The Refrigerator Box

Does anyone out there have fond memories of playing in an empty refrigerator box?  When I look at old pictures of past Christmases, and take inventory of the toys of each year, I have no memory of any of them being my favorite.  Some look familiar, but none of them, with the exception of a Creepy Crawler set and Easy Bake Oven, take me back to hours upon hours of total immersion of my attention.  Take those hours, and multiply them by 10; that is my ranking of the refrigerator box!  Sure, the other toys were fun.  They provided some variation of choices, but none like the giant empty box.  It was a blank slate with endless possibilities.  It was down in the basement where my sister and I could play without disturbing our parents.  It was a clubhouse.  Unlike our bedroom, we could decorate it any way we wanted to.  We cut windows (no easy task with school scissors), hung scrap pieces of fabric for curtains, and used crayons to color the inside and outside of the box.  It was important to us, and we were proud of what we had done.  Recalling time spent with my favorite "toy", I'm surprised that I don't remember its passing.  There must have been a very sad day when it became necessary to dispose of the beloved refrigerator box.    

Memories of the infamous box were brought on by watching my grandson totally enjoying himself at the beach with another simple "toy", a shovel.