Half a century ago, the kid in this ad could have been me.
All right, the fire-engines are wrong: these are contemporary (from the period of the ad in the 1950s-60s) and made of metal by a known manufacturer, while mine were deliberately retro (from the 1930s) made of plastic and still a mystery.
But the rest - including that regrettable crewcut, because I had one* - is so accurate it's uncanny.
Uncanny is good.
Uncanny creates stories...
*I also had a plaid flannel shirt worn with a white tee-shirt under it, cuffed blue jeans and black baseball boots with white rubber toecaps and circular ankle-bone protectors. Small wonder that Mum & Dad sometimes thought their son had taken a wrong turn before birth. I never did turn into an American - but I eventually married one... :-)
