Christmas Memories

Christmas Memories

Lots of warm Christmas memories house full of

people, 15 to 20, huge feasts, midnight Mass.

One year I got a 22 riffle. but no ammo.

I had to play poker with dad to win ammo.

That took a couple of months before I could

do any target practice.

Dad always had a lot of confidence in me.

I got a kit to turn lead into molten metal and

poured into molds to make toy soldiers, I was 8.

Yes I got a few blisters but learned fast.

Another year I went camping with Boy Scouts

in 3 foot of snow for a week, it was actually alot

of fun.

And I got an erector set with a motor.

It was a set of hundreds of steel girders

6" to 12" long and thousands of little bolts

and nuts. I spent hours building these huge

mechanical monstrosities.

And one year it was a chemistry set with 48

jars of chemicals.

I had one accident/explosion from the chems,

and had to get 7 stitches in my thumb.

Dad just wanted to know if I knew what went wrong.

I did, and he was ok with it.

It was the time of the atom.

There was a little tube with magnifying lens in it,

and if you held it up to your eye in the dark

you could see a little spark???

Getting my eye nuked at 10 yrs old maybe?

Dad was a great outdoorsman, for a while he

even ran a trapping line, and would run it at 4am

before he had to go to work, and he took me with

him for the first time on Christmas eve.

We would skin the animials and streach the skin on

looped stretchers to dry them.

That eve he put war paint on my cheeks from the

blood of the raccoon, he was so cool.

It was a wondrous time of amazing gifts and memories.

Gerald

Little boy again.

Merry Christmas

.

.