May 19, 2019:

I no longer have the jet fighter simulator.

It was a thing of impressive imagination. Inventive: cardboard for consoles, an old vacuum cleaner handle for joystick. Functional: the switches "worked", meaning they lit the indicator lights. Powered by a nine-volt lantern battery and several miles of proverbial spaghetti, the wiring I tore apart and rebuilt from scratch several times.

I started by faking switches, using erector set parts and felt pens. Over the weeks I'd replace the fakes with real ones, one handful at a time, following each family trip to FedMart where I had a weekly budget of a couple of dollars for expansion.

If I were ten today I'd wheedle a large tablet from an indulgent parent, running one or another flight simulator or air war app connected to a functional joystick. The rest of the control panels would remain as they were.

But when I was ten it was 1968, when imagination had to make do.