bicentennial christmas

A stone drunk Santa

slow jams through our home,

his long white beard

reduced to patchy stubble,

rosy cheeks

gone yellow & hollow,

chubby physique

now stick figure thin.

Dad's lifelong passion for oblivion

once curtailed at Christmas

in deference to us kids

could no longer be,

such balance now beyond his grasp,

chased away by the ghosts of cirrhosis

gnawing at his liver.

This last Deck The Halls,

sipping Cream of Kentucky

libations through a straw,

when even prayers to the porcelain

or the rug or the sink

are unable in the end to stave off the slab

and a date with a toe tag

come the swelter of August.

goodwill sunflowers (van gogh on the cheap)

the pale green plaster walls crack

to a nicotine ceiling sadly

coughing up our acrid interior

hazy through their shroud of putrid.

--

a thrift store van gogh muses

from his living room perch on high,

they lie catty corner to one another

in fading upholstered coffins

numb to vincent's goodwill sunflowers.

--

sick, smokes, and delirium

and never ending bargain basement booze

flow by the hand-me-down television

tuned to unwatched watergate hearings

whose treachery can't be bothered

in this netherworld of ours.

Translucent Chains

A child's eye view

of life's possibilities

is light beyond boundaries,

a vision bright as to blind

an adult's perspective

long relegated to the shadows.

---

Slowly the light dims,

the vibrant colors growing flat,

the edges sanding smooth.

---

Countless innocuous admonitions

handed down through generations

form an unseen family heirloom

of dysfunction we all carry inside.

---

Growing.

Choking.

---

Sewing a web

around your dreams

in translucent chains

hiding hideous across

the expanse of your life.

---

Ah, young childhood -

the unfettered joy

of a hot water heater

cardboard box "fort"

or ratty paper kite,

happiness that trumps

the best grown up high

you'll ever have.

---

But it's a drug in itself,

the flame we all chase

our whole adult lives,

whether through workaholism,

or alcoholism,

or religion,

or sex.

---

It's the gift that keeps on giving,

as old as history bestowing

the first vestiges of neuroses upon us

through predators/famine/drought, whatever.

---

Our futile race to taste

the primal pleasure again

unwittingly extinguishes

that very fire in our children,

our own ember doused

from our parents' drab rendition

of this same sad song.

plumbing supply chain blues

My father danced

from the gallows of life,

a Don Draper swinger

gone to advertising seed.

Should you find yourself in need

of plumbing supplies

or second hand cirrosis

and can wait out a Strand Hotel

bender or two,

come on down to North Everett cira 1969

and darken our door -

my daddy-o, he can oblige;

this hep cat pappy,

with his dad gone mad skills.

Sweet sounds of sickness

and Aqua Velva whiskey fragrance,

deep thrusts of indigestion

and tortured circumspect;

the fury weighed heavy

on this slightly animated corpse

but he'd be glad to help you out

for just a taste

of formaldehyde distilled.

a blinding brace (with squirrels)

My father was but a dark shadow

passing down the hall,

a perpetual winter

onto himself.

My mother was but a blinding brace

of robes and smoke,

a withering wind

blown back hard.

I'm but the seed of misplaced rage

trapped in a past

caught on a half torn tape

spinning in my head,

a nightmare on rewind

I can't bear to eject.

Through it all, the squirrels in my yard

find the pickings pretty slim,

the trees stripped bare,

crying quietly into March

and neither much concerned

about poor, poor pitiful me.

The Puget Sound of Wayward Wasting

I walk down

hallways

of smoke and stucco,



my kicks scuffing

frayed braids

of thrift store bounty.

I float past

the ringing

of party lines calling,

through kitchens

caught avocado

and dining rooms

born singing silent.


I echo down

basements

through backyards to alleys,

then trip on

corner curbs

to vacant lots

even the plum trees scorn.


A gray splash

of rain drops,

melting my remembrance

toward the Puget Sound

of wayward wasting

here

but no less wasting away.

Pub crawl in Oz down the Yellow Brick Road

Dad was scarecrow stubble,

all jaundiced meandering mumbles.

