ago, Mary Ann suggested that we try Taco Bell one evening for dinner.  There's a fairly new Taco Bell location not far from the house.  I don't think either one of us had patronized a Taco Bell in many, many years.  It sounded like an interesting adventure.  The results were surprisingly favorable -- we both enjoyed our respective meals.  We have returned for take-out several times since.

This morning, I snuck out early with Bella to go to the barber shop.  After I got my haircut (There's so much less to cut than there used to be...), I decided I'd see what a Taco Bell breakfast might be like.  I was very pleasantly surprised once more.  I ordered the sausage, egg and cheese breakfast quesadilla combination.  At $2.79, this has to be one of the better breakfast bargains available.

The quesadilla, made with a large flour tortilla, had a generous portion of scrambled eggs, sausage nuggets and grated cheese.  The flavor and consistency were excellent.  A hash brown patty was wider, longer, and thinner than my standard McDonald's fare.  It was somewhat dry and greasy and didn't compare well with the Mickey D's standard.  The coffee was exceptional, with a fresh, robust, slightly nutty flavor -- a terrific eye opener.

All in all, I would highly recommend the Bell as a breakfast alternative.  Especially if you're experiencing a cholesterol deficiency...

Satisfied Customer...

Yesterday, I installed a new Undercover LUX tonneau cover on my sorta new truck. This is a very well designed beautifully fabricated product. The finish is perfect. The shipping container was also quite well conceived. It arrived in A-1 condition. My friend Jim Lauria came over to help me install it. The instructions were crystal clear. We had it installed in less than an hour. I couldn't be more pleased. This is a wonderful product, made in the USA.

When We Heated Our Homes with Coal...

Some of our radiators
were quite ornate

I don't suppose many people nowadays are familiar with the concept of heating our homes with coal.  But when I was born, in 1940, almost all homes in cities in the North were heated using coal as a fuel.  My family converted from coal to oil heat in the late 1940's, but I have a fairly detailed recollection of how the system of heating with coal worked.  I'd like to share what I remember.

In most homes where I grew up, in upstate New York, each room had one or more cast iron radiators.  These were usually located on the floor in front of windows.  Steam or hot water flowed through pipes that came up from the floor and fed the radiator to heat it,  A second pipe on the opposite side of the radiator carried the return water or condensate back down to the furnace, located in a basement below the ground floor.  Growing up, I didn't know of any houses that didn't have basements.

A coal-fired water heating boiler with stoker to supply fuel

A hot water boiler of the type
we had in our basement

Our house used hot water for heating, and there was a fairly large boiler in our basement that looked almost identical to the picture here.  Every year, my father would have it inspected and sometimes they had to repair either the internal brick work of the firebox or the outside insulation of asbestos and some kind of cement.  It was an annual ritual to clean and service the furnace.

Alongside the boiler was a metal tubular housing that extended about 6 feet to a metal bin.  This tube contained a motor-driven corkscrew device that transported lumps of coal about the size of walnuts from the bin into a cast iron grate that formed the "table" on which the coal burned.  The ash formed by the burning coal simply fell through the slots in this grate to collect in an ash container.  We always burned anthracite coal, which was more expensive than the more common bituminous coal.  The anthracite burned cleaner with less smell and formed very little ash compared with other coals.

A coal door

On one side of our large basement was the "coal bin."  This was a room about 10 feet by 12 feet into which coal was delivered from a truck outside of the house.  Some houses had a cast iron coal door in their basement walls through which a metal coal chute was inserted.  Our coal bin had a window in the basement wall that swung up on a hinge and hooked in place when coal was being delivered.

The coal trucks that I remember were low bed stake trucks.  The beds were filled with pre-measured canvas bags of coal, each weighing 40 or 50 pounds and having two heavy canvas loop handles.  The coal truck would pull up and park in the driveway alongside our home fairly close to the coal bin's hinged window.  One of the deliverymen would go into our basement to open the window and check the pile of coal still in place.  Then they would place a shiny steel trough that extended from the side of the truck through that open window.  Once it was in place, the team of two men would alternate dumping those heavy bags of coal into the  chute.  It was a noisy operation as the coal slid and rolled down the metal chute into the basement.  After five or ten minutes, the delivery was complete.  I recall that we got deliveries every three or four weeks.

