Much Ado About Easy-Bake Ovens

EXTRA! EXTRA! Stupid Children get fingers caught in Easy-Bake Ovens! "Roasted Child-Digits" only 185 calories each!

So read the papers and blared the radio a couple months ago ... Dumb kids, dumb parents, dumb recall, dumb world... However, this silliness did bring up multiple memories and tales-to-tell of my own adventures with MY Easy-Bake Oven. And being a good little queer boy I didn't burn MY fingers. I made tasty things to eat!

If I recall correctly I got my Easy-Bake Oven for Christmas when I was about six or seven. I really liked it - mainly because it worked! You could actually "bake" cakes and stuff in it. The oven used two light bulbs, one in the top and one in the bottom, surrounded by a highly-reflective aluminum shell. You mixed the cake mixes in little bowls, greased up the little pan, and slid it into the oven where it baked for a time. When it was ready you pushed the cooked cake out the other side of the oven, and a baker you were!

The packaging shown above looks much as I remember MY oven - the late 1960s "Flower Power" decals included. I also recall thinking that the little girl featured on the box wasn't too bright. Look at her little cakes. You are SUPPOSED to bake TWO layers of cake and frost them together with a layer of icing in the middle! It's boring to simply frost a single layer!

My two big memories about my Easy-Bake Oven involved my Dad. He was all for it - indeed he was the baker in the family. When I made my first cake I was distressed that when I pushed it out the far side of the oven a sharp blade (inside the oven) hacked off the top of the cake and made a very flat shaved-off cake layer. This didn't seem right and wasted some very edible cake. My Dad agreed, so out came the tools, he opened up the oven and removed the "cake-shaver." Voila! Unshaved cakes.

The Easy-Bake Oven also gave my Dad an opportunity to give me a lecture on the evils of Capitalism. The oven was a really good toy, well-made, and fairly priced. But the company really gouged you on the cake mixes and frosting packets. And I was baking a LOT of little cakes!

So Dad explained all this stuff about monopolies, and evil-marketing strategies designed to take advantage of little boys, and he took me to the grocery store where we purchased inexpensive JIFFY cake mixes, frosting mix, corn-bread mix, and such. We found a little clear plastic container and carefully measured a "real" Easy-Bake mix, and using tape and a marker, made an Easy-Bake measuring cup so I could easily use the "real" cake mixes in my oven. These real mixes were even better than the expensive "Easy-Bake" ones. There were more flavors! I could make things like corn-bread! And this made the oven seem more "legit."

We chose the JIFFY mixes because they were the only mixes that already had the eggs and stuff in them. Thus they were ADD WATER ONLY just like the Easy-Bake mixes.

Toys wear out and I have no idea what became of my Easy-Bake Oven. But when I was nine, we traveled to Bridgeport, Texas because my grandfather was very ill. My Dad took care of me and my sister in the motel room while Mom was at the hospital all day. One afternoon, while walking the main street of Bridgeport, we wandered into a "five-and-dime" store and I spotted a treasure I had to have!

A SUZY HOMEMAKER OVEN!!!

Suzy's oven also worked via light-bulb, but it was bigger and looked and functioned more like a "real" oven. You placed your food in the oven through the hinged oven-door on the front of the oven.

Well, Dad sensibly saw this as a way to keep me occupied and amused during those long days in the motel room and he got it for me. This oven came with an assortment of "cake mixes," too, but it was suggested somewhere that one could also make pie! So when we went to the grocery store for the old reliable JIFFY mixes we got some JIFFY pie-crust and a jar of jam and I became the "Boy Baker of Bridgeport" for a time.

So here I sit thirty-five years later, I love to cook and I bake pies from scratch.

But the world has changed. Think of the fun to be recalled in 2043 when some forty-something brat will be writing mini-essays on how when he/she was ten, he/she stuck their fingers in their toy-oven, burnt them to shreds, sued Easy-Bake for Billions, and they are forever doomed to a life of store-bought baked goods.

Bon appetit, David

Christmas Memories

Photo from Christmas 1964 - Arlington, Texas - Two years old

I've been thinking a lot about my childhood Christmas memories. Fearing they will one day fade I started writing down details I remember or have knowledge of, from my first when I was six days old, on up to last year's Holiday. I have some memories of Christmas 1965 when I had just turned three. And quite good memories of Christmas 1966 when I was four. The earlier Christmases are reconstructed from notes in my baby book, our home movies, and family anecdotes. Happy Holidays!

