The World of Henry Orient

Each of the apartments in our building on Embassy Row were time capsules for the lives their inhabitants had left behind in the places they called Home. Without access to anything of the moment, the event of a newcomer was a glimpse into the future. My family was the Camelot edition of the 1963 Holiday Season.

My parents were young and stylish with important people to meet and places to go. A babysitter for the evening was found in Ground Floor, Apartment 1A; an English War Bride having lived in our building since the Atomic Age with her GI husband and teenaged son.

Dr. Denton footsteps outside their apartment door, sing song greetings from the most astonishing looking woman I had ever seen. Hair in pink curlers, eyes framed in black, pink chiffon swirling with every step she took. A cigarette in one hand that never seemed to reach her lips, a tiny white poodle tucked under her arm. "Won't you come in and have a look at the tree!"

I will never forget the evening my brother and I spent side by side entranced by the sight of a silver Christmas tree that whirred as it turned from pink to blue to green.Time had stood still in a most delightful way in Apartment 1A.

A trip to the Antique Mall found a few Atomic Age items coming home with me. The Napco Christmas girl is a planter standing about seven inches tall. It is marked with the year I was born, 1958. What a lucky find!