Holiday Values

 

November 3, 1963, Appleton Post-Crescent

We're entering the holiday shopping season and though times have changed and much of our buying is online, we still like to feature the fabled Valley Fair from time to time.  Please examine some of the anachronistic merchandise above, because, after all this IS 1963. Typewriters were THE lifeline of any office, so it made sense to give your kid a "junior" typewriter, readying him or her for that business future.  Plus, no home was complete without smoking accessories, to include a nifty elevated ashtray which would have been right at home in the finest hotel lobbies and train station waiting rooms.  And that hair dryer...my sister had one like that.  (Do they still make those?)   Putting all those "dated" devices aside, I cannot let it be ignored that I owned that Big Bruiser wrecker from Grant's.  I was a typical boy, engrossed in cars and trucks and all that sort of thing.  That is, until 1964 came, bringing G.I. Joe and 1965 which introduced me to comic books, so cars and trucks intrigued me less and less as time went by.  But this wrecker truck, coupled with my Texaco Fire Chief pumper truck (which shot real water through the hose, by the way) were so emblematic of my childhood.