What are the best Christmas presents you ever got?

I was trying to recall my favorites. My parents gave me a Buddy-L truck that was strong enough for me to sit on when I was 5 or 6, and I can still remember everything about that truck. That was certainly one of my best presents ever.

A year or two later, they gave me a little steam engine that actually worked. It ran from a boiler that was heated with a can of sterno. The steam made the wheels go round, but I'm a little vague about what the wheels did once you got them going. It was a wonderful little toy, but in retrospect I think my uncle, who was there that Christmas, had more fun with it than I did. It certainly didn't compare with my Buddy-L.

Another uncle used to give me some dumb thing he found in his attic. I never liked whatever it was but he usually gave me a $5 bill and a $20 gold piece, too. By the age of 10 or so, I preferred the cold cash to the gold piece because, of course, my mother never let me spend that. I don't know what happened to all those gold pieces he gave me. I suspect my mother might have cashed them in one of those years they were having a tough time. Mom wasn't very sentimental about things like Indianhead pennies or gold pieces that I'd saved.

Considering that I got dozens of presents every Christmas, it's not very nice of me to have forgotten all but a few. I remember the year I got an Iver Johnson bicycle and the year I got a pair of high leather boots with a jackknife in a little pocket on the side of the right one.

Once you get over being a kid, there's no telling what Christmas presents are going to strike you as exceptional. I have a cashmere scarf a friend gave me about 12 years ago. It looked just like any other scarf when I got it but I've never lost it and I've worn it a lot on very cold days. Scarves don't normally turn me on when I get one as a present but this one was very special.

My four grown kids have been great gift-givers. There's no reason I should be surprised, but I always am at how intimately they know me. Its fun to get a present you weren't expecting that indicates the person who gave it to you knows you very well.

My son gave me a saw that must have been hard to find. I still use the pasta-maker that one daughter gave me, and I love the wood-identification book that my other daughter found for me. It has little samples of more than 100 different kinds of wood, describing their properties. I once received a whole case of tennis balls. I love anything in wholesale amounts, but it had never occurred to me to buy a case of tennis balls.

One of my great all-time presents was given to me by Arthur Godfrey in about 1954, when I was working for him. He gave me a woodworking tool called a Shopsmith. It must have cost a bundle at that time and I couldn't have been happier if I'd been 6 again getting that Buddy-L.

I realize how personal all of this is. I even understand that a reader wouldn't care specifically about the scarf or the Buddy-L. When you write something like this you hope it will be understood that the specific examples represent something more universal. By which I mean, I'm sure you've all had your own equivalent of my Buddy-L, tennis balls and $5 bills.

If you're reading this column, Merry Christmas.

 

Andy Rooney is on vacation. In his absence, we are reprinting a classic column originally published Dec. 21, 1981

 

For More Andy Rooney Click Here

 

 

For More Andy Rooney Click Here

 

(Write to Andy Rooney at Tribune Media Services, 2225 Kenmore Ave., Suite 114, Buffalo, NY 14207, or via email at aarooney5@yahoo.com)

(c) 2010 Andy Rooney

About Andy Rooney

Andy Rooney born January 14th, 1919 is a writer, humorist, radio and television personality.

Rooney became most famous as a humorist and political commentator with his weekly broadcast on the CBS News Program "60 Minutes" since 1978.