What was YOUR best Christmas Present ever?

As most of you know, I grew up in Switzerland. I was born in 1951, just six years after the end of WWII. Money was tight as my father had just finished building a house for the family. To help pay for the mortgage, my parents rented out two rooms downstairs. Seven years old, it was the first Christmas we celebrated in our new Home back in 1958. One of the tenants, I called him “Herr Bolt,” was invited to celebrate Christmas with my family as he was an immigrant from Germany and had no money to go home for Christmas.
To my surprise Herr Bolt had a present for me. With the little money he had, he bought a Stokys Metal Construction Set for me, the Swiss version of an Erector Set. It was the smallest set, the number 00. (Click on link and scroll down to see an image of the 00 set).
I played with the set until we went to the midnight mass at the local church. Back home and well past midnight, my mother had to take it away from me so I would get some sleep. I could hardly sleep and couldn’t wait for it to be morning so I could play some more.
Only weeks later, I scratched every penny together I had and bought the “add on set” with the number 00a. Now I had the equal of the set with the number 0. The largest set was the set with the number 4.

I started delivering newspapers to save additional money for my ever growing and increasingly complex projects. I never had enough wheels and gears I remember.
With my bicycle I would ride to Dietikon, a neighboring town to the little village of Spreitenbach where I grew up. The hardware store in Dietikon had a small section in the crammed downstairs. The stuff my dreams were made back in those days was stored in small wooden drawers behind a counter. I still remember the steep worn wooden stairs and the distinctive smell down in the basement of the hardware store.

I think this present had a lot to do with my later professional carrier; Herr Bolt I’m sure had no idea what he started, or did he? Thank you Herr Bolt, it was the best present I ever got..

Do you have a story about your best Christmas Present ever, you would like to share?

December 26, 2009, Peter Frei