At the Stakes old shotgun house BC (Before Christmas & Before Celia) in November we would receive several Christmas catalogs. They would not fit in our narrow, small mailbox next to door, so left on wood porch. If I & brother Tommy at school, momma get to them first. But if not at school, I would snare it, and carry it around like cousin Ronnie Brister carried his first trout around in pocket for a week. The catalogs saw a LOT of use, of course neighbors Rabago kids, sometimes Ortiz kids and Kawas kids we all sit around looking thru the toy pages and many I WANT THAT could be heard.

How many things did we get from the catalogs? Well, depends. There were some "high dollar" things in the catalogs. To our family anything above $50.00 was sort of high dollar. But wishing was free. And sometimes we would circle things we wanted with crayons or pencils. Not that it would make a damned bit of difference, we knew some of the gifts Santa would bring probably Cathedral khaki pans, and plaid shirt, get lucky, get a 3 pack of underwear and some socks too!

Bicycles. Scooters. BB guns. Airplanes & cars that ran on some sort of gasoline. Erector sets. Lionel trains!Pretty endless if you a kid in 1960s.

I used to serve Midnight Mass at Cathedral as was altar boy 11 years. Poppa would not go, just me, momma & Tommy. Exhausting mass about 3 hours. But when you get out, the Corpus Christi breeze hit you in face, all good, and celebrated Jesus birthday. Well, unless you fainted in church, I will have to tell you about that later.

Poppa would be waiting for us, and off we went mile home. Inside house Santa had been there! Lots of gifts under tree, this year TWO bicycles! One purple, one green. The green one had a shifter on it, Captain Kangaroo even sold them so you know it was good. We opened up the gifts, paper, ribbons flying around, doggie Bootsy eating them.

Hard to get to sleep though, even when poppa turned off the Christmas tree lights, we all would be wound up, but would be up before sun came up next morning, wanting to play with bikes. Up & down Antelope we went, other kids in neighborhood, bringing out their new bikes, skateboards too. The old hood was filled with light Christmas Day.

 A few weeks later I ran into the ONE WAY sign next to Coca Cola at Lester street. It jumped out in front of me, jealous it didn't get a new bike.

But...I and the bike got scraped up, and the purple paint came off, and under it red. This was my OLD bike my dad had painted to look new. He fixed, repaired and rented bikes you know to sailors from the Port mile away. I was thoroughly bummed out, the light from Christmas Day a few weeks earlier dimmed, went out. Momma cried and tried to explain to me that Tommy's new Captain Kangaroo bike cost $70.00 (remember, poppa's check was $156 so a chunk of change!!) so he sanded, painted, my bike. My old bike. 59 cent can of Krylon paint. Anyways, I never let them live it down, especially as a teen ha ha, momma would get scowl on face and roll eyes.

The Sears catalog got most abuse, poppa looking at all the great Craftman tools. Us, the toys. Momma, uh, the momma things. And Sears was at corner of Sam Rankin & Leopard, only 6 blocks from us! So most frequented. And the store smells great with popcorn, hot cashews, nuts, and had chocolates and stuff we should not have been eating, but cheap, like gummie orange slices!!

Other catalogs we would get were Montgomery Wards (monkey wards), BEST Products (later), J C Penneys, but SEARS rocked, and was about size of Harry Potter, Ivanhoe & War & Peace combined, most times about 500 pages, twice size of Corpus Christi phone book, well, except the Gonzales section, that was 100 pages alone. Sears also changed name of book to WISH LIST. Well, duh!

PHOTOS! Photo #1. 1966 Sears roebucks Christmas catalog. Bigger than a Corpus Christi phone book, this whopper weighed in 700 pages. Don't be tearing out pages to take to Cathedral, just tell friends about it. You know Germans used to put real, live, candles on Christmas trees. I only thought I was a pyro.

Photo #2. J C Penneys 1966 catalog was impressive, but could not hold a candle to Sears. About 1/2 the size, still, downtown Penneys would open up mysterious 4th floor as nothing but toys, toys, more toys.

Photo #3. Page from Sears catalog. I had a "worlds smallest loco" which had nothing to do with loco on 7th floor at Memorial hospital crazy ward (uh oh here come more deer meester ette letters) but this thing played music as it went around tracks, enough to make momma's hair turn grey. Also one year got the Jeep with all the "wild animals" and put put some in the red ant mound in front of grandma's house on Doss only to find out those animals were invincible to numerous big red ant stings!

Photo #4 Speigels Christmas catalog, what the hell is Spiegels? Next to it is Montgomery Wards Christmas catalog, dad wants a modern camera, momma wants a jewel encrusted watch that dad will have to take a second job to pay for. Sort of like Arkansas Lottery, you win 3 million dollars, they give you a $1 a year for 3 million years. Junior & Susie looking at Christmas ornament that appears Santa has kidnapped Suzie already

Photo #5. Captain Kangaroo was spokesman for Schwinn bikes many years, awesome show. That is my bike there poppa painted red and like a dumbass, I didn't know until I ate a street sign. Why didn't Captain Kangaroo warn me?

I didn't have a headlight on it either until I stole one, it had a little wire than ran to spinner thing on wheel, so would turn on light, only if you moving. Would have been on both Santa's and Captain Kangaroo naughty list if they knew I kiped the headlight.

Photo #6. Captain Kangaroo with Tommy's bike. Identical even shifter and green with banana seat! If Tommy allow it, I would ride it to Cathedral, and lock it up, was ONLY kid to ride bike to school. And charge kids 10 cents a ride around whole Cathedral from Upper Broadway, to Lipan, to Carancahua down to Mestina and back, I had quite a racket, as many kids had never ridden a bike you could shift gears like that.