Christmas Stories by the webmaster

Stray Lake U, the college of last resort

'Run That By Me Again,' from a real newspaper column of stuff and nonsense

Hickory Farms is
an American favorite
for your table
for your gifts
for the holidays
for anytime.
Order here.

Hickory Farms

The Santa Claus trap

By
Bob Markwalter

I was 10 years old when we set the Santa Claus trap, and I was full of grown-up knowledge and swagger, and quite sure that Santa was a figment of my parents' imaginations, or worse, no more than a lowly shill for department stores. And worse still, I wanted to prove it.

Not that the Santa Claus trap was my idea. I wasn't that clever, or that brave. The Santa trap was the brainchild of Jeff Thompson, who seemed to have most of the ideas that got us into trouble. Then again, he had most of the ideas that were fun, and we would have followed him anywhere and done nearly anything he wanted, because charisma oozed from Jeff long before anyone called it that.

"We" were the neighborhood gang, and we were inseparable. There were Jeff and I, and Far (for Farley) Hickman, and Lute Wilson (Lute was the name on his birth certificate; we knew because Mrs. Combs made him prove it in third grade). The four of us went everywhere and did everything together.

Jeff was a year older, and light years wiser. It was Jeff who clued us to Santa Claus. Far and Lute argued at first, but I knew better, and in the end we were convinced: the jolly elf was a fraud.

Our parents didn't like Jeff, especially when we came home with the scoop on Santa. I suppose they knew we would get skeptical sooner or later, but the idea that Jeff turned our heads somehow made it worse.

"He's so young," I heard Mom telling my father.

"He's ten," Father answered. "He's gotta learn sometime."

But Mom kept after me, wanting me to hang on for just one more year, to believe for one last Christmas. She started leaving little presents by my bed at night, gum and baseball cards and candy, and saying, "Why, I believe Saint Nick has been here, Ronald. Look what he left!"

It was all too much. And Far and Lute were getting the same treatment (we were sure our mothers collaborated on this kind of thing).

"I can't take any more," Lute wailed one day as we walked home from school. "If I hear one more time how we have to clean the chimney or bake the cookies or..."

"We don't even have a fireplace," Far told us, "so I have to be sure the shrubs outside the living room windows are trimmed, so they won't snag Santa's coat!"

We hooted at that one, all except Jeff, who was strangely silent, even when we passed Mrs. Castle's house. He usually whistled for Mrs. Castle's dog, which would start barking, which would bring from the rest of the neighborhood mutts a chorus that sent people to porches and windows to scowl at us as we passed.

Lute finally asked, "Catgut your tongue, Jeff?"

It was an old joke, but we laughed, then Jeff said, "Guys, what happens on Christmas morning?"

Lute and Far and I looked at each other until I finally said, "Presents."

"Where?" asked Jeff.

"Under the tree, of course," Lute answered.

"And how do they get there? No, wait, how do your parents tell you they get there?"

"Santa," Far said. "Jolly old Saint Nick, the Flying Figment."

"Right," Jeff said, a grim smile crossing his face. "In and out, down the chimney, through the locked door, the closed window. But guys, not this year. This year, we trap him."

We were speechless. And, speaking for myself, worried. Doubting was one thing, but fiddling around like this was another. What if Jeff had somehow gotten some wrong information? What if we woke up to bare floors under our trees? What if ...

"What if we set a foolproof trap and there was nothing in it on Christmas morning?" Jeff asked.

Then I understood. It wasn't catching the old boy that mattered, it was setting a foolproof trap. Nothing was so important to Jeff as a bigger, better, more complicated machine or contraption, and I knew there would be no stopping him.

We were still a week away from Christmas, and as the candy and baseball cards kept coming Jeff said no more about the Santa trap, but we knew he had not forgotten. He was planning, thinking, experimenting in his basement.

On Dec. 23, the day we got out of school for the holidays, he told us, "I've got it worked out. Far, you get as much rope as you can lay your hands on, all kinds of it. Lute, you pick up every empty can and bottle you can find, maybe go down to the dump, lots and lots of them. Ronnie, you get a couple of gallons of paint. We meet at your house, Ronnie, tomorrow just before dark."

We argued for a while about who had to get what and why, but Jeff wasn't explaining much, so we parted company early that night to start our scavenging.

The next night, Christmas Eve, we met in my garage as dusk gathered. Snow had been falling since early afternoon, but we all had what we were sent for, and Jeff was carrying a camera, one of those big, old news photographer types with a giant flashbulb. He finally let us in on the plan.

My house had been picked because it had a chimney in the center of the roof and a good-sized bit of lawn on all sides. I had to admit, the trap was a gem, and Jeff put us right to setting it.

First, he had me shinny up the old walnut tree next to the house carrying some of Far's rope, which Far had evidently gathered from just about every house in town where the stuff hadn't been nailed down - he had coil upon coil of it. I wasn't nuts about going up the tree, not just because of the snow, but also because my father had been talking about having it cut down before it blew over. But when Jeff ordered, we obeyed.

