I was lucky enough to have two things going for me as I was growing up: (1) I was raised in Chicago in the 1960s (no better place for a kid, but times change) and (2) My Dad worked for Sears and got great employee discounts which made Christmas even more fun – at least in the good years.
Chicago in the 1960s meant all day field trips from school to some of the coolest places on the planet, at least from a young boy’s perspective. Places like the Museum of Science and Industry with all those buttons to push and make things go. Not to mention the underground coal mine and a German U-Boat.
Chicago was also home to Bozo the Clown and the Riverview Amusement Park near the Chicago River. It died in 1967 like so many of the old amusement parks, a result of gangs and crime in and around the park which (unlike Disneyland) had no admission charge.
Although you likely didn’t live in Chicago at that time, one thing I can say for sure is that if you were a kid in the 1960s at one time or another you got your hands on the Sears Christmas Catalog. The catalog arrived a few weeks before Christmas so you could sit on the living room floor and mark your favorites (not so surreptitiously) so your parents would know – or pass along to the guy with the white beard at the Department Store.
Which ones did you mark in the catalog?
In the catalog was nothing less than the lives and dreams of boys and girls during a time when America seemed a little more innocent and more in control of itself, if only the visible part that kids see.
You either got the Christmas Catalog in the stores (of course, you had a Sears store in your town) or in the mail. Now, if you can find one of these old catalogs, they go for good money. Why? It could well be the ultimate source of good times nostalgia for us baby boomers.
So, without further ado, I give you a few trips down memory lane, from the eyes of an old kid:
I did have sisters ……
Yes, a different time, a different place.
When the word game began.
Sic Semper Tyrannis
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