We purchased coal by the ton.  Today, a ton of Pennsylvania bituminous coal will set you back a little over $50.00.  Anthracite will run close to $100.00 per ton.  My dad thought the world was coming to an end when anthracite broke through the $10.00/ton mark in 1946 or '47.  Today, comparing coal with fuel oil, coal is about half the cost per BTU of heat.  But that doesn't tell the whole story.  Let me fill in some details.

Once the coal was delivered to our basement, it was still a good 30-40 feet away from the stoker that fed the furnace..  On cold winter days, my father would have to go to the basement, shovel coal into a wheelbarrow, wheel it into the furnace room, and shovel that coal into the bin that supplied the stoker.  And he usually did this twice a day, morning and evening, and most of the time he did all this in a white, starched shirt.

Then about once a week, the homeowner had to shovel the ash from the bottom of the furnace and haul it outside to be collected by the city.  That was a particularly messy job because it created such a cloud of dust.  In fact, burning coal to heat one's home is a pretty messy proposition.  My mother complained all winter about how often she had to dust the furniture.

I remember the day they installed our oil burner.  It was a big deal.  Kalteux Brothers had a crew at our house at 7:00 AM on one warm spring day.  They emptied out the small pile of coal that was left in the coal bin and swept and mopped the concrete floor.  Then they began dismantling and removing the stoker mechanism that fed the boiler.  Soon, they were pouring a small concrete pad where a shiny new oil burner would be mounted in front of the firebox.  

They lugged a 275-gallon fuel tank down the external access stairs to the basement and firmly mounted it where only a few hours before had been a pile of coal.  Then they ran some copper supply line up from the fuel tank, across the unfinished ceiling of our basement, and down the side of a post they had installed next to the oil burner.  This was a simple affair that sprayed a jet of heating oil into a turbulent flow of forced air.  It had an electric igniter and was equipped with safety interlocks to shut off the flow of oil if for some reason the flame went out.

The whole installation was done in a day.  We were summoned to witness this new furnace in action.  There was a satisfying "click" when the foreman threw a switch.  A motor in the metal housing began to whir, a blower fan came on, and there was the faint "whoosh" of a flame being ignited inside the furnace.  No shovel, no wheelbarrow, no broom, no dust, no daily trips to the basement for my father.  We had entered a new era, never to look back.

Even More Genealogical Ramblings...

A home in Coxsackie, New York, built in 1860.  This is probably
Similar to my ancestors' home in this town

Before my Aunt Ethel (my father's sister) passed away, I tried to pick her brain for genealogical information.  She was sort of a self-appointed keeper of the Mead family history, especially because she had traced our lineage back to my fourth great-grandfather, David Mead (1762-1836), a soldier of the revolution.  She had put forth a lot of effort to qualify for membership in the Daughters of the American Revolution, in which she remained active for many years.

By the time I was interested in the family history, Aunt Ethel was well into her dotage and some of what she passed to me was so romantic or serendipitous that it seemed highly unlikely.  Nonetheless, I wrote it all down, hoping that in time I would be able to segregate fact from fiction.

One such seemingly far-fetched tale was that I had an ancestor who had been the captain of a whaling vessel.  Not only that, he had married a girl who died quite young and subsequently had married her twin sister.  Quite a yarn, but I had trouble believing it.  Until today it remained nothing more than a family fantasy.

This morning I was working on the genealogy and trying to fill in some details on my great grandfather, Richard Henry Mead.  I knew that he had been born in 1837 in Greene County, New York.  My notes informed me that he had married a woman, Margaret Elizabeth Mosher, around 1863.  This would have made him about 26 at the time of his wedding.  I decided to use census records to pinpoint his whereabouts every five or ten years (The federal census is conducted on the 10-year cycle 1850-1860-1870, etc, whereas the New York State census was conducted in 1865-1875-1885 etc,).

