Gifts to Remember

With Black Friday just three days away, the official holiday gift-giving season is upon us. Andy Rooney said on 60 Minutes Sunday night he has received four really great presents in his lifetime—a tricycle when he was about five, a $10 bill, a big league baseball autographed by Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig, and, recently, a five-pound can of dry roasted peanuts (http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7076431n).

No doubt, I received many great gifts as a child. Some were practical—every Rosh Hashanah and Passover my Uncle Willy would come to our home for the holidays laden down with new outfits for my brother, sister and me from his dry goods store on First Avenue off 10th Street in Manhattan. I still recall a snazzy blue suit he brought when I was around 6. In those days, the middle 1950s, boys wore wide brimmed hats, as well. Dressed up in my new suit and hat, I looked like a miniature Don Draper, without a cigarette. And, I think my ears stuck out wider.

I can recall just three really memorable presents from my childhood, none related to a birthday or holiday. The first was a reward for being a good patient. I needed several baby teeth extracted. My mother took me to a specialist in downtown Brooklyn. The oral surgeon propped my mouth open with a short, hard black rubber tube before putting me to sleep. The next thing I knew, a young nurse’s face was circling round and round before my eyes as I emerged from the ether. To reward my good comportment, my mother took me into a nearby store where she bought a six inch, pink plastic school bus hanging in a plastic bag on a display tree. It was kind of a lame toy. Nothing moved on it. It was just an injection molded plastic toy. But then, my mother was never really good at buying presents. As we got older she would simply give us money and tell us to buy whatever we wanted. She was way ahead of the gift-card trend of recent years.

A little earlier, definitely not later than my fifth birthday, we traveled to Philadelphia to visit my mother’s brother. From Brooklyn, we took the ferry across to Staten Island, this being 10 years before the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge linked the two boroughs. For some unknown reason, Uncle Sol gave me a toy car. It was about 18 inches long, at least six inches wide, a grey convertible, with doors, hood and trunk that opened, rubber tires that could be taken off with a small tire iron stored in the trunk. All afternoon I played with that car on the parlor floor. I don’t ever recall seeing Uncle Sol again. There was a falling out between him and his four sisters when their mother died. I don’t know if our visit preceded or came right after my grandmother’s death. I only know Uncle Sol never again appeared in my life. We didn’t reach a rapprochement with Sol’s family (his widow, three sons and their families) for nearly 20 years, until Gilda and I married in 1973 and we invited them to our wedding. But that car stayed with me as a favorite toy for many years.

It was either the mumps or chicken pox that confined me to my parents’ bedroom when I was about seven. Mom had returned to full-time work with my father in his factory. I was left in the care of our housekeeper, Jessie. To cheer me up, she gave me an Old West stagecoach. Pulled by two brown horses (with a yellow wheel under their harness to simulate movement), the stagecoach was driven by a grizzled, rubbery man, with Andy Rooney-style bushy eyebrows and a whip in his right hand. The whole outfit was huge—the stagecoach itself had to be at least a foot in length and nine inches high. With the horses attached, the toy was easily 18 inches long. Long after the stagecoach busted up (or was thrown out in one of my mother’s periodic closet cleanings—my baseball card and comic book collections shared a similar fate), I played with the teamster until he, too, outlived youthful play dates.