That's right. A toy car. It was our big prize of the day.
How can a now-defunct, muddy, tireless Happy Meal type prize from the 1970's be a prize? Even cleaned up, the toy is only a shadow of what it used to be....a real, working matchbox car, a Mercedes Benz 450 SEL at that, with a spiffy gold-yellow paint job and rust-free chrome accents. But consider this: maybe it was an escape for a kid, living in modest 564 Cecil Court (or maybe visiting?), playing on the front walk, dreaming of living big one day.
That prize is part of the home's history. No one famous lived there; it is an ordinary two bedroom, one bathroom bungalow. But dig a little futher and you can picture its past: a family, kids, neighbors, community. And you realize that ordinary can be EXRAORDINARY.