He didn't look much at people

those last few years,

staring off into space

at scabbed tidbits

of pleasant small talk crippled,

slack jawed all wrong.

Watergate remembrances

of Colgate on the leaking sink

and Terry Jacks on the transistor

drowning out Mom and Dad in a fester

of afternoon numbing,

drunk and drained of the blister

that was morning father shaking

on the living room couch,

dry heaving over Barbara Walters

or sometimes J.P. Patches

but never Captain Kangaroo.

Pops, with his steaming wake up cup

of hair o' the dog that ate him whole,

barking up the pieces

of our fractured family photo album,

burying the remnants

of our torn and frayed lives.

Cookies and Damnation at Grandma's

Grandma was determined to save my soul from eternal damnation, a fate she'd already resigned to my parents. I'd have a wonderful time visiting on the weekends as a child, with her Norwegian cookies and her home's quiet nature, free of the smoke and drama permeating my own homestead at the time.  Wonderful that is, except when she'd tuck me into the guest bedroom and tell me a bedtime story.  It was too often a tale of demons and brimstone, of pitchforks and blood curdling screams that go on forever.  Satan ruled over everyone here and my folks were pinned to the coals for infinity with Lucifer's forked toes firmly ensnared 'round their necks.  My primal lizard brain soaked this shit in like a sponge and try as I did over the years with booze and coke - Beelzebub knows I underwent this method of treatment with gusto - and of late with psychiatry, I haven't been able to ring it back out.

Now this particular piece of dysfunction is minuscule when compared to the heaping helping of shit ol' Mom and Dad ladled into my psyche.  And unlike some of the things the folks visited upon me, Grandma's tales from the crypt were told with the best intentions.  You see, she had retreated deep into fundamentalist Christianity toward the end of her life after having lost her husband and son in the space of a few years time.  Grandma was suddenly alone save for an aloof daughter (my Mom) and went looking for any raft she thought might save her from drowning in this strange sea that was America.  Oh sure, she had other relatives around - a sister even - but it wasn't the same.

Grandma never felt comfortable here in the US, out of place and phase with a culture both too diverse and too fast for her, despite having lived in the relatively slow-paced, white-bread world that was and is Everett, Washington since arriving on these shores from her native Norway in 1929 with her husband and son in tow and pregnant with my mother.  She was woman not yet 30 when she first gazed upon this land and yet already well set in her ways.  She'd always been a "traditional" Norwegian, meaning a staunch and very conservative Lutheran.  She'd been brought up on a farm and didn't comprehend or approve of the pop-obsessed culture that dominated this country and mesmerized her children, particularly her daughter.  Her fun-loving husband was, in his way, fascinated with this culture as well so there was no commiserating with him on the matter.  She'd spoiled my mother as a child to the point that there was no hope of reaching out to her and receiving actual understanding or emotional support when she found herself a widowed sixty-something at the dawn of the 1960s.  She then lost her son to a heart attack in 1965 and was "on her own" in a very real way.

Grandma eventually married again, a neighbor, more out of loneliness than anything else.  But she gave her all in those last years - her heart and, yes, her soul - to the Jehovah's Witnesses and with it accumulated the Armageddon-laden baggage that such a belief packs.  Thus came the images of my roasting parents and the possibility that my sister and I might join them on the rotisserie should I not stand straight and fly right.  As such, whenever somebody waves a Watchtower on my stoop, I never fail to answer such a greeting with a hearty "Hail Satan!" before slamming the door shut in their beaming faces.  Well, I don't because I'm a wimp.  In fact, I often pretend to listen to their rantings before begging off after some imagined task they're keeping me from.  But I'm thinking it the whole while!

My time with Grandma was brief - she died of bone cancer when I was not yet 9 - and as I mentioned, almost completely positive save for this one thing.  Still, even as a fervent non-believer in any accepted theism - I've been thus since I was old enough to form an opinion on such matters - it's there, festering.  Nightmares of demons and terror.  I can't even watch movies like The Exorcist or The Omen lest I cower in fear for the next several weeks afterward.

