Book Preview: That Christmas Look
Christmas Day, Nineteen Sixty Something
Remember those Christmas mornings when the adults were more excited about your toys than you were? Yeah, this was one of those.
It’s about the year Santa brought me a Lionel train set… and my dad and uncle managed to turn it into a smoky, unforgettable holiday.
If you’ve ever had a Christmas that went a little sideways (or a rug that never quite recovered), I think you’ll enjoy this one.
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It is easy to love people in memory; the hard thing is to love them when they are there in front of you.
― John Updike
Electric Football, the 1960s vibrating tabletop football game—easily the most frustrating toy ever made.
If you ever played this game, or saw it being played, it is likely the sound you remember most. The most annoying buzzing sound. Electric Football made an unforgettable, high-pitched buzzing sound that was a result of the vibrating motor that sat under the metal football field.
You didn’t really play it in the interactive sense of the word; you set up the little plastic football players in formation and turned on the vibrating field. The players then moved, all by themselves!
But they never moved in the direction you wanted them to, or in any type of formation that even remotely resembled football. There was a little moving arm on the quarterback that you could pull back and throw the “football,” which was a little piece of felt.
You had no idea where the players were going, so completing a pass—by hitting the player on the head, seeing as they didn’t have hands to catch—would have been a miracle.
The electric vibrating football game was a fixture in the Sears Wish Book. I would pore over that 500+ page catalog for hours and circle gifts that I would hope to get.
Looking through the Sears Wish Book was a simple form of entertainment and one of my favorite Christmas memories: lying on the big green rug in the living room, rifling past pages of useless items like men’s and women’s clothing, shoes, watches, jewelry, tobacco pipes (!), power tools, even imported candy, just to get to the good stuff: toys!
I never once circled the electric vibrating football game. But, I did circle a train set.
And in 1965, Santa came through. He left me a Lionel electric train set. It had four or five cars: an engine, a coal car, a freight car, and a caboose, plus enough track for a four-foot-wide circle, and a transformer to power the train, with a little lever that controlled the speed.
I couldn’t wait to play with it! Dad and his older brother Arthur set it up on Ma’s new living room rug. A tragic decision in retrospect.
“Let’s make sure it works,” Dad told Arthur. That seemed reasonable. Electricity was involved and he was a responsible adult.
The train whirred to life! The whistle blew! Steam came out of the smokestack!
Ever the stickler for testing, Dad remained at the controls for a very long time. When Uncle Arthur and Dad finished their beer, Dad said something to the effect of, “Arthur, keep an eye on the train while I get us another beer”.
Uncle Arthur, also a responsible adult, took over. Dad came back with the beers and watched his brother run the train around the circular track.
Therein lies the ritual, the child inside is reawakened and reignites the Christmas spirit in the adult, long dormant. They both now had That Christmas Look, with the giddy smiles of a seven year old.
I, the actual seven year old, and only child in the room, never did get to play with that train set.
“Do you smell smoke?” said Uncle Arthur, shortly before the train slowed to a halt.
It really didn’t smell like smoke. It was more like the smell of burning tires or melting plastic. The kind of acrid smell that burns the inside of your nose.
The transformer had overheated and burned out. In fact, it had gotten so hot that the bottom of the plastic base had melted completely and stuck itself to Ma’s brand new living room rug—her beautiful dark green rug with the giant leaves embossed in the fabric. This was now a much larger problem than a dead electric train.
Dad worked frantically to free the transformer from the rug, but it was really, really stuck. I assume that the hope had been that once they were able to get the transformer off of the rug, they could somehow also remove any trace that it had been stuck there like a barnacle to a whale.
This proved to be magical thinking. The transformer would not budge. Removing it was going to require a tool of some sort. Perhaps multiple tools.
Unfortunately, the tools were in the basement. The door to the basement was in the kitchen, at the opposite end of the house. The kitchen was filled with people, most notably Ma, who no doubt would notice someone attempting to smuggle tools into the living room.
This was a bad situation for the grownups, and I, for one, was intrigued.
I remember the living room was suddenly full of people. And they weren’t there to see my new train set. There was a lot of yelling. Ma was yelling at Dad and Uncle Arthur. Aunt Pauline was also yelling at Uncle Arthur, her husband, one hand pointing a finger at him while the other cradled a Pall Mall cigarette, with the ash dangling perilously.
All this yelling drew curious onlookers into the living room from the kitchen. In this madhouse, Dad had managed to get the transformer off of the rug, but the evidence remained for many years: a big black mark embedded in Ma’s green carpet.
Dad never did replace the transformer—neither did Santa—so I was reduced to pushing the train around the track. Nowhere near as much fun.
But, hey, at least I got a story out of it.