Model Rocket

My favourite birthday memory comes from the time when I was turning ten. That would be December 1959.

One of our traditions at birthdays was that the birthday boy or girl got to pick what we had for supper. My favourite meal for birthdays was hamburgers and french fries - all homemade. Mom was such a good cook!

After supper Dad and Mom gave me a gift. The odd thing is that I cannot remember them giving me any other birthday present during this time. Either my memory has gotten bad, or this was a very special day.

The gift was a plastic put-it-together-with-glue-and-decals model of the Nike-Ajax surface to air missile that was a mainstay of the US Army. I had never seen a plastic model of this kind before. I had never put a model together. Certainly Mom and Dad knew that, which (I suppose) led to the next surprise: Dad said that he would help me put it together!

Now Dad was big on chores and doing the things that needed to be done. He wasn't big on sports or things that might be considered as a waste of time. Today as I write this, I am in awe that he and Mom would think to buy me a present that they knew I would like, and then take the time to help me with it!

Well, we started to put it together. Dad let me use the epoxy glue. Pretty soon I had it all over the model parts. Instead of running in a nice neat line on the edges that needed to be glued, it was all over. When it came time to put the decals on, I managed to put them on crooked and in the wrong places.

I remember to this day that Mom and Dad took money and time to see and meet my desires. I remember and some 50 years later give back my thanks.