To whatever excesses float your boat

Remember when we sailed Popsicle sticks in puddles and called it a yacht race?

Of course, American culture was still in its Paleolithic stage at that point and not yet the cradle of excellent ideas like credit default swaps, bundled mortgages and baseball contracts that match the aggregate gross national product of several developing nations.

I mention this because, near Thanksgiving, I saw an ad in The New York Times for a model sailboat.

It was beauty, all right -- made of carbon fiber, titanium, stainless steel and materials called Kevlar, which is often used in bulletproof vests and Mylar, a polyester film known for tensile strength. Were the designers imagining subversive cannon fire at the neighborhood park or unruly sea serpents below our tranquil lakes? You wonder.

The craft was 57 inches long -- larger even than your daughter's neurotic Siberian husky -- and, naturally, radio controlled. It "folds quickly for easy storage and transport," the sales pitch promised, and, in all, seemed the perfect gift for anyone who has secretly been channeling Sir Francis Drake and hoping to repel whatever is left of the Spanish Armada. "Rule the boat pond!" declared the ad copy. And the price? Would you believe $6,250?

In this holiday season, just pondering a model boat worth more than a semester at the good, old State U. (Stony Brook tuition and fees: $4,049.75) does not, as perhaps you would think, make me want to rush off to the nearest Occupy Wall Street encampment or, on a moonless night, steal along the North Shore, from, say, Lattingtown to Lloyd Harbor, keying Lamborghinis and BMWs.

Not at all.

Actually, I view the high-end model boat, like the $12,300 Chanel watch (40 diamonds, mother of pearl dial) advertised in the same issue of the Times, as evidence that the country, down on its luck at the moment, is going to be all right.

As Thanksgiving approached, in fact, I found myself adding to my yearly list of things-for-which-to-be-grateful, the extraordinarily rich Americans who, though often reviled, help us keep things in perspective. (Also on my 2011 list is the website that helped me find Wigwam wool "sweat socks," as they were called when we wore them in gym class back at McKinley Junior High in Brooklyn. Feet, rejoice!)

Be honest, don't you feel better knowing that among our citizens are those so deeply dedicated to conspicuous consumption that they would spend more than 6,000 bucks to slip a nearly 5-foot mini-yacht into the drink at Belmont State Park just to "rule the pond!"? Isn't there something reassuring about an economic system that -- though inequities abound, and though many are downhearted -- produces a spendthrift-thrift that admires stuff of such splendid uselessness? In the end, how can a nation go wrong where even a few are so wild with ambition and cavalier with their cash? Crazy, sure. But American! Keep in mind, there once were people who bought small tanks called Hummers for duty no more dangerous than picking up a quart of milk at Dairy Barn. We survived that, too. We can survive anything.

That's just part of it.

What do you remember most about the holidays? If you are anywhere near my age and from a family that occupied the same income bracket of my working-class mom and dad, it was the little things -- meals that unbelievably began with cheese with blue veins, and figs and nuts and ginger ale "highballs" complete with maraschino cherries and, later, a table of such amazing, and rare amplitude that a boy could be excused if his eyes bulged with his tummy.

Then came the sound of adults, who, having had a sip or two more wine than usual, grew loud and happy and expansive in a fashion that their dutiful lives seldom allowed. "Here's to us," Dad might say. "Happy days." There would be the clink of glasses, and a chorus of "bottoms up!" and the joyous trickle of glasses being topped off.

At Christmas, there was a little Lionel engine that ran circles under the tree and the wonder of being awakened at midnight with the news, that, yes, yes, dear, he has been here and just a moment ago went right out the window and down the fire escape to the sled and reindeer waiting in the street and yes, he did eat the cookies, and look -- look! -- what he left, boxes with bows and a red stocking tied to the cupboard that bulged with fruit and, with luck, a fuzzy stuffed animal or balsa wood plane.

Yup, that's the way it was -- something along those lines. No yachts, no watches, nothing that cost more than what most people made in a year but plenty, plenty. Isn't that the idea -- figuring out what's enough and what's too much?

People will differ on this, but I say thanks to the folks who have such unbridled optimism that they consistently, happily, unapologetically go overboard. It wouldn't be America without them. Here's to them, here's to us.