The Roscoe II was almost identical in design and displacement
to the Charles W. Morgan, shown here at Mystic Seaport, CT

In the course of my searching, I discovered a whaling ship crew roster with a "Richard Henry Mead" as a crew member.  This was part of a digital database housed at the New Bedford Whaling Museum in Massachusetts.  The record lists his full name and his home town of Coxsackie, New York, his age (17).  This was certainly my Richard Henry Mead!  The listing includes the fact that he is a blacksmith.  He left New Bedford in 1853 aboard a whaling bark, the Roscoe II.  A little further research revealed that the Roscoe II, displacing a little over 300 tons, made voyages in 1842, 1846, 1849, 1853, and 1856.  She carried a crew of 24 men.  These whalers made long voyages, typically 2-3 years, so this was quite a commitment for a young man.

On this 1853 departure, the Master was a gentleman named Asa R. Gifford, whose age is not given.  I located Asa Gifford's genealogical information on Ancestry.com and determined that he was 40 years old in 1853 when young Richard Mead embarked on his seagoing adventure.  I did discover an article dated July 2, 1869, in the Martha's Vinyard Gazette, published in Edgartown, stating, "Capt. Asa R. Gifford, of this town has built a fine grocery store just opposite the Picture Gallery of Shute & Sun. He has not yet occupied it but will soon have a choice assortment of Camp Meeting articles."  This is very likely the same individual.

The crew of the Roscoe II on its 1853 voyage ranges in age from 17 (Richard Mead) to 36 (Weston Briggs, the First Mate).  This was a young man's game.  In addition to a 1st, 2nd, and 3rd Mate, ratings included Greenhand, Seaman, Boatsteerer, Cook, Carpenter, and Blacksmith (my ancestor).  The crew came from all over Massachusetts, Vermont, Maine, Connecticut, and New York.  On these 2-3-year voyages, the crews must have gotten to know each other most intimately.  They must have become the closest of friends or the most bitter enemies after being cooped up on a small sailing vessel for months at a time.  Having learned this information, I concluded that Aunt Ethel had been partly right.  My direct ancestor had been aboard a whaling ship, but he was the ship's blacksmith rather than its Master.

Coxsackie in the 1870s

Next, I turned my attention to the legend of marrying a twin sister -- almost too far-fetched to be believable.  I began examining census data surrounding Richard Henry Mead for every five years beginning in 1850, when he's a 13-year old living with his parents.  In 1863, when he registers for the Civil War draft, he's still single and living in Coxsackie.  Soon thereafter, he marries Margaret Elizabeth Mosher and they begin a family.  In the 1865 State Census, we find Richard and his wife and a 6-month old baby, Rachel, living with her parents, Robert and Rachel Mosher.  Richard's occupation is shown as "butcher."

In 1870, the Meads continue to live in the Mosher household, but now they have a second child, William (8 months old) who is to become my grandfather.  Another daughter, Edith, is born in 1872.  Then tragedy strikes.  Richard's wife Margaret Elizabeth Mosher dies on 1 November, 1873, at the age of 29 years, 2 months, 28 days, according to her tombstone.  I have been unable to find her death record, but I would speculate that either influenza or smallpox or some other infectious disease took her life.

1875 Census entries show that the widower Richard and the three children,
Rachael (age 11), William M. (age 5) and Edith (age 3), are all living with
Grandfather Robert, Grandmother Rachael, and Sister-in-Law Mary Ann.

In 1875, Richard is still living with his in-laws.  But we note that his sister-in-law, Mary Ann Mosher, age 25, is also part of the household.  And then the story unfolds.  By the 1880 census, Richard and Mary Ann have gotten married and she is expecting.  They are soon blessed with a son, John Bogardus Mead, born 4 August, 1880.  So the myth about Richard marrying a twin sister was mistaken, but he did marry his first wife's younger sister.  And that's the rest of the story!

More Genealogical Stuff...

The Wyckoff House, Brooklyn, NY, 1934

As I have been digging deeper (delving further back in time), I'm learning that my Mead side of the family is a lot more Dutch than I had ever realized.  Names like Hallenbeck, Pruyn, Reynersche, Spoor, Van Oblinus, Van Patten, Van Schouwen, Van Woggelum, and Vetter are just part of the evidence.  The quest is fascinating.  One branch of my tree had the surname Williams.  I assumed they were of English origin.  It turns out they were all Dutch, having anglicized the name Willems early in the nineteenth century.  Today, I ran across a home that was built by an ancestor of mixed Swedish and Dutch origins named Hendrick Pieterse Claesen Wyckoff.  He was born in 1625 Boda on the Swedish island of Oland.  After migrating to America, he eventually settled in Brooklyn (Remember, Brooklyn was originally Breuckelen, a Dutch settlement.) and built a house on Canarsie Lane.

