Out of the Inkwell

It's nearly Christmas and these two items stir up some pleasant memories.

I was never one of the kids in love with Santa, not was I a scoffer. I suppose I was a Santa agnostic. I would sit on his lap and tell him what I wanted just in case, but I didn't buy the whole yarn.

I think it was the chimney aspect. We didn't have one and I was told he came through the window in our house. That sounded just a bit too common for the jolly old elf.

Well, the year a real telegram delivery person knocked on the door and gave us this telegram from Santa I was impressed. It didn't occur to me at the time that my parents had sent it. I saw it as some sort of proof that Santa was out there somewhere. If nothing else it caused me to question my agnostic position!

The other photo is from the Christmas season of 1983. I was in the middle of my five-year tenure as a talk show host on WREB in Holyoke, Mass. The Chamber of Commerce asked me if I would be the official city Santa at the tree lighting and I said yes. They supplied a great suit and brought me to the City Hall in a horse drawn sleigh (with wheels...good thinking as there was little snow at the time).

The acid test was that my wife Mary had brough our young nephew Andrew to the event to see Santa. I was sweating under the suit as the kid was a believer and I didn't want him to pull down my beard and see it was his uncle.

He didn't. He told Mary that he had seen the "real" Santa. He's now 29 and I don't know if he remembers this event, but I do.

©2006 by Gordon Michael Dobbs. Merry Christmas to all!