My Childhood is Moldy

Behold: my birthright. It's a Tyco train set, along with a half-dozen or so plastic models of buildings. (There's a farm, gas station, split-level home, factory, church... in other words, the essentials.) Best as I can recall, this little fake town was set up under our family Christmas tree from Christmas 1972 until the early 1980s. Eventually we stopped setting up, though it seems to have made a reappearance somewhere around 1990, as evidenced by a set of tickets for a live Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle show I found in the box. (I have no idea. Must have been something my sisters attended.) I think about this train set around this time of the year, when we drag the Christmas decorations out of garage. I think: Man, I should ask my Dad if he still has that train set. Nothing reminds me of Christmas like that set.

Turns out, the Bride did the asking for me, and today, she carried three small, wet, moldy boxes into our house. My birthright.

I didn't know it was mine, but my Mom told the Bride the set had been purchased for me when I was a baby. So I was welcome to it.

Like everything from childhood, the set was a lot smaller than I remembered. I was imagining this huge, elaborate townscape... but instead, it's a fairly small collection of trains and models. And they were very wet. I don't know if they were left out in the rain one night or countless nights. Right now they're drying out in the laundry room.

I have serious doubts about the trains working. The model houses (the gas station especially) needs some hot glue and love. But I'm determined to set everything up this year under our tree, just so that someday I'll be able to bequeath a few small, wet, moldy boxes to my own son.

And the circle of life continues...