I believe that whatever the great truth about reality, the universe, the multiverse, etc., that it's something far beyond our current capacity to understand and the odds that any group of people have guessed it right is stupendously small, especially when almost all of them believe it relates somehow to kings and angels and devils, good, evil, punishment and rewards, and all the things that seem very specific to a time and place long ago on our little old planet.  But that's just me.

Sleep tight and don't let the bedbugs bite.

The Dyed In the Dermis Statue of Inky Naked Liberty

My father always had a lady on his arm and she was unfailingly naked. No, he was not a galavanting playboy or strip club devotee; rather, this was a tattoo that ran down his inner arm from elbow to wrist. It was one of the more visible, persistent reminders of the innumerable mistakes Dad had made while in the throes of alcoholic bliss. It was perhaps the single biggest source of embarrassment for the old man, who took to wearing long sleeve shirts at all times, even in the midst of a particularly noxious mid-August swelter. I'm guessing it was just too large to consider removal, at least with the means available back in the fifties and sixties when he might have been in the position to weigh such an option.

I never thought much of The Lady, and frankly don't even remember the details all that clearly. I think it adorned his right arm but maybe he had one on each; my addled flashbacks have been edited for sanity's sake and these bits must have been left on the cutting room floor. I do vaguely recall asking him about it as a toddler but the only really clear memories I've retained relative to this matter are the incessant threats my parents made as to just what they'd do to me if I mentioned "her" in front of others. The folks lived in terror of outsiders discovering dents in what they viewed as a lovingly crafted model of Leave-It-To-Beaverism. The truth is that dents were the least of this model's concerns when all that remained were gaping holes by the time the late 1960s rolled around, the ghosts of June, Ward, Wally and the Beaver flying off into the night in horror at being associated with our unique spin of familial dysfunction.

I think The Lady is the primary reason I never desired a tattoo of any sort and have never understood the appeal of body art in others, whether it be ink or piercings or like forms of self mutilation. In fact, I don't see the difference between a person with piercings or tattoos and the ragged razor scars of a cutter. Sure, there's an obvious difference in intent and the former might be more aesthetically pleasing than the latter; however, the psychology of intent can be many layered and not at all obvious to the conscious mind while aesthetics are, by definition, subjective.

A news recap this morning showing a group of Independence Day weekend revelers included a dude with what looked to be a very familiar tat running down the length of his Flexor digitorum and the hazy memories of Dad's ink-drawn Elke just sort of washed over me like a fog.

The 4th of July is often the time when my childhood remembrances come to the fore: it was my father's favorite holiday after Christmas and it is my mother's birthday. She'll be 82 tomorrow. When Mom was celebrating her 41st birthday, my cousin Jennie (my Mom's niece) gave birth to her daughter, Lisa (who, if my highly advanced math skills have calculated accurately, will herself be 41 tomorrow). Dad loved to buy and light off fireworks on our country's birthday and we did so each year until my Mom had her stroke in June of '72 and Dad took his final plunge into the bottle shortly thereafter, never to return again until his body bobbed to the surface for a toe-tagged gurney ride to the morgue a little over 5 years later. But prior to this slide into oblivion, I had a giddy anticipation of each Independence Day that was only bested by Santa's annual sleigh ride.

Where I grew up, "Safe & Sane" fireworks stands started popping up in June all over the town and we'd peruse the season's "new" offerings with excitement. Really, there wasn't much new year to year (sparklers and snakes intermixed with various pinwheels, rockets, and fiery cannons). No firecrackers or bottle rockets or M80s and the like. They were certainly available on the sly but Dad mostly stuck with the legal stuff. After the fireworks were expended and we were done running across the lawn with fists full of sparklers, finished watching the "snakes" melt into the sidewalk where'd they leave a stain lasting the rest of the summer, sick of going 'ooh' and 'ahh' at the pinwheels and sparkle rockets as Dad ignites their glory; after all that, we'd go to bed and wake up again into the usual drama that defined our lives outside of the spell of the 4th and Christmas (and, perhaps, for a few hours on Halloween). Thanksgiving sometimes dampened our dysfunction, but just as often accelerated it (sort of like a gasoline-based fire extinguisher, if their were such a beast).