During the great depression, the U.S. Government had a program, the Historic American Buildings Survey, that documented historical buildings.  In 1934, one of those buildings was the "Peter Wyckoff House" built by my ancestor (9th Great-uncle).  I've included some of the images and drawings done during that effort.  Quite frankly, the artistry of the draftsmen is almost as fascinating as the subjects they were trying to document.

Wyckoff House in 1934

The attention to detail in these renderings is magnificent!

I initially thought that the Wyckoff House had been torn down at some point to make way for progress.  I have learned however, that I was mistaken.  A Website,
https://wyckoffmuseum.org/,  informs me that "The Wyckoff House Museum preserves, interprets, and operates New York City’s oldest building and the surrounding one-and-a-half acres of park. Through innovative educational and farm-based programs we build cultural and agricultural connections within our community, emphasizing immigration, family, food, and community through history."

Wyckoff House today

The site also informed me of details that I likely would never have known about my 9th Great-uncle: "In April of 1637, a young man named Pieter Claesen arrived in what was then the Dutch-controlled colony of New Netherland. Like most of New Netherland’s immigrants, Pieter’s native language and culture were not Dutch. Pieter grew up in Norden, an area in what is now Germany, where the population spoke Frisian. Dialects of this language can still be heard in coastal areas of Denmark, northwestern Germany and the northeastern Netherlands. Pieter’s parentage and his impetus for immigration remain unknown. We do know, however, that upon his arrival Pieter was contracted as an indentured farm hand for a fellow Frisian tenant farmer named Symon Walichsz, on a vast estate, or patroonship, called Rensselaerswyck, situated near present-day Albany.

Rennsselaerswyck, which consisted of approximately one million acres, had been granted by the Dutch government to the wealthy van Rensselaer family of Amsterdam. After a period of six years, Pieter’s contract of servitude expired and he became a tenant farmer himself. He soon married a Dutch-born young woman, Grietje van Nes, and they began the family that would eventually number 11 children."

About the house, I'm informed, "In 1650, upriver farmers started to move south toward New Amsterdam, the seat of government, to purchase land that had been recently made available for purchase by independent farmers by the colonial government, the Dutch West India Company. By 1652, Pieter and Grietje had acquired a farm in the newly established community of Nieuw Amersfoort, in what would eventually comprise the city, and later the borough, of Brooklyn. The house they occupied was a simple one room structure with a packed earth floor and unglazed windows, with doors at both ends and a large jambless (or open) hearth.  Miraculously, it still stands today.

Over the centuries, the house has been reconfigured, expanded, and modernized to eventually encompass 6 rooms with three fireplaces, a walk-up attic above, and root cellar below. The Wyckoff family occupied the site for eight successive generations, until 1901 when the land and house were sold to developers.

After more than a half century of disrepair and a devastating fire, the house was restored in 1982 and opened to the public as a museum."

In 1967, the house was placed on the National Register of Historic Places, providing certain protections based on its historic significance.  The narrative of the petition for that recognition tells a lot about the home: "The Wyckoff House was probably constructed in 1652. This date is determined by certain structural evidence and the first year of Wyckoff's residence of the property which is around 1652. The original house was a single room with lean-to shed on the north side and an attic above. The east end had a stone wall and chimney, the west wall had one small window and the south side had a door and casement window.

The first addition was a new kitchen on the west, with connecting doors replacing the casement window, which contained an integral lean-to shed for additional rooms on the north side. The second addition , which occurred in the second quarter of the 18th century, doubled the original structure on the east. This is supported by the fact that the original cellar, oldest attic beams, and floor partitions all extend to only three-fifths the depth of the present house. At this time the jambless Dutch fireplace was converted to the English style
with a paneled wall with cupboard and closet.

Around 1815, a third addition was added, replacing the rooms on the north with larger rooms and introducing a center hall in the main wing. A new symmetrical roof was raised overall with curved eaves and a wide overhang. Then in 1850, the rear kitchen was further extended.

