Christmas blues: For a 60s kid, Sears meant cheapness

I spent my boyhood in suburban Upstate New York, just outside Syracuse, in a leafy town of 25,000 residents named after the Roman General Marcus Furius Camillus.

I was a skinny, wiseacre kid, doing goofy, follow-the-leader things with my crew of suburban friends. We shot millions of baskets at the bent hoop in my driveway. From Peterson Drive, the middle-class street I called home, I could easily walk to an outdoor shopping plaza, public golf course or a farmer’s mysterious cornfield.

It was the late 1960s and I ran the streets as the Vietnam War raged, oblivious to Walter Cronkite’s evening reports of American boys dying in a conflict they didn’t understand.

For me and my boys, wars could wait: we were too busy trying to outdo one another — pack the hardest ice-ball or tell the best pun.

When one of us got the latest newfangled gadget, everybody else wanted one, too.

One autumn afternoon, I almost fainted with desire when I laid eyes on the street’s newest “it” contrivance: a Schwinn bike. I don’t think I ever wanted anything more, before that day or since, (with apologies to various wives).

Jamie Privon, one of two twins a few years my junior, rode past my house on his spanking new Stingray. He shot me a satisfied smile.

I gasped.

The bike’s elongated frame featured a banana-shaped seat and high chopper-style handlebars, with multicolored plastic tassels that dangled gloriously from each end.

The best and yes, sexiest, of all was the padded metal sissy-bar that shot into the air like an elongated shark fin. 

And the coup de grace? Baseball cards attached to the spokes that made a flapping noise, a purring motor-head sound for boys not yet versed in car engines.

I just had to have one.

Jamie’s father, George Privon, was an engineer at the Carrier air-conditioning plant in Syracuse. He made good money for his family of five boys. When I did sleep-overs with Chris, the twin’s older brother and my good friend, their refrigerator, freezer and food shelves were always packed with cookies, ice cream and frozen pizza.

At home, my fridge was most often howlingly empty. 

My father’s salary for the New York Telephone Company strained to support seven children — five girls and two boys. When Chris stayed over at my house, I’d shudder in shame at a refrigerator that might contain only a lonely water bottle, and a few condiments — pickles, maybe a ketchup bottle — on the shelves. 

Instead of pizza, I ate raw potatoes sprinkled with salt for flavor and ketchup sandwiches laced with black pepper. 

I knew I couldn’t keep up with the Privons. 

But I wanted that bike.

After dinner one night, I began my campaign. Like with most demanding kids, my parental instructions for what to buy me at Christmas were specific:

This year, it had to be a stingray. It had to have a banana seat and sissy bar. Most importantly, it had to be a Schwinn.

And never, never ever a Sears.

Sears meant cheapness. I even hated the sound of the word.

My family bought everything at Sears & Roebuck — from appliances to furniture to back-to-school clothes, counting on high-quality goods at reasonable prices.

I knew my parents as well as I knew my well-oiled baseball glove.

They were Sears & Roebuck zombies, War War II generation holdovers

For me, Schwinn was the future, the kind of bike that could take a kid to the moon.

“If you can’t get a Schwinn, don’t buy me a bike!” I begged. “Just don’t get a Sears!”

It was my first hint that not everything in life was good, that things could get shitty.

Later, I developed acne and got caught shoplifting. One year, I grew an entire foot and subconsciously began to slouch, a posture I carry to this day. 

I failed at baseball and got cut from the high school golf team, nicknamed “the apple” for choking on so many critical short putts. My teenage girlfriend told me she was pregnant in the same breath she said she’d terminated the child. I got arrested for public intoxication and possession of marijuana.

At age 18, I fled Camillus for college and never came back, never even looking back as I slouched toward adulthood.

I knew none of this, of course, as I waged my Stingray campaign. 

On Christmas morning, my younger brother and I ran down to the living room from our second-floor bedroom.

I stayed in the background, on the top of the stairs, as my brother raced toward the same fake tree my father had erected each year -- and the pile of gifts scattered beneath it.

For a moment, my hopes soared.

Because right there, resting on its kick-stand, was a sparkling new stingray.

It was purple and it was gorgeous, and I was in love.

Then my brother looked up and, in a small voice, said:

“It’s a Sears.”

I turned around and went back to bed.

For months, I cringed as kids shouted their regular refrain of “Cheap! Cheap!” each time I peddled past.

With no children of my own, I’ve never known the pressure my parents felt to provide for so many with so little. 

For the longest while, I blamed them for that boy’s insult-of-a-bike.

I don’t anymore.