A
friend just posted a page from the 1973 Sears Wishbook, the go-to
source for satisfying all children's toy avarice during the annual
winter holidays, and that image kicked the Wayback Machine in my skuul
into high-gear, returning me to my earliest years in Westport.
Sears Wishbook G.I. Joe spread (1972)
My
parents' disaster of a marriage first began to display visible signs of
collapse around 1971, and they were at full-blown war by the time we
moved from San Francisco to Connecticut in June of 1972. They thought
seven-year-old me did not notice their open vitriol toward each other
(it was as plain as the noses on their faces), but just in case they
buried me with toys every Christmas. My dad was an IBM exec, so he could
afford lavish amounts of presents, and the Christmases of
1972 and 1973 found me awakening to all of those years' new GI Joe
stuff, even the top-shelf vehicles and bases, and two or three Adventure
Team Joes to be deployed when my older ones inevitably fell apart from
play.
Sears Wishbook G.I. Joe spread (1973)
I was grateful for all of it, because play was my way of
disconnecting from the vicious, dysfunctional hellhole that was our
home. Those miserable years are what sparked my love of toys, an
interest that persists a half-century later, though now I display toys
instead of playing with them. Nonetheless, they still grant me comfort.
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