1962 - Six days old

This was probably an odd Christmas. Of course I don't remember any of it. I'm not even sure whether I was at home or in the hospital on this first Christmas. My mom had had a C-Section but I suspect we were home by Christmas. I'm sure she would have wanted out of the hospital as quickly as possible. At this time my parents lived with my grandmother in Arlington, Texas. My grandmother had a heart attack the day I was born. No doubt it was a combination of stress, subconscious jealousy, and needing attention from my mom. Sigh...

1963 - One year old

The next year I had just turned one. We were still living in Arlington with my grandmother and great grandmother. For Christmas that year I got a red wagon, a marvelous pull-toy called the Happy Hippo, a set of blocks, and a corduroy suit. I remember all these toys well. I had them for several years afterward.

1964 - Two years old

Now we are two. Same living situation as before. This year I got a Santa's Work Bench, a toy train, a toy mail box, and a little table and chairs. It is this Christmas morning featured in the photo at the top of this blog-post. We also have some great color home movies of this Christmas but alas they aren't digitized yet.

1965 - Three years old

Three years old and all is much the same. But it would be our last year in this house. My mom was about to graduate with her BA from University of Texas at Arlington and she was looking for Grad schools.

This year I got a bright red toy car that I could ride in. It had a push stick. So my Dad would push me down the sidewalk or street with something that looked like a pool cue. This little red car was made by Marx Toy Company. My parents noted with glee that I had a little RED car made by MARX. Perhaps to balance my early introduction to leftist politics I was also given a toy gas pump, and a cash register. My parents also surprised me with a Christmas puppy. When asked what I wanted to call the puppy I said, "Nuffin ..." So Nuffin became the puppy's name.

1966 - Four years old

This is the first Christmas I remember in vivid detail. In the Summer of 1966 we had moved from Arlington, Texas to Albuquerque, New Mexico so my mom could get her Masters degree at the University of New Mexico.

A couple months before we moved Nuffin disappeared. My mom accused my Dad of "getting rid of Nuffin" to make it easier to move. Years later he admitted he had. I knew nothing of this at the time of course. Just before the move my great-grandmother passed away at the age of 92. My grandmother stayed in Texas, taking an apartment in Fort Worth. And we traveled back to Texas to spend the holidays with my grandmother.

We drove back to Texas in our white Corvair van: Mom, Dad, me, and our new pet basset hound, Zeb. I remember we drove straight through - which is a long drive. We put my mattress from home in the back of the van for me to play on and for me to sleep on once we got to Texas. In the middle of the night driving Zeb the Basset had a very smelly accident in the back of the van. We stopped, my dad cussed, and the van got cleaned out. We stayed at my grandmother's new apartment. I think she slept on the couch in the front room and my parents took her bed, and I slept on my little mattress we had brought with us.

I remember being very happy we were going to see my grandmother; and remember, too, that it seemed strange to see her in a new apartment. The apartment was a fairly big one-bedroom. My Grandmother was a pianist and she still taught at this time so she needed room for two pianos. She had downsized to one baby grand and one console.

There was also a neighbor lady who had a boston-terrier named Inky which I absolutely adored! I was also fascinated with my grandmother's red finger nail polish. I was thrilled when she painted mine red, too! Such a nice and obliging grandmother!

I don't remember much about the tree that year, but I'm sure we had one. I do remember my presents!

Model Tramway Car

This was a toy tramway car that I suspect my parents fot at the Sandia Mountain Tramway just out side of Albuquerque. We had gone to the Crest of the Mountain right after we moved and I had wanted to ride the Tram but it was too expensive. So I think this is why I got the toy one. I wanted to play with it and my Dad cleverly rigged it to run between two of the legs on the grand piano.

Creepy Crawlers

This was a very popular toy, probably considered too dangerous for today's kids. It came with a little heating plate and metal molds of various insects. You filled the moulds with liquid rubber which you then "baked"on the little hotplate. When the rubber became cooked and opaque you plunged the metal into cold water and peeled out the rubber insects. I really did like Creepy Crawlers a lot!

Cheerful Tearful

I had also asked for a baby doll. Well, my grandmother gave me one named Cheerful Tearful. I don't remember getting any flack from neighbor kids either. I've wondered what my grandmother thought of giving me a baby doll and of painting my little fingernails red. Maybe grandmothers always "know what's up" on some level. But this WAS 1966 and she was a straight-laced methodist lady, so who knows, but she was very supportive of my off-beat interests!

