Christmas morning: 1990 edition

I hate to have to start off today's post on a negative note, but if I want to properly set the scene, and I do, it'll be necessary to bring up some unpleasantness, so please bear with me for a couple of paragraphs, and then we'll get to the fun stuff.

I thought it had been longer ago, but apparently it was just back in September that I talked a little bit about my grandma, and her quick passing from leukemia. I won't rehash what's already been said, but one thing that I didn't mention in that previous piece, is that she lived with my mom and I during the last couple of months of her life.

You see, her and my grandpa lived in an old house that didn't have a bathroom on the main floor, and once she started the chemo, she didn't have enough energy to go to the one upstairs, and if she had went to the one in the basement, she probably wouldn't have had enough energy to get back up those stairs. My grandpa was still working at the time, and so were my mom and all of her siblings, so nobody could stay there and help her all day -- and even if they could've, she wouldn't have allowed it, as she wasn't going to allow anyone to be put out by her, or her illness.

Something did have to be done though, so since my mom and I were the only one's who lived in an apartment, which obviously had a bathroom on the main floor, so she came to live with us. Other than everyone knowing that the chemo wasn't going to do anything for her (leukemia was a death sentence back in '88), the first two or three months weren't too bad, she could stay by herself during the day, although that rarely happened, as family members seemed to always be there, whether it was during their respective lunch breaks, after work, or weekends, our little apartment became quite the hub of activity.

From what I remember, the last two months were pretty bad though, as she was pretty much confined to one of those hospital style beds that was set up in our living room, and she was only there because that was where our only television was. I only vaguely remember her last night, there was some sort of problem, an ambulance was called, and then within just a couple of hours she was gone.

This was in March of '89, and even though everyone knew that it was coming, the family was still absolutely devastated, she was the glue, and with her passing, things were never the same. As you can probably imagine, our little apartment didn't feel the same after she died, it seemed to have acquired a depressing air, and my mom started looking for a new place almost immediately -- which she would find later that year in the form of a somewhat rundown two-story house (with a basement and detached garage) that was located in SE Portland (OR).

We moved in to said house in either January or February of 1990, I don't remember exactly when, but I do know that I had to switch schools during second grade. The house itself was pretty unremarkable at the time, they were all over Portland (at the time), it was the sort that could be had for around $25,000, the sort that now couldn't be had for anything less than half a million (californication is very much alive and well). The house had it's pluses, and it's minuses. On the plus side, I would find a new best friend who lived just four houses down. The grade school was only two blocks away, so it was easy enough to walk to and from school, it was also nice to have a playground so close. We also had a fairly decent sized backyard that came with somewhat of an already established garden, which was great for bunnies, which we had... sort of! It was actually the people that lived behind us that had rabbits, rabbits that just so happened to dig (chew) through the bottom of their hutch, and dig a hole under the fence. They would always come over, or rather under, and just hang out, then go home when they felt like it. Both my mom and myself really liked this unexpected perk, our cats didn't seem to mind either, as they never chased, or tried to kill, the rabbits.

I mentioned that it had some minuses as well, looking back they weren't too bad though, it was mostly just that the house needed some work, although the detached garage was pretty bad though, it was basically unusable at that point. The basement was pretty big, but it was awfully dark down there, and I did not like going down there by myself. Speaking of scary things, I wasn't overly fond of the upstairs either, although I think the staircase to go upstairs was what bothered me the most. The staircase was located right inside the front door, it was the first thing that you saw, as the stairs led up right in front of you. Going left or right from the land was an option too, left would lead you down a couple of steps to what became my pseudo playroom, which also led to the kitchen. And going right would take you down into the living room. But boy was that staircase bothersome for me! It was closed in by what I'm pretty sure were load bearing walls, and I had a real problem with not being able to see who, or what, was up there, until reaching the last store -- I always thought someone, or something, was going to jump out at me. Being a kid with an over-productive imagination, it also didn't help that with it being an old house, that the steps were very creaky, and would often do so even when no one was going up or down them. For such an old house, those stairs seemed to still be settling a lot.

That backstory ended up being a little longer than I thought it would be, but I think it sets the who, what, and when, up pretty good -- at least as far as Christmas morning of 1990 is concerned.

I don't actually have any memories from this particular Christmas, but I remember the stuff, so that's what I'll be focusing on here today. I know I certainly don't remember opening up presents in my underwear, but I guess I've got the pictures to prove that I did indeed spend at least one Christmas morning opening up presents in my underwear, obviously eight-year old me didn't have any concept of modesty yet. Later that day we would've gone to my grandpa's house for the family Christmas, so my freedom from pants that morning would've been short lived.

So first up was a LEGO set. LEGO's were never really my thing, but I still got some from time to time, my brother (he lived with his dad, which is a story for another time) really liked them though, he had an insane amount of them when we were young. It's kind of hard to tell what particular set I'm holding, but thankfully my mom kept, and still has, my LEGO's, so a couple of months ago I got into them and found this:

After doing a brief search of ye olde interwebz, I found out that this model was called the BLACKTRON Alienator, which apparently was released in 1988. Of all of the LEGO sets, this black & yellow space series is the one that I remember the most. I didn't look through all of my old LEGO's, but I'm pretty sure that I had/have a few sets from this series.

While going through the "LEGO tote", I did pull out one other thing too

I said that LEGO's weren't really my jam, and that's true, but damn did I love these little motorcyclists! I'm not even going to attempt to guess how many hours of my life that I spent playing with just these guys on the coffee table, but trust me when I say that it was a lot.

