Childhood

When I was little, my dad bought my brother and myself an electric train set. On birthdays and other gift-giving occasions (like Chrismahanakwanzakah), bro would get train cars, and I’d get houses, buildings, landscaping materials, animals, and little people. Dad built a nice big platform in the basement, and we set it all out, and added as new items came in. It sounds really pre-Feminist, but actually, I liked the houses, people, animals, and landscaping–they gave me something to do. And I think bro liked the electronic trains best.

It looked a bit like this (only with a train going round it):

The best time we ever had was the night we painted the people. They were little neutral colored people–in different shapes, with different clothes and tools attached to them, and they were maybe 3/4″ tall. And we painted them with increasing recklessness as the evening wore on–two adults with wacky senses of humor and two kids of 7 and 10. Good times. I also thought it was so cool how Arthur, played by Dudley Moore, had a train running around his spoiled drunken rich boy-man home, but then I was seven.

The whole kit and kaboodle has long been dismantled and packed away for future generations.