The Lady on the Arm and 4th of July seem inexorably intwined, even if the random news clip hadn't jousted the Freudian gnome living on the European continent of my subconscious to change the reel of my yesterday-dreams to Scenes of Dad's Ink-stained Other Woman. I guess it's because pop did wear short sleeves while orchestrating the fireworks, likely because the fear of polyester melting into his skin outweighed that of the neighbors eyeballing his epidermis artwork.

In the end, when Dad was cremated, The Lady on the Arm went the way of the fireworks that freed her for an annual night unveiled. I guess it was her destiny.

Ooh, Ahh.

A Moment Saturday in the Summer of '70

Mom is gardening

in the summer sun out back,

smoking and probing

at what might one day be lettuce, parsley.




Inside, Dad's head bleeds sweat

through the couch cushions,

sweet stained remnants

of endless bourbon daydreams.




I am manning a lemonade stand

in the yard out front,

earning some coin

from kindhearted strangers,

though I'm the one drinking the Kool-Aid.



Sis is away with friends

trying to blot out homestead time bombs,

a normal teenage girl

trapped in the body of familial dysfunction,

trapped in the bailiwick of parental decay.


We are all in our own place,

frozen in a fevered fear of fate

not yet written but already carved in stone.

Memorial Sap

Memorial tree sap pastes my car

until the garden hose and chamois sponge it clean.

If only memories could be vanquished

with a turn of the spicket, a touch of elbow grease.

Father bleeds into my mind's eye,

all indigo camel, jaundiced bottom shelf;

Mother's wheels grinding behind him,

all stink-eye pasty, acid tongued whiplash.

People say I have her nose and self pity;

I have his eyes and liver.

The spitting image, but it matters little.

Dissolving ghostly bygones

into the present tense,

I breath a sigh of relief half restrained

and go about my day,

these remembrances pasted still to my tomorrows.

The Ol' Neighborhood (Plum Crazy)

Summer, 1970.

Violent trees of violet plums

stand guard over our homes,

carpet bombing bitter fruit

'tween the sidewalk and street of my childhood hallucinations.

I climb the limbs of our abode's digestive sentry

and survey the neighborhood's blossoming decay:

Look, there's a pickled Arlene Warfield three doors down

making quiet sick into her flower bed with grace.

Look, here's Father clumsy fumbling toward the curb

'neath my purple camouflaged catbird seat

before mounting his trusty Mercury Comet,

the sonic blast of mufferless combustion

signifying another cattle drive underway

'cross suburban prairies to liquor store ecstasy.

Dad, the shakiest gun in the (North) West.

Dad, slow drawing double barreled bourbon.

Dad, outmatched by six shooter cirrhosis.

---

I pick off a plum and suck out the pulp,

amusing myself with malignant metaphors

drifting nowhere and serving scant purpose

until nature absconds me to the ground,

rushing my ass toward the family confessional

that is our only and blessed toilet.

I learned, that day, two stark truisms

which have never wavered through time and tribulation:

human beings can be quite dead while busy living

and plums are simply prunes in hydrating disguise.

Radio Hour

My parents were

performance artists,

acting out a menagerie

of dysfunction

some called their lives.

Mom was Norma Desmond

without the showbiz pedigree.

Or a kind of Martha

Virginia Woolf fraidy cat

fortified juicing bookworm.

Dad was Don Birnam

without the suit

and writer repartee.

Or maybe he was Willy Loman

but with only the shaking

and his sick left to sell.

I had a front row seat

to shows played always,

the Sanislavski method

taken to extreme.

When my eyes tired

of this gray grotesque,

I'd listen to their broadcast

through my room heating duct.


I then languished in repose

from my poster plastered cell,

a coffee-stained typewriter

pecking dreams out of my nightmares.

My childhood pet beside me

growing old, confused, and heavy;

bestowing unconditional love

beset by uncompromising fleas.

My eight track

stereo punk soundtrack

cracking snide on the death dance below me,

harmonizing with the rain on the roof.


Finally I collapsed on my bed, out of life

and chanced to glance over at Joe Strummer

screaming from the wall and through the speaker wire,

never growing up

yet both old before we aged.

