Best Christmas ever had or will ever have.
I was seven. Growing up in Cleveland, Ohio, we had Higbees, May co and Halley’s down town department stores. After Thanksgiving, each would have an entire floor full of toys. Of course the best was the train area where there was Lionel and American Flyer layouts set up. I’d stay there for hours watching them run and, of course, there were free catalogs.
Mom asked me what I wanted for Christmas. I pointed to the Lionel SF diesel A-A and 4 beautiful aluminum passenger cars and said ‘that’. At 90 bucks, mom said we can’t afford that. Dad worked at Midland Ross steel and, if he made that in a week, he was lucky!
$90 in 1953 is over $1,000 in 2022: imagine spending that much on a seven year old, today, for one present!
I remember getting up that Christmas morning and seeing the large rectangular box all wrapped and knew exactly what it was.
As in ‘Christmas story’, that was the best Christmas I ever had, or ever will.
And it still runs great!
