View-Master

I may have been very young, but I have been endowed with a good memory. Certain events are like tattoos on the inside of my eyelids; I can close my eyes and see these events happening in front of me right now.

One of my strongest childhood memories is from 1951. We were living in Calcutta and my grandmother had gone to visit her daughter (my aunt),  in Florida and she returned just before Christmas with a thrilling gift for me:  it was a View-master. I’m sure many of you listeners know what a view-master is, with its exciting 3-D pictures. 

One of the View-master reels my grandmother brought back for me that Christmas was the story of Rudolph the red nose reindeer. The song was written by Gene Autry and remains a staple of radio playlists for the Christmas season. There is also a television broadcast using stop-action models which tells the story with little (wooden?) figures. Every year when I see it, my View-Master reel comes flooding back into my memory-bank!