Christmas 1972

All of the Christmases of my childhood seem to have merged into one big bag of memories. It is like the wrapping paper after opening presents. I can’t remember which paper went with which present. This is not the case with Christmas 1972. That Christmas was the pinnacle of Christmases as a kid. Every other Christmas is mostly another scrap of paper tossed into a bag.

That Christmas we were in Olympia with, my step-dad, Ray’s parents celebrating Christmas. We returned to Kirkland late on Christmas Eve. I remember walking back to our rec-room and seeing the Christmas tree in the far corner between the sliding glass door and the brick hearth of the fire place. Presents stretched across the floor at least ten feet from the tree. The room seemed to be all presents and lights.

That year I got a King James Bible with a zippered cover and color pictures on the outside and inside. I also got my Flexible Flyer sled. I don’t ever remember using that sled in Washington, but it was a major form of transportation in Alaska. I fancied myself a bob-sledder as I would slide down Donner Loop Road. Rick planted ideas in my head when we watched “The Wide World of Sports” on ABC on Sundays. Whenever Rick saw something particularily dangerous, something that he didn’t have the courage to do himself he would say, “You should do that. You should be a bob-sledder.”
In my mind, my entire life, I have been a bob-sledder.

I also got a bunch of Big-Jim action figures. Big-Jim is lesser known that GI Joe and is also much shorter. Big-Jim is only 9” tall compared to the 12” tall GI Joe. Thinking about it now it makes sense. I am sure that oil prices made it cost prohibitive to make the larger figures. Also protests against the war in Viet Nam probably made the military focused GI Joe less attractive. Big-Jim was purely an athlete. His bicep would grow as you bent is arm. Big-Jim also came with a lot of accessories. He had a camper, a dune buggy, a dirt bike and uniforms for every sport you could imagine. He even had clothes for hunting.

I still have the Bible, it usually sits on the shelf in my office. The sled is no longer usable. Rick took it to the gravel pit and bent one of the runners while he and Gary Hammond cruised down the hill. The sled now is purely for show. It hangs on the wall of a room full of antique sporting goods. The Big-Jims are in a box in storage. Many of the accessories are well worn, broken or lost.

It is sad to think now, that when I was being overindulged, Hanoi was getting a different present from the US. In Viet Nam, Christmas 1972 is known for the bombing raids by the US. It was in the days surrounding Christmas that year that we dropped 20,000 tons of bombs on Hanoi. It is little comfort to know that only 1600 civilians were killed during the final days of the war. Nixon in his push to end the war with dignity tried to bomb the North Vietnamese into negotiating an end to the war. The peace terms, Nixon was trying to win, were already agreed to in October by both the US and the North Vietnamese. It was the president of South Vietnam that didn’t like the terms of the agreement, but we bombed Hanoi.