Althouse's post on ticks reminded me of the Kit Cat clock I had on my wall as a kid. It was a Christmas present, as I recall. I wanted a clock in my room, and kids did not have watches in those ancient days. Did its tail and eyes move and did the eyes and numbers glow in some radioactive way, or am I remembering wrong?
That memory of my Kit Cat clock was like a Madeleine to the sentimental Proust in me. I see my room, the window overlooking my Mom's hosta garden, my bookshelf-turned-rock-and-fossil collection, the Revolutionary War prints on the wall, my little desk and chair with my chemistry set in one of the drawers, my first precious little transistor radio, the big aquarium set up with rocks and sand for my various lizards, and my bed that I hid my forbidden Mad Magazines beneath to read with a flashlight after lights-out.
And I remember Question Time as a young lad.
Every night, at lights-out time, my Dad would stand silhouetted in the doorway to invite one question. It would be things like "Why do snow crystals vary when quartz crystals don't?" or "What's this new Continental Drift idea?" or "How do birds navigate?" or "How do sails work?" (We sailed quite a bit.) Being a Harvard guy, an MD, and highly curious about everything in this world, he usually had an answer.
Oh, I also remember asking "Where do babies come from?" (My parents were constantly making annoying new babies, it seemed.) The answer, as I recall, sort of freaked me out but he always did - and still does - say it straight. Except when he doesn't want to. When he was young, he looked like Gary Cooper, was 6'3, never tolerated fools, had Commie politics, and was inner-directed to a fault. The latter three still apply to the laconic and enigmatic old Yankee guy, who would be still working today if his eyes and ears hadn't worn out.
But back to the clock. Remarkably, you can still buy them, but the new ones need batteries. The originals plugged in, which made much more sense because time marches on whether you can find any C batteries or not.
