Touching the Past

Took advantage of the Labor Day holiday to have a more thorough look around the little library in which my brother spent much of his time for many years. It's an odd sort of place, with a psychedelic poster on the inside of the door, stacks of LP record albums, and shelves overflowing with every sort of odd or unusual nick-nack imaginable, from shark jaws to bongo drums. This was where my brother practically lived for the longest time. This was where he kept his toy cars. And this was where they would still be, according to him, if they were still around. As I scanned the room, endeavoring to see through the blanket of dust, I began to lose heart. Even here, in this time capsule from the distant past, I could see that many of the things I remembered were missing. The stand where my brother had kept his cars was long since gone. Despite the dust, it was clear that efforts had begun to reclaim to the room from antiquity. I was about to give up, when I saw it -- a plastic baggie stuffed with what appeared to be toy cars. It was a small bag which couldn't possibly hold all the cars he had owned, but it was, at least, some of them. I grabbed it with reverent excitement.

As I emptied the bag's contents, what should be the first car to grab my attention but the bright yellow 1978 Packin' Pacer. It's funny because in reminiscing about my brother's "fleet", the Pacer was always the one I remembered most vividly. As a child, I never understood what it was that inspired him to buy it. He seemed excited to get it, and I suppose that's all that mattered, but it didn't look particularly fast or cool to me. To this day, I grit my teeth when the only color in which I can find a given Hot Wheels car is yellow. Yet in spite of all these things (or perhaps because of them), it was still the car that stood out best in my memory. And there it was again, in the palm of my hand. Needless to say, I promptly dropped it. D'oh! Also in the bag was one of the even older cars with which my brother played, but it turned out to be a Johnny Lightning, not an early Hot Wheels. Moments later, as I showed off my discovery, I learned that the same was true of my other brother's beloved purple Mako Shark, which he still keeps carefully stashed away in a closet. This would explain why I could never find an image in the Hot Wheels database that made me want to shout, "That's it! We had that one!" (with the exception of the yellow monstrosity known as Open Fire). Still, even an old Johnny Lightening has increased significantly in value. So naturally I proceeded to drop that one as well. D’oh- d'oh!!!!! As it turned out the Pacer was the only Hot Wheels car in the bag. And yet I was immeasurably happy to see it. I could almost forgive it's being yellow. Almost.