Easy Joy

As a child,

there was such effortless joy:

riding an imaginary horse

with a banana seat saddle

and streamers for ears,

a hot water heater box

transformed into a fort,

the arrival of a traveling 

carnival come to town.

...

Now the daylight fades 

into diamond dust

and I take a breath

then turn away, unmoved.

----

I've learned so much,

grown so old.

--

Too wise now, it seems, for easy joy.

Twilight Twixt Time

My mother fights the British and swims the English Channel

drunk on jug wine, tipping off the love seat,

nose lost in the pages of the wonder of others.

I am not impressed.

----

My father grins on sour mash piss laughing gas

slick with sweat, writhing on the sofa,

staring dull eyed darkly up at our snot green shutters.

I am not amused.

----

I'm Schwinn spokes kicking down the neighborhood alleys,

banana seat running from cadavers still breathing,

buzzed on ten-cent candy bars and two-bit paper kites,

haunted by parental ghosts gone sour.

----

The half life of these remembrances

stretch to the end of me, fraying without decay;

blurry to begin with, those polyester yesteryears

nonetheless grip

a raw nerve end at the root of my mind,

tugging some ugly bygones

kicking and screaming into the now.

-----

An ice cream truck down the block is lost in song;

another Sunday in the twilight twixt time.

bowel obstructions (and other family roadwork)

I feel the weight of the weird

and the strength of sad weaklings

as I crawl through the alleys

of childhood dreams.

----


I arise to the noises

of garbagemen retching

and I yearn to be trashed

until numb to the numbskull I've been and become.

----

Yesterday's misery

is mailed to tomorrow

as time disappoints me

once and again.

----

I'm malaise bloomed incarnate

in Kafkaesque shit storms,

drenched in digestion

of booze battered lineage.

----

I'm swamped in the ethos

of failed adolescence,

bathed in the strychnine

of putting up appearances.

----

I'm the muck that I'm stuck in,

cut on shiny shards of family

through the deep shag of sick

and the avocado bygones

of disco sad psychosis,

shot past present tenses

that haunt all my tomorrows

like an out of style spectre

cursed with everlasting shame.

The Drifting Fade

I'm blind to the brewing

of the great unwashed

though I am counted among them

in circles I avoid.

Jacked on coke,

candy and bile

and a gargantuan weakness

weathering time and tidal tears.

-----

I'm railing rancor incandescent

at myself in unseen mirrors

reflecting my mind's eye

glaring back at me unforgiven.

Cracked and caked in piss stained

crimson gold and peeling

nicotine yellowy ceiling - walls - frayed,

unwanted and half betrayed,

at the feet of plaster knick-knack figurines,

arms askew, chipped and fractured.

Ghosts of my childhood,

haunted and haunting,

clotted from waiting

for me to arrive at some kind of solace,

gargling flesh and blood with lost animation,

vomiting memories of paternal delirium.

-----

My seismic hungry

licks all the CD cases clean;

my perpetual panic

tears apart the couch for crumbs;

my inner chickenshit

grips the bedsheets slick with sweat

soaked sweet

from the gin and juice

of a thousand drinks gone by.

-----

Summer some day is

a distant light from here,

the drifting fade.

-----

Blistering angst cuts

on a rage lost in thought,

the angry call.

-----

The mind blends to nonsense,

blessed chewing on my nerves,

the peptic turn.

-----

My wisdom's stillborn stupid

with an instinct for fear

and guile and guilt.

It's what I have and what I am:

the drifting, shivering, sanctifying fade

-----

Sway

So I sit here this evening with a migraine and a toothache and Sticky Fingers on the iPod. Not exactly an inspirational record but it seems to fit my mood to a tee tonight.

I've felt out of phase and off kilter all this week in ways I haven't since the bad old days, yet without having indulged in any of the 'better abuses through chemicals' that accounted for such a funk back then. My 'head full of snow' (thanks Moonlight Mile) is purely of my own making this time. By that, I mean it's physiological, which to me is more frightening than the pharmaholic hangovers of yore. That, by the way, is a great name for a rock and roll band: The Pharmaholic Hangovers of Yore. Ya heard it here first.