I also got $9 in pennies from my grandfather (who stored up pennies all year long in a big glass jar). I got a Remco Mouse House; and perhaps the most lasting of all the presents, my Dad built me a playhouse in the backyard of our house in Albuquerque. I was there when it was being built so I know it wasn't a surprise. But I don't remember if it was built before Christmas or right after we got home. David's Playhouse needs a blog post of it's own!

More Christmas to come ...

When you talk about this blog later, and you will, be kind.
Copyright © 2007 D. H. Maxine.

Dr. Zaius in Oz or; Leggo my MEGO!

I've been thinking a lot about play - or more specifically, how I played as a kid. I am trying to remember how it worked, how I did it, what it felt like.

All of my favorite toys were puppets, stuffed animals, and the like. I also loved movies and had a strong passion for PLANET OF THE APES. I devoured the movies, watched the prime-time TV series, and the animated Saturday morning cartoon. I even tracked down the Pierre Boulle novel - which I also loved. I found it especially sexy somehow that Boulle's astronaut was completely naked as Zira took him for walks around the city.

I also loved L. Frank Baum's Oz books. My Second Grade teacher, Mrs. Strong, at Monte Vista Elementary School, in Albuquerque, read them to us a chapter to two a day after lunch. I also discovered the MGM movie, which I came to love as well. So one can hardly overestimate my childhood joy at discovering MEGO (a toy company) was producing 8-inch action-figures of PLANET OF THE APES characters, followed a bit later by WIZARD OF OZ characters, among many others including another childhood obsession, STAR TREK.

But back to play. I would ask my sister something like, "Do you wanna play Oz? or Apes?" And she pretty much always did. We would then go to my room and prepare the universe. We had a couple dark furniture throws and these would be tossed over carefully arranged pillows, cushions, piles of clothes to create mountain ranges and valleys as wide as the bedroom - a terrain for the play to occur within. We would then set up the Emerald City or Ape City in our room-scape and the play would begin.

But I dont remember how we did it! We devised such elaborate plots and story lines! They often continued from day to day, too. But there was no discussion that I recall about how to do it, no set rules for who "operated" which characters. It was a seamless flow of interaction between the two of us: handing off characters, improvising dialogue, manipulating plot, creating back-story with no effort whatsoever. But I don't remember how we did it! We were just so in synch - everything worked. And we both fell into a hypnotic state where the room would fall away, our hands hopping the characters across the bedspread would vanish, and we did little more than channel Zira, Cornelius, and Dorothy Gale! Yes we mixed the worlds up quite often.

It worked REALLY well, too! Sometime apes would go to Oz; and sometimes Oz characters would go to the Planet of the Apes. If you think Dr. Zaius (the ornery orangutan) freaked out when he saw a talking human you should have seen how apoplectic he got over talking lions, Tin Men, and little girls with dogs!

Sometimes Zaius went to Oz! At least once the Wicked Witch captured him and thought he was her runaway flying monkey. She could NOT understand what happened to his wings. "Curses! It's that Dorothy Gale's doing!" But then again sometimes Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock would beam in at just the right moment and then all hell would break loose! The Wicked Witch would over hear Kirk talk about dancing Orion slave girls (who are green!) and the Witch would decide she could trap Kirk and Spock by stripping and dancing for them! You may recall that the Wicked Witch is green, too.

I do not know if other MEGO-loving kids did this cross-pollination thing. Sometimes I would buy duplicate characters to make them into additional characters. I "aged" a Cornelius with white paint and miniature glasses to make someone I names Dr. Barlow. We turned an extra Glinda the Good into Laverne DeFazio to play with my sisters Fonzie figure. A few characters I just made from scratch - a Patchwork Girl and a Sawhorse come to mind. Some ideas we never quite pulled off probably due to lack of money. Grandma and Grampa Walton would have made a wonderful Aunt Em and Uncle Henry but I guess i just didn't feel like spending $15 to get two sort of boring characters.

But is was so magical, so addicting! This hypnotic-state of play occurred whenever my sister and I played with our anthropomorphic toys: puppets, stuffed animals, etc. Once on a car trip I told her that there was a miniature universe in my pants-pocket. I pulled out bits of lint and stuff from my pocket and introduced them as animals, live stock, etc. I made a tiny little woman out of a scrap of Kleenex, too. But I swear we could see "pocket-world!"

And that's what I miss! I miss my imagination being that powerful. I think I still have a strong ability for fantasy and imagination and daydreaming - but I can't quite make the real world disappear anymore - at least not with pocket lint!

David

When you talk about this blog later, and you will - be kind.

Copyright 2006 D. H. Maxine.