The house is built on a foundation of rubble stone. The walls are of braced wooden frame construction filled with wattle and daub in the earliest part and brick in the later additions. The exterior covering is wooden shingles which were also used for the roof. Double doors with decorative leaded glass transoms date from around 1815, replacing earlier doors.
Some of the circa 1815 six-over-six sash windows still survive, with wooden paneled shutters of the same date and old, if not original hardware. The three chimneys are all largely rebuilt in the 19th century.

Interior of the Wyckoff House today

On the interior there are nine rooms on the first floor including three in the wing, and four in the attic including one in the wing. The one staircase dates from circa 1815 additions. The floor is constructed of wide pine boards and the walls are whitewashed plaster. One good wooden paneled fireplace wall remains dating about 1750. All doors were replaced in the 1815 renovation with the exception of a board door between the kitchen and the original main room. The main portion of the house is in fair condition structurally, but suffering
from years of neglect and resulting deterioration. The kitchen wing of the original part of the house is in extreme deterioration, requiring replacement and repair of the main structural members as well as walls, plaster, and almost the total section. The oldest surviving shingles are located on the southeast front of the main house. These hand-hewn cypress shakes are 42 inches long with rounded edges, and are laid with 14 inches exposed to the weather."

  

Christmas Past at 901 Union Street...

901 Union Street (Now renumbered to 847 Union Street), Schenectady, NY --
The house where I grew up

The imposing house, about which I have written before, stands on the northeast corner of the intersection of Union Street (County Road 146) and Gillespie Street in Schenectady, New York.  It was a large enough home to contain both our family (3 children, 2 parents, and my maternal grandmother) as well as my father's dental offices and, waiting room, and laboratory.  My brother and I shared a bedroom, my sister Ann had her own room on the third floor, my parents had a bedroom, and my grandmother had a bedroom.  And there were enough bathrooms to handle the needs of 6 people.

Whenever Christmas rolls around, and especially when I see the movie "A Christmas Story," I recall the many rituals and traditions that made Christmas so special in that home that I dwelled in for my first 18 years.  I'd like to share some of those recollections.

Decorating the house was a big deal.  We lived in a neighborhood dominated by doctors and dentists.  It was important to "keep up with the Jones's."  So the decorating started a little before Thanksgiving.  We wrapped the front porch columns with evergreen garlands, framed windows with lights, and had a small lighted tree on the porch to greet the patients unfortunate enough to have scheduled dental work around the holidays.

The "big" tree always occupied the same location -- in the center of the dining room bay window.  These 3 windows had window seats covered with dark crimson corduroy tufted cushions.  Under the seats, in cubbies protected with a grille of ornate spindles resided three cast iron radiators that kept those seats toasty warm.  The tree had to be kept far enough away from those heaters to prevent it from drying out too quickly.  Thus, we could walk (or crawl) around the back side of the tree to keep track of any new gift boxes that might appear in the weeks leading up to Christmas.

The circle encloses the bay widow where our tree always stood.

There was always the ritual of watching our father arrive with the tree strapped to the top of our 1940 Chevrolet, untying it and cutting the base of the trunk just so, and mounting it in its stand ever so carefully to ensure it would not lean one way or another.  Then we'd all help get it through the kitchen door and take it through the butler's pantry to the dining room, shedding needles all the way.  We kids would all help put water in the base to keep the tree alive.  And my father always dissolved aspirin in the water because he had read somewhere that it extended the life of the tree.

A 1940 Chevrolet, similar to
my father's "tree hauling  car

After Mom vacuumed up the debris, we'd all go to the attic to retrieve the several boxes of ornaments to start unwrapping them and reminiscing about their origins or arguing about who got to hang the "best" ones.  Dad would have strung the lights while we were retrieving the ornaments.  Last, of course, was the hanging of tissue-thin strips of lead tinsel (Yes, tinsel was lead before it was aluminum before it was plastic.).  We were admonished to drape the individual strands, never to toss them. 

After the tree doily was placed around the base came my favorite activity.  We set up my brother's Lionel electric train in an oval around the base of the tree.  He had received his train on his first birthday in September 1937.  My dad wanted to make sure he was raised understanding the importance of trains (notwithstanding the fact that my father had never owned an electric train when he was a child).  After all, Schenectady was the home of the main plant of the American Locomotive Company, ALCO.  By the time I was growing up, they had produced over 50,000 steam locomotives!