Now before you get all excited about some amazing scientific breakthrough you think I've discovered where I can tap into my psyche to get an organic high with no need to pay for drinks, score dope or whatever it is you might otherwise do, you should know I've only stumbled upon the capability to induce the hangover portion of those particular rides. It's like discovering a get-rich-quick scheme wherein you instantly become a multi-millionaire in the eyes of the IRS and have to pay taxes on this money, but you never actually get the money itself. I can't imagine anyone wanting such a gift.

How did I unlock my inner hangover?

It was really quite simple: I started nosing around where I don't belong in a Pandora's box of childhood memories I'd heretofore kept on ice in my subconscious, repressed into a stone cold coma. There they stayed lo these many years, nice and somewhat quiet (except perhaps for the ulcers that occasionally flare up, but that's only a guess and in any case, indirect). Until last year, when I decided I needed a proper hobby and said to myself, "Hey, how about trying my hand at some creative writing, some 'factional' short stories about Growing Up Birnam." Think one part That 70's Show, two parts Titus, two parts Twilight Zone, a jigger of Married with Children, a healthy splash of The Night of the Living Dead and a slice of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind on the side.

I started with one of the few memories I had of those carefree, Leave It To Beaver days: Dad throwing his hat on the rack in the front hallway, loosening his tie and calling out, "Honey, Kids - I'm home!" Yes, indeed. Then I switched off Nick at Night and tried to get my focus back to the task at hand, my memories, my childhood. No Barbara Billingsley, no Hugh Beaumont (though I'm sure Otis Campbell from Mayberry was really there on occasion). Start at the beginning, Ben, concentrate. Think of each significant event and start riffing on the keyboard. Think, remember, write.

Think, remember, write.

I've spent about 15 months of doing this now and each memory pulls another one out of the ether along with it, up and out of my pounding head, like doing shots of Tequila then fast-forwarding past intoxication to the aftermath. I think this week's sort of the culmination of this journey. The first week of the year is always tough for a number of reasons. One is because it means the holidays are over and as much as I profess to dislike this time of the year now, I loved them as a child. My dad usually managed to hold it together during the weeks leading up to Christmas and I don't have any bad memories of that time of year but then came January and business as usual with drunken bickering parents. Sort of like a segue from It's a Wonderful Life to Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? To add to this, the first week of the new year means I just got back from time spent with my sisters in AZ, which I enjoy but which inevitably means much reminiscing about that childhood. Too much whine can give you a hangover to rival too much wine, it seems.

The tone for most of this 'therapy' is too dark for posting to this blog (believe it or not, the shit I have thrown up here is the 'lighter' side of my memories). Beyond a black hole of depression, the rejects are frankly not all that entertaining at this point (certainly not all that funny). Or maybe they're the good ones and it's the shit I've been posting. Or, most likely, they're all shit but nevertheless my shit and I should throw caution to the wind and see what sticks. I need to figure out the angles before most of these screeds see the light of day, and that's if I decide it's even worth the price of admission to continue on this odyssey of self discovery redux.


Unfortunately, tonight I've got a psyche full of snow and the rabbit ears aren't working (damn digital broadcast switchover, nobody told me it applied to my head). Time to turn out the lights as I listen to the sound of strangers sending nothing to my mind ...

Krofft cruft

Thoughts of the Land of the Lost on Saturday mornings past bring back memories of all my favorite like-minded shows in the early 70s:

• H.R. PufnStuf
• Sigmund and the Sea Monsters
• The Bugaloos
• Lidsville

All were the work of Sid and Marty Krofft.  Sort of the Joel and Ethan Cohen of the 70's children's fantasy puppet genre.  God bless those guys.

In keeping with Hollywood's complete lack of originality, I see that a movie version of H.R. Pufnstuf is coming out in 2011.  More interesting is a 2007 horror-spoof of the show, H.R. Puffnsnuf.  I'll have to hunt that one down (though it might fuck with some relatively rare positive memories of childhood in disturbing ways).

