The Reindeer Keeper

I loved it when the Sears Wish Book came in the mail. I'd spend lots of time going through the toy section over and over again. Eventually I'd mark everything I hoped Santa Claus would bring me and then point  out to my mother which ones I liked the most; which ones I really, really hoped to find under the Christmas tree. Besides the Sears Wish Book, there was another catalog that came in the mail before Christmas that I really, really liked It wasn't as glitzy or jam packed with pages chuck full of toys and dolls and doll beds and doll clothes and stuffed animals and games and bikes and on and on and on yet I'd get so excited to look through the pages of that catalog-the Miles Kimball Christmas Catalog. I never had to share that catalog with my older brother like I did the Sears Wish Book because he had no interest in it so I was able to sit at my desk in my bedroom and go through it over and over again. I always found things that I considered little treasures, along w...

I always felt like a famous artist when working on a Paint-By-Number Painting. I loved them. They came in a kit inside a decorated cardboard box. The kit contained everything one would need to complete the painting. Some kits included one large paint-by-number painting. Others included three paint-by-number paintings, smaller in size than the kit with the single painting. I can still remember my most favorite of all the ones I painted. It was a horse standing in front of a barn-a rather big horse. I spent hours on that painting, sitting at my desk in a bedroom I shared with my younger sister with a huge assortment of brushes, a glass of water and lots of tissues sitting next to me. I always made a mess when creating. That's just what artists do. Going shopping for new paint-by-number kits was great fun. Woolworths and Newberry's always had great selections. Sometimes my cousin and I would go downtown shopping and sometimes I'd come back home with gift ideas to tell my m...

When growing up out in the country, Christmas came in the mail and I don't mean email. It was wrapped inside a protective cover but we knew it was the much anticipated Sears Wish Book. The pages upon pages full of toys were looked at and marked up and dreamt about. By the time Christmas finally arrived the catalog would be without a cover; pages would be worn-some ripped apart. That magic catalog was like having Santa's Workshop right in our home. I was intrigued by all the cowboys and their horses and the stagecoaches. I'm sure that was due to some famous cowboys at the time-Lash LaRue, Hopalong Cassidy, and Roy Rogers to name a few. One year Santa brought my brother a Hopalong Cassidy radio. I was just as excited as he was. 5 p.m. every night we'd listen to it while sprawled out on the living room floor. One toy my brother always circled was a toy cork gun. And for a few years, it would be under the tree Christmas morning. There were...