Ooh, look how excited I am to be receiving sweats for Christmas! I can't get over how young I look in these pictures, this one in particular, I mean I still do look young for my age, or at least that's the impression that I get every time I have to show my ID somewhere, but still...

It's funny too, I didn't like sweats when I was young, but now they're like my favorite thing ever, although I still can't bring myself to wear them out in public.

Ah, a 45, now we're talking! Music was very big in our house at this time, and from what I can remember, it always had been. My dad was a musician (not professionally), and my mom was good friends with a guy who owned a record store, so "new" records were always being brought home. I didn't have a lot of my own, but I did have some 45's, so it's not terribly surprising to see me getting one for Christmas.

Thankfully I haven't gotten rid of much non-sports card stuff over the years, meaning that I still have my 45's, which made identifying the album in the picture much easier. Any guesses?

I'm willing to bet that no one guessed correctly on this one! The information is lost to time, but it would've been interesting to know if I asked for this one specifically, or if my mom just thought that I would like it? I guess it doesn't really matter either way, because I did, and still do like "Wild Thing". And I don't know if anyone cares or not, but "Love is All Around" is on b-side, which obviously isn't as well known, and isn't a song that anyone would ever refer to as a "sleeper".

Since I'm talking about owning 45's as a kid, how about a quick side trip to take a look at a few more of my earliest records?

I used to love this song so damn much! I would sit by the turntable and just keep replaying it over and over and... well, you get the point. I don't know how my mom was able to put up with that, it must be one of those things that you need to be a parent to understand. Not one of my favorites now though, but it's still nice to have for sentimental purposes.

I go back and forth on it, but this might be my first album as well. It's kind of hard to remember such things after 30+ years. If it wasn't my first, then it had to be the second, as there's only one other album that I could've had longer...

I'm pretty sure that I've already covered my love for this song in the past, but given the time period, it should come as no surprise that it all started with The California Raisins. The b-side features "You", which is really terrific song as well, even if it didn't get a whole lot of attention at the time of it's release.

I've never been a big Stevie Wonder fan, but I really liked this song as a kid, and this point, it's probably the only Stevie Wonder song that I like.

Remember how I said that my mom had a friend who had a record store, well, Yesterday Records was Bob's store. I don't have very many memories of him, other than that he was very nice, and very passionate about music. He also had a vast knowledge of the history of music in Portland, which is something that I really wish that could've appreciated more at the time. I have no idea whatever became of him, but hopefully he's still alive and doing well.

Alright, let's get back to the Christmas morning, especially seeing as how there's only one item left, aka the big ticket item!

The lower half of one of our cats, Bogart, can be seen in the upper right :)

As you might be able to tell, this was a much desired item by me. Today's kids probably couldn't comprehend why anyone would be excited to get a boombox, but at one time they were a pretty big deal.

We had a really nice Marantz 4-piece stereo system (with gignormous speakers) at this time, I believe my mom had bought it from Smith's (that's a name that should be familiar to most longtime Portland residents) right around the time that we moved into the house, and we used it a lot, but I was also starting to acquire a lot of cassettes around this time, and probably wanted something of my own to listen to them on, I don't recall ever asking for this though.

Thanks to the magic of the internet, I was able to pilfer this image from an eBay listing, since it's a little difficult to tell what it looked like just from the box.

This boombox was one of my prized possessions for a number of years. My most specific memory involving it comes from about '92, when I got a really cheap microphone, and some friends and I started making fake news broadcasts. For ten-year olds, we got kind of serious about this, what with the doling out of assignments, and writing scripts and all, it was pretty involved. Sadly those recordings weren't long for this world though, as the tapes would later be used to record songs from the radio, which were then eventually tossed out.

I think I had this radio until about '96 or '97, being replaced to make room for my first boombox with a CD player in it. I'd absolutely love to get another one of these, but $40 plus another $35 for shipping is a bit cost prohibitive right now, maybe someday though.

*************************** Bonus Content *****************************

I mentioned being able to see part of Bogart in that boombox photo, so I figured why not grab another photo from the same pack to show all of him, and my beloved Kitten.

We got Bogart (on the left) right after we moved into the house, he came from one of my mom's co-workers who had to find a new home for him because her neighbors didn't like cats, and had poisoned (and killed) her two other cats, so she asked my mom if we would take him, obviously we did. He was already a couple of years old, and lived until he was 15 or 16, which was pretty good for a guy as big as he was (over 20 pounds, but not fat)

Kitten - which incidentally wasn't his original name, it just stuck - was found as a starving kitten on our street just a month or two after we moved in. I'm guessing that this photo probably dates to around January of '91, because he's not quite full grown yet. He ended up being more of my cat, although he would become rather independent, only coming in to eat for much of his short life (he was hit by a car six or seven years later).

I don't remember the exact details, and I don't like having to ask my mom about unpleasant memories, but I'm pretty sure that thanks to some bad financial advice from my grandpa, the house had to be sold, and we ended up moving to Beaverton in the summer of '91. So we were only in this house for about a year and a half, but it sure feels like it was a lot longer. We moved around a lot when I was a kid, and I always hated it, but this particular move wouldn't be so bad, as the two years that we would spend in Beaverton would be the two happiest years of my childhood -- that'll probably be the subject of another post as well :)


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