Looking on IMDB, I discovered that Mama Cass Eliott played Witch Hazel in a 1970 movie version of Pufnstuf, though she wasn't on the series.





No sign of Papas Denny or John or Mama Michelle.  John would have been picture perfect as the father of the protagonist, little Jimmie.  He could have shown him how to smoke black-tar heroin from his talking flute.

Speaking of Jimmie and his flute, Jack Wild (who played our young English lad among puppets in Pufnstuf land) died of Tongue and Throat cancer just a couple of years ago.  There was no mention as to whether his magical talking flute had anything to do with his demise, though that thing was no doubt filled with all sorts of toxic pixie dust (all the reason why Witchiepoo was forever trying to get her hands on it).  I wonder if Witchiepoo or Mayor Pufnstuf made it to the funeral.  That would be a great premise for a reunion show!

Finally, for no particular reason, I'm left with memories of the show Shazam.  It was on, I believe, in prime time rather than Saturday morning and had no relation to the Kroffts (it was a live action show).  But my jumbled up memories scoop this into the Krofft pile.  I distinctly recall 7-11 coming out with Shazam Plastic Specialty cups when you got a large Slurpie.  There were several to choose from and I was determined to get them all.  I think, in fact, that I did.

Toyz in da Hood

This time of year - which seems to begin earlier every autumn - puts me into a nostalgic frame of mind. Up with the birds this morning, I was able to catch a bit of Saturday morning TV fare with the very first flush of the upcoming holiday season's toy advertisements already breaking bread. Now to be sure, my toys of yore were a bit different. We're talking toys circa late 60s/early 70s. I think the most "high tech" item I ever owned was Hasbro's Lite-brite.

Hot Wheels were my longest running passion. I remember a few Christmases with them, and they're still alive-n-kicking in the 21st Century; in fact, they are one of Mattel's premiere brands to this day. Of course today Hot Wheels is all fancy and whatnot. Back in the olden times it was just a bunch of orange plastic strips of miniature road connected together in sundry ways (loops and ramps and so), with little metal cars you dropped onto said tracks. Gravity did the rest of the work, no electricity required. It didn't take long for the day-glo tangerine strips to outlive their usefulness as race tracks, but they went on to new lives as play weapons (whips, swords, etc.). I can still feel the sting those three foot hunks of rubbery plastic exacted when used in pretend anger.

Slot-cars. They were right up there in the pantheon of toy Christmas pleasures, along with Big Wheel and my black Sears Spyder five-speed "muscle" bike. I could be getting some of my Yuletide memories jumbled with birthdays here but I remember the slot-cars distinctly on Christmas, racing them all day long under the tree.

Looking back now, my favorite time of Christmas wasn't rushing out of bed to see what the unkempt fat man and his mangy venison chauffeurs had delivered but rather putting things together afterward. My parents - and later, sister - were often up until the wee hours stitching together my Kris Kringle loot but there were several items still wrapped come morning and many required assembly once opened. This was the shit "Santa" hadn't delivered (presents from people living south of the North Pole). Dad and I often set to work on this task together and it was one of the few father/son moments I remember fondly. The other was Sunday mornings with the paper and powered donuts. After that it drops off into the abyss.

Other items of note:

• Unicycle. Not sure why my friend Brian and I learned to maneuver these things but I can tell you it's not like a bike: you do in fact "forget" how to ride as I found out not too long ago in a painful display.
  
• Remote-controlled model car
• Rock'em Sock'em Robots
• Barrel full of Monkeys
  
• Electric Football Game. Electricity vibrated the little players around the "field" - perhaps this was my highest tech toy.
• Various Play-Doh toys (mainly used to carve up said play-doh into numerous shapes and sizes). My Mom used to make homemade "play-doh" as well, of wildly varying color and quality.

Man, reading all this now I see this kid was really spoiled as a child with all manner of crap. Somehow my parents came through with the goods come Christmas and birthdays, regardless of our financial straits. If only there were but two days in the year then things would have been golden all around. Damn Gregorians.

Oh yeah - I nearly forgot perhaps my favorite toy of all: Mattel's VaRoom! ...

Varoom by Mattel
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