Christmas Lost And Found
This is a story of a special Christmas gift lost and how I came to find it again.
We can all remember those special toys from our childhood. Faces and names may fade from our memories, but call to mind a special Christmas gift and the years melt away. Close your eyes and think back.
Suddenly it’s a Christmas morning from our youth. The Christmas Tree seems so much larger, the lights and the ornaments more magical. The Nativity is there, right where little hands carefully placed each lamb and wise man, before settling baby Jesus down in the hay.
Familiar Christmas carols are playing on the radio and the kitchen is filled with the smell of pumpkin pies, roast turkey and gingerbread. Once more perched on a well-worn kitchen chair, we press out bells, reindeer and forests of trees with the old tin cookie cutters of many a Christmas past. For some reason Mom always seemed to need our help.
Parents, grandparents, uncles, aunts and siblings are all there as we remembered them…all gathered again at the appointed time and place. Even the beloved family pet, in my case a wee Scottish Terrier, is there in our minds eye once more to tug at bows and jump on piles of wrapping paper.
And then you find the special gift. You can still see it clearly in your minds eye. Not chipped, faded, torn or broken, but fresh and new as only the bright clear eyes of a child can see a favorite toy.
Through the love and sacrifice of our parents, my brother and I were fortunate enough to have our letters to Santa answered on Christmas morning. Through the years there were many special toys.
One of my earliest toys was a metal telephone company truck, complete with linemen and poles to set up. My father remembers that after setting everything up, I would carefully take it down and put it all away again in the back of the truck. I guess any kid putting his toys away is a memory that sticks with a parent, especially since I had armies of plastic soldiers from every period of history that never seemed to make it off the living room floor.
Every boy who ever was given one, remembers his first Lionel train. Setting up the track was half the fun, then running your short-line railroad round and round the Christmas Tree. Like many a model and toy train enthusiasts, I never quite grew up and still live for the hours I can steal away to work on my never ending rail empire.
Of course, growing up in the 50’s and 60’s we had one eye on the future. You know, the far future of say 2000, when we would be living in space. There were robots like Mr. Machine with his cogs and gears to march across the living room floor. There was a flying saucer with a gyroscope you wound to make it spin and stand on end.
Let’s not forget the Cold War. My brother was partial to James Bond and the Man From U.N.C.L.E. He still has the Aston-Martin Gorgi Car from Goldfinger, the one that ejects the bad guy through the roof. One year he got the toy James Bond briefcase, with caps that exploded if you opened it the wrong way. Like many toys we didn’t keep, this one now goes for around $10,000…if you can find a kid who keeps their toys in the original box and never plays with them.
The very earliest toy I can remember from my childhood was a wooden soldier that stood nearly nine inches tall. He had a glossy red military tunic, blue trousers, crossed white webbing across the chest and a shinny tall black bonnet, the kind made out of bearskin. My wooden solder was made in Denmark, where similarly attired soldiers guard their royal palace.
It wasn’t in the toys I had saved and I often wondered what became of that proud soldier, so far from his native land. When I grew up, I would often check out antique toy booths with an eye for finding another one.
I soon discovered how hard it was to find a nearly fifty-year-old toy from Denmark in Missouri. But my hopes were raised a few years ago when I saw a book about the old Captain Kangaroo children’s show. There in the black and white still pictures was one of the Captain where you could see the toys on the shelf behind him. There stood the exact same wooden soldier. Not willing to believe that Captain Kangaroo had stolen my toy, I had renewed hope of finding one.
Then, just before Christmas last year, my wife Sue and I were going through an antique mall on Tesson Ferry. There in one of the hundreds of cases was the wooden solder I had hoped for so long to find. It had been partially repainted, but otherwise it was the same.
In the excitement of making this find all sorts of thoughts went through my mind. Perhaps, given their scarcity, this was the very same soldier I had when I was three or four. Somehow it had been lost and made its way from one owner to the next, till at last in a Christmas miracle I had found it after all these years.
I gave the soldier a prominent position among the holiday decorations in our dining room, where he was standing at attention when my parents came to visit. I was excited to be able to show my parents what I had found.
“Look, what do you think of this?” I asked.
My Father, not showing the desired level of enthusiasm I had expected, simply said, “That’s nice.”
“But it’s the wooden soldier you gave me as a kid,” I explained.
My Father looked a little puzzled and said, “That’s not your wooden solder.”
“Sure it is,” I insisted, “The paint has changed a bit, but it’s the same one.”
“No it’s not.”
“Why not?” I asked.
“Because I have your’s in a drawer at home.”
It seems I wasn’t the only one who thought that gift was special all these years. My “original” wooden soldier soon arrived as a gift from two loving parents…for a second time.
This Christmas both soldiers stand at attention beneath our Christmas Tree. They are still a long way from Denmark. That’s where you will find them…evidence of my Christmas lost and found.
