So, at the risk of getting my balls broken from my fellow Board miscreants, I’ll share with you my favorite Christmas toy. I discovered it under the tree one Christmas morning way back in the late 1960s.
When I was a little boy, my favorite show was “Lost in Space”. I got to stay up past bedtime on Tuesday night to watch it. Luckily, those were the days when prime-time programming started at 7:30 not 8:00. So, I burned the midnight oil and stayed up ‘til 8:30! On the contrary, if I was bad, my mother would send me to bed not allowing me to watch my favorite show. Ouch!
Which brings me to the toy: Under the tree was the Jupiter 3 (the spacecraft that the Robinson family traversed the universe with), the Chariot (a track vehicle that looked like a cross between the Lunar Rover and a San Francisco cable car!), and a few other incidentals that I can’t remember.
Well, my spacecraft was a little underwhelming. It was made out of Styrofoam. But the Chariot was cool as hell! It followed a flexible, tubular track that could be laid out any way desired.
My father had everything up and running in no time. The Chariot was now humming along its track around the spaceship and, needless to say, I was mesmerized! At that very moment my little sister bounded into the room, took a bad step, fell down and smashed my fuckin’ Styrofoam Jupiter 3 to smithereens!!!
God Bless the old man. The next day, he spent hours trying to glue the thing back together, but it was never the same. The Jupiter 3 lived out the rest of its days in “dry-dock”!!!
HAPPY HOLIDAYS!!!