My brother's Lionel set was pulled by
their 1937 Torpedo locomotive

Church played a huge role in our collective lives.  This was a family of Irish Catholics (My mother's maiden name was McLaughlin.).  And we lived within a city block of St. John the Evangelist Church, a daunting edifice that dominated the city's skyline with its 220-ft. central spire, topped with a 14-foot cross.  So it's only natural that the pace of church-related activities picked up around the celebration of Christ's birth.

All three children in the Mead family attended St. John's parochial school.  We were taught by Sisters of the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary, a conservative French-Canadian order of nuns.  If you attended St. John's and were a boy, you were expected to be trained as an altar boy and to be a part of the boy's choir.  My brother Bill and I did both.  So at Christmas, our sister Ann would be part of a Christmas pageant while Bill and I were part of an endless series of choir commitments and seasonal Masses ranging from 6:00 AM daily Mass to the Solemn High Midnight Mass that was typically more than 2 hours long.  My mother and grandmother were constantly laundering and ironing our cassocks and surplices that had to be perfect for every service.

It took an army of altar boys for a solemn high Mass in the 1950s

Because we didn't get to bed before about 2:30 on Christmas morning, the opening of presents usually was around 10:00 AM once Bill and I were old enough to be involved in church obligations.  Before that time, we started hounding our parents at the crack of dawn to get up and go downstairs to see what Santa had brought.

The Irish Mail pedal toy I received
shortly after the war

My memory of very special gifts lasts 'til today.  My sister and I each received a brand new 24" Columbia bicycle in 1945 - mine was red, hers was blue.  Electric trains weren't available during World War II, but I received my own Lionel train set in 1946.  I got my own baseball glove in around 1947.  I also received a riding machine called an "Irish Mail" at about the same time.  New shoes (always from Patton & Hall shoes, where my godfather worked) seemed to be a favorite gift.  I almost always wanted something from the A.C. Gilbert catalog.  At various times, I received an Erector set (Size 8-1/2, the ferris wheel set), a chemistry set, and a microscope set.  

The A.C. Gilbert Electric Eye laboratory

In 1949, I received an electric eye set that I played with endlessly.  It was described in the Gilbert catalog that year, "Uncanny! Amazing! Thrilling!  Can you think of anything more uncanny than making a bell ring by striking a match — turning a radio off or on by the flick of a flashlight — making the rising sun operate an alarm? These are only a few of the amazing things you can do with the mysterious Gilbert Electric Eye. By simply waving your hand you can stop and start American Flyer Trains or Erector action models — turn electric lights on and off. Set contains battery box, electric light socket with bulb, RCA Photo-electric tube, RCA Amplifier tube, tube shade, and power unit with variable potentiometer. Operates on 110 volt A.C. only. Packed in blue metal cabinet with illustrated manual of stunts. $13.75. Denver and west, $14.45."  Remember when things cost more in "Denver or West"?

The Lionel diesel locomotives that I
received in 1950 by saving up $21.50

In 1950, Lionel introduced the diesel locomotive Model 2344P, a New York Central twin unit with their latest technology, Magnetraction.  I simply had to get one for Christmas but my parents said that $42.95 for a toy was absolutely out of the question.  My grandmother came to my rescue.  She told me (without my parents' knowledge, I later found out) that if I would save half the cost, she'd pay the other half. I worked for several weeks, washing and waxing cars and washing windows for every neighbor I knew, and finally saved up the $21.50 to give Nana.  I got the locomotive for Christmas.  My parents were furious with my grandmother, but they didn't make me return the locomotive.

A similar thing happened in 1951, when A.C. Gilbert had introduced their Atomic Energy Lab.  I wrote a previous blog entry about my Grandmother's largesse that Christmas.  It had to have been the biggest surprise I ever had on a Christmas morning.

I feel very blessed to have grown up when and where I did.  There was almost always snow at Christmas time.  I always felt secure in a stable (if somewhat dysfunctional) family.  We had lots of friends and relatives to engage in holiday activities.  It was, in retrospect, a pretty magic time.