Christmas Toys Portend the Future

As we approach Christmas, I’m thinking of my wife, my grown children and my grandchildren and another good year. 

I’m also thinking of my later mother and father, Edward M. Davis and Claire Ann Wardino-Davis. 

As I noted in earlier post, when I was about 11 or 12 in the early 1960s, I told my mother that I wanted to be a writer. I asked her to buy me a typewriter, and I told her that if I had a typewriter, I would be a published writer in a year.   

Paul Davis On Crime: One Special Christmas Gift Remembered  

This was a bad time to ask for extravagant gifts, as my father was hurt on the job and he was out of work. We were poor, but we never went hungry nor did we did not want for any of the basic necessities. In one of last conversations with my older brother Edward R. Davis, we agreed that despite our poor background, we had a happy childhood thanks to our parents. 

I don’t know how my mother did it, but she purchased an Olivetti Underwood typewriter for Christmas that year. It took me a lot longer than a year to become a published writer, but I finally did become a professional writer. (I have the typewriter still and it works, although I use a computer these days.)  

Because of our financial status back then, my older brother and I were allowed only one big gift for Christmas (although we got socks and underwear in our hung stockings). 

Supermarkets in the early 1960s placed the big gifts on top of the shelves that held their products. Some were based on TV shows. One year, I asked for the Wyatt Earp set, which included a street in Dodge City and toy figures of Wyatt Earp, Doc Holiday and other notable characters from the popular TV show and from history. I loved the TV show, and I loved the toy set.  

Another year I asked for the Zorro set, based on the Walt Disney TV series Zorro. The set included the cantina and the hacienda and toy figures of Zorro/Don Diego de la Vega, Zorro’s deaf-mute servant Bernado, and the comical soldier Sergeant Garcia. Like Wyett Earp, I loved the TV show, and I loved the toy set.

I selected a 2 or 3-foot toy aircraft carrier during a later year. The toy carrier, which resembles the above photo up to a point, but my carrier was better built and more realistic. The carrier had toy aircraft, flight deck and hander bay equipment, toy pilots and flight deck sailors.    

And the following year, I asked for a 2 or 3-foot-long submarine with a see-through plastic removable top that showed the various compartments of a ballistic submarine and the sailors aboard the submarine. I searched for a similar model via Google and eBay, but I found mothering like it.

That year I had my own Navy in the living room with aircraft carrier and my submarine. I wonder now if my toy ships did indeed portend the future.

I enlisted in the Navy when I was 17 years old and I was assigned to the aircraft carrier USS Kitty Hawk during the Vietnam War. I was not assigned to a submarine after the war, but I received orders to a 100-foot-long Navy Harbor Tugboat that was assigned to the U.S. Nuclear submarine base at Holy Loch, Scotland. Owning and playing with the toy ships could be regarded as training.   

Sadly, as I grew older and stopped playing with toys, I threw out my Navy ships. I wish I still had them, as they would adorn the top of my bookcases in my basement office and library, along with my photos and other mementos from my years in the Navy.