THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, December 25, 1995 TAG: 9512250026
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Column
SOURCE: Guy Friddell
LENGTH: Medium: 56 lines
As you read this column, your errant reporter is winging by plane on a Christmas Day swing to Baltimore, Richmond, Norfolk.
The challenge lay not in the journey but in gathering last-minute gifts in job lots, as always, for eight grandchildren and six parents.
One year, it was the yellow rubber boots that police wear in heavy weather. What hilarity when they all opened boxes and found boots! Within two weeks, they were wearing them in the snow, sobered.
Last year, from M&G Sales surplus in Norfolk, each adult had a neat seat the size of a ladies' hankie supported by a metal frame 18 inches high that folds to fit in a pocket. Again, much mirth. But one brother conceded he sits upon it now viewing children at soccer.
I plunged Christmas Eve into The Toysmith in downtown Norfolk.
Mike Smith displayed a tool belt for children. ``The very dinctum for the two 6-year-olds!'' I cried.
``The very what?'' he asked.
``Dinctum. We said it long ago. It's Southern. From Latin, maybe.''
But then the two 4-year-old boys would envy the older ones.
``Make it four belts!'' I said.
And don't psychologists lament that girls get nothing but dolls?
``Make it seven belts!'' I called.
For the oldest boy, 12, I wrapped a book that had bewitched me.
For the three daughters-in-law, artist William Turner's foundry on the Eastern Shore shipped, overnight, three bronze sculptures in miniature - one, of a fox chasing a goose raising its wings; another, of a fox plunging into a hole while a rabbit sits in the open at other end; and the third, of two fox kits frolicking.
Let 'em pass 'em around among themselves, year by year, a traveling exhibition. Or so I'll say.
For the three sons, I found at the Chrysler Museum a kit to build an old-time stereopticon.
You hold up a yardlong rack and peer through a shade into a pair of special lenses. At the far end of the holder, two pictures of the same scene are mounted side by side to afford a single three-dimensional version. It was our television.
You ought to see Niagara Falls through a stereopticon.
On Christmas morning, every father ought to have something he can't put together. I may offer advice, here and there, as they try.
The daughters-law have been quite vocal, obstreperous even, protesting my staying but a couple of hours at each household.
``Only a pit stop!'' one chided.
``You ever hear of Santa Claus hanging around?'' I asked. by CNB