My Christmas Memory
By Jenny Margotta, High Desert Branch
In the December edition of The Inkslinger, Mike Apodaca challenged us to “find a beloved Christmas memory that you shared with someone special in your life, write it out . . . and send it to that person as a Christmas gift.” I don’t know the name of the person who created the following memorable event for me, and I doubt he’s still living, so I can’t send it to him, but I can write it out and share it with all of you.
As the years pass, we all get so caught up with the challenges of everyday life that many past events are shuffled aside and discarded. But no matter how many years go by, there are some events that are so firmly embedded in our minds that nothing can erase them. I’m not sure if the one I’m relating here can truly be called a “memory,” because I was much too young at the time to etch it in my brain. But my mother told the story so often that it feels like a memory. And I certainly remember the result of the event!
In the 1950s, Louis Marx and Company manufactured the Fort Apache Stockade Playset, inspired by the popular TV series The Adventures of Rin Tin Tin. It contained Rin Tin Tin, of course, as well as a plastic log stockade, two block houses, four ladders, a tin log cabin with furniture, cowboys and Indians, horses, a buckboard wagon with horse in harness and spare wheel set, rail fencing, benches, teepee, rocks, a flag pole, oxen, and more. I don’t know how much it sold for, but I’m sure it was well beyond anything my parents could have afforded at the time.
We were living in Mannington, WV, in an apartment above a family-owned grocery store in the downtown area near the train station. I was four at the time. My older brother and sister were in school, so I was home alone with my mother. According to my mother, there was a small fenced yard between the building and the railroad tracks where I often played. Apparently, I never failed to wave at the man in the caboose when a train passed—and most waved back.
One day near Christmas, there was knock on our door and my mother opened it to find a large man in bib overalls, a striped cap with a bill, and a red neckerchief around his neck. Under one arm he carried a large box wrapped in brown paper and he was holding my hand with his other hand. “This little girl lives here, right?” he asked. When my mother said yes and nervously asked if I’d somehow managed to get myself into trouble, the man told her his story.
He said he was the “caboose man” on one of the trains and always waved at the “smiling little crippled girl” whenever the train passed. One of his grandchildren, whom he rarely saw, also wore heavy braces, and he was reminded of her whenever he waved at me. One of his duties on the train was to handle all the packages being shipped and, unfortunately, many were damaged or their wrappings were torn in such a way that the packages were undeliverable. The box under his arm was one such package. He knew the playset inside was probably intended more for a boy than a girl, but he remembered seeing me in my Indian warrior costume (I was something of a Tomboy in those days) earlier in the fall and hoped I’d enjoy playing with the toy. My mother thanked him and sent him on his way with a bag of homemade cookies.
On Christmas Day I opened that box and found the Fort Apache set inside. The “caboose man” was right—it was one of my all-time favorite toys for many years. In fact, I still have a few of the pieces in my keepsakes box in the garage. I don’t remember the man, but I have never forgotten the heartwarming story that accompanies that long-ago gift. They say you can’t put a price on a memory, but the current bid for the Fort Apache playset I found on eBay is $399.
This heartwarming memoir originally appeared
in the January 2024 The Inkslinger, newsletter of the High Desert Branch.