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Show Toys gone but memory lingers on r By MARC ELLA WALKER The boy is 18 and one-half years old and he says, "Mom, what ever happened to my astronaut outfit?" Into your mind comes a vision of a chubby little boy, probably about six, seven or eight years old. The astronaut outfit was more than just a helmet It came down onto the shoulders. It was made of white plastic and it had a yellow face visor that went up and down. This kid always loved hats. When he was the fattest baby you ever saw he would rip the hat off the head of a perfect stranger and sit it on his head. He loved hats even then and it has never abated. He has hats all lined up on the ceiling of his room. Hats of every kind and description including cowboy hats, sailer hats, baseball hats with various things written on them, and his grandpa's old hat. Then, after all this time, he asks where the astronaut hat (helmet plus) is located. It is long gone. It died a normal death for something that is played with a lot and is only made of hard plastic to begin with. I hated to tell him it was gone and we didn't have it anymore. I wished it could still have been there, even if broken, for him to look at again and dream the dreams that once were dreamed when he wore it. all could have a specif Di, : keep everything that we eve,' ' 11 so we could hold it and hav . ' -y grand feeling once again ' When Mom married tJi next door after being a wj. over 10 years she had to CU the house that we had lived i1J- -"' many years and move next i' She had us come up and SK l us things she had saved Th a very soft bristle baby WT' comb, pale blue ? highlights, there was a pair J:' shoes and a hand embro.'"' 'p dress. There was a baby W"; $ some jottings about my 'birth There was a box of letters ' the boy who died in a planed when I was a teenager the the pioneer doll she made me the state celebrated its cent.. s in 1947, there was the'l" " storybook doll with one missing, there was the tiny ' plate my Mia Maid teacher for me, there was a certifie d having the most beautiful d''! the doll show. "; No, son, the astronaut gone. I wish we had a pictureV with it on. But we do have pictures of you in many of theo -! hats and we need to get some it'! We don't have the astronaut We do have the memory. Hold," I that, forever, my son. I remember all the times that his Dad and I sat down and went through the toys, throwing away the broken and worn out and saving the good and not-so-worn-out. It has to be done but it is hard to do. I always found it hard to throw an old toy away for them because I knew that behind that battered face, or wheelless truck there was a story, a memory. I am way past my own toy stage now. So far past it that you'd think I couldn't remember that far back. But I can. I remember a huge baby doll. She was so big that she didn't fit well into the green wicker buggy that I had for her. What happened to her? I'd like to see her again. I'd like to see the buggy again. I wonder what became of the little china dishes that sat in the cupboard Daddy made me? What about the little muffin tins and pie plates we made mud pies in with red berries off the bush that the birds liked? There was a black doll. She was chocolate brown and had painted-on painted-on black curly hair. I loved her. I'd like to tell her so but I don't know where she went. And it wasn't just dolls or toys. It was clothes, too. Where are the little dresses, two of them, that I got for my birthday on the day the war ended in Europe in 1945? Where are the bobby sox, the princess-style green coat, the felt skirt? What happened to the boxes of comic books and movie magazines that I used to keep under the bed to trade with other kids in the neighborhood? Every once in a while, a flash of memory comes back and you miss something you used to have. You miss it a lot and you wish you still had it. I know my parents had to go through that stuff and like us had to throw it away when it was old and worn and not much good anymore. But sometimes I wish they hadn't. Sometimes I wish we |