All-American Gifts for Kids

Insight on the News, Jan 10, 2000 by Joseph Sobran

A new and unique gift catalog was designed to Inspire the Imagination of American boys.

There are doubtless those who were all cataloged-out by Christmas, not including those many mail carriers who probably are spending the post-Christmas holiday at their chiropractors. So it comes as a welcome relief to turn to a catalog that is good all through the year -- one with the unabashed but wholesome manly appeal of the All-American Boy's Adventure Catalog, from the Vision Forum -- 40 slick, handsome pages of gifts for a breed you'd think was dying, if not extinct: the normal kid.

Doug Phillips, the Vision Forum's president (and son of Howard Phillips, presidential candidate of the Constitution Party), celebrates the classic "noble dreams of youth": to "rescue the damsel in distress, explore uncharted lands with Columbus, or ride with Stonewall Jackson."

"The time has come," Phillips writes, "to reverse engines and once again restore Christian virtue to our sons." His selection of gifts has its own message: It's "designed to inspire and motivate boys to dream big for the glory of God." Each gift is illustrated, along with Phillips' surefire copy, which fairly sucks the credit card out of your wallet, I've never seen a catalog so enjoyable to read. (Did you know that Patrick Henry, Stonewall Jackson and Sgt. Alvin York were extremely devout Christians? Or that Henry had 17 children?)

For instance: "A boy will never forget the first real pocket-knife his father gives him." In this case, an elegant (at $48) jackknife 3 inches long with a birchwood handle and leather sheath. "Great for whittling, fishing, and hunting." And still protected, I believe, by the Second Amendment.

Other gift ideas include inspirational and patriotic books promoting piety, courage and chivalry -- among them the historical adventure novels of good old G.A. Henry ($20 each, $210 for the whole 15-volume set) -- Indian (not "Native American," please) arrowheads ($8), Indian tepees ($145 and $230), a safari belt ($32), a brass pocket compass ($11), a toolbox ($48), a genuine Texas longhorn skull ($135), a 1955-vintage yo-yo ($12), a crystal radio kit ($35), a wooden sled ($55), miniature covered wagons ($87 and $135), several telescopes (up to $228) and a pouch of glass marbles ($6.50). Land sakes, I'd nearly forgotten such things ever existed!

There also is a variety of headgear: a Patrick Henry hat ($23), a coonskin cap ($20), a jungle missionary hat ($20), a train engineer's hat ($10), a Stonewall Jackson kepi ($11), a Sherlock-style deerstalker cap ($30) and a World War I doughboy helmet ($18). No cowboy hats, though, or Indian headdresses.

Low-tech weaponry abounds: a Bushman knife ($20), a powder horn ($30), a tomahawk ($22), a boomerang ($16), a slingshot ($14), a lacquered hardwood shillelagh ($85) and reproductions of Civil War bullets ($14). At one rime you could take such things to school for show-and-tell; now you'd be risking arrest.

For the musician, there are the Minuteman fife ($35), a Revolutionary War field drum ($22), a harmonica ($32), an ocarina ($58), a backpacker guitar ($198) and of course a bugle ($25). Other miscellanies include an ice-cream maker ($170), a rock tumbler ($65), a Swedish camp stove ($11) and, for leisure between adventures, a cozy Roosevelt (Teddy, of course) chair ($1,325) and ottoman ($475). Actually, as you might guess, this chair, like the electric train of yore, is really more for Dad.

Holiday shopping tip: Never give a kid a chair! It's like giving him a shirt -- something only an aunt would do. And if he finds out the chair cost more than a thousand bucks, that only makes it worse: He makes heartsick calculations of how many toys he could have bought with that kind of money.

But the priciest item in the catalog is an authentic Teddy Roosevelt signature, framed, on a sheepskin document ($1,625). That, too, could buy a lot of toys or, for that matter (for you aunts out there), shirts.

Otherwise, it all promises fun and fascination, with the exception of the Patrick Henry bust ($85). In my day, boys didn't go for busts of even the greatest heroes. Besides, in these iconoclastic days, busts can backfire: I myself once had a small bust of Shakespeare, but then I found out he didn't even write those plays. Who knows what they may dig up about Patrick Henry?

Not that Phillips is worried about that. He's the sort of man who still can talk about the Founding Fathers without mentioning slavery, genocide or the fact that Mrs. Henry had to spend much of her life barefoot and pregnant. We need more like him. Heck, we needed more like him even when we had more like him.

Joseph Sobran is running for vice president on the Constitution Party ticket.