The walnut hung over the house, and I lowered myself onto the roof, braced my feet against the gutter, and lassoed the chimney (we were all big fans of Saturday morning TV westerns). Next, I threw the free end of the rope over the crown of the roof, then lassoed the chimney with another mile or so of hemp and let the end of this dangle over the gutter where I was braced. If my mother hadn't been baking cookies for Santa, she'd have seen me two stories above the lawn in a snowstorm and fainted.

By the time I crawled down out of the walnut, Jeff already had Far and Lute up in trees out in the yard, tying off the ropes so they stood taut just a few inches off the roof. Any sleigh trying to land on my house would be caught like a plane landing on the deck of an aircraft carrier.

The rest of the rope we wove all around the lawn, tying it to trees and shrubs and downspouts, so you couldn't walk without tripping, especially under the windows. The cans and bottles were tied to this vast web, and anyone wandering into it would make enough noise to wake the dead or at least all the neighborhood dogs.

Finally, the two cans of bright yellow paint I had taken from the back of the cabinet where my father hoarded the stuff were cracked open, then propped over the windows of our living room and carefully connected to trip wires. Anyone who tried to deliver toys from the ground would be drenched.

It was dark now, and the snow was ending, but it had built up to a depth of several inches on lawns, driveways, and the street. We slid down the incline of my drive and turned to admire our work.

"Let's see him wriggle out of that," Jeff said, raising his camera to capture his creation for posterity.

It was then that Mrs. Trinkle's garage door opened.

Mrs. Trinkle lived next door. She was about a million years old, she never went out of the house, and she was deaf as a post. Her driveway also had a pretty steep slope. And she picked this night to drive to her son's home, rather than take the bus or have him pick her up.

We stood silently - I'm sure our mouths were hanging open - as Mrs. Trinkle's Packard backed out of the garage. I would remember the next few seconds every time a college professor talked about the inevitability of Greek tragedy.

The Packard cleared the garage door, Mrs. Trinkle stepped on the brakes, and the big car began to slide, slowly at first, then faster and faster. She locked the brakes, jerked the steering wheel, and the car left her driveway and slid into my side yard.

The old walnut tree truly was on its last legs. When the Packard caught the ropes in the yard that were anchored to the tree, it offered no resistance, falling slowly at first, then crashing into Mrs. Trinkle's garage.

The walnut tree also caught one of the ropes stretching across the roof. Far's rope was remarkably strong, because the chimney actually popped straight into the air before it disintegrated and slid brick by brick down the roof and into the gutter, which groaned once before it snapped and fell.

I heard my mother scream, then one of the living room windows slid up and my father's head popped into the night.

Mrs. Trinkle was out of the car by this time, standing by the door. She took one look at my father, dripping yellow paint, and let loose her own scream. I wanted to cry.

By now, most of the neighborhood was in the street or at a window. And most of the neighborhood dogs were in my yard.

The noise was deafening. Even Mrs. Trinkle heard it (she screamed again).

There were dogs trailing every imaginable kind of rope and can and bottle, and soon they had toppled the paint at the other window and the whole scene had the look of a flashback in an Italian movie. My father just stood in the window, dripping paint while my mother tried to wipe him clean with a dish towel.

Behind me, a flash bulb went off. I looked around at Jeff, who smiled and shrugged.

The police began to arrive - they came from miles around - and they started chuckling, then laughing. The neighbors came into the street, soon hot chocolate was being passed around, and a real party was underway. Even my father and mother came out, he dripping paint, she wringing her hands and wiping at him with dish towels.

We were spared the worst of it that night, because my father assured Mrs. Trinkle his insurance would rebuild her garage and the police were laughing too hard to do much more than untangle the dogs. But we dreaded the next morning.

I was especially worried. If we had set a Santa trap and the old boy was for real, he would know, right? And for Christmas I would get ... but if he was a figment, then my presents were surely destined for the return department.

I went upstairs without so much as a glance at the big tree in our living room. I lay awake until dawn, which was crisp, clear, and beautiful except for the missing chimney, the mess on the lawn, and Mrs. Trinkle's garage. I crept downstairs before my parents woke.

To my amazement, the tree was surrounded with presents, everything I had asked for and more. I started to throw myself into the bounty, but was overcome with quilt.

I had wrecked our house, Mrs. Trinkle's garage, our lawn, my father's dignity, and most of my mother's dish towels. I shrugged into my coat and went outside to survey the damage.

It was not pretty. The lawn was full of bottles, cans, bricks, and enough rope to rig a clipper ship. The walnut tree rested in - not on - Mrs. Trinkle's garage. There was a gaping hole where our chimney had been, and in the snow on the roof ...

I blinked and rubbed my eyes. In the snow on the roof were tiny little tracks and the unmistakable lines of a set of runners. I could only stare.

Then my father was standing beside me, still smelling faintly of oil paint and looking a bit yellow. He put his arm around my shoulders and stared up at the roof with me, then we went inside for breakfast and presents.

The sun had melted the tracks in the snow by the time Far, Lute, and Jeff came over, with their parents, so I said nothing about what Dad and I had seen. We kids cleaned the yard, feeling like the condemned, while our parents talked in the kitchen.

In the end, we weren't keelhauled or put to hard labor or even grounded. It did take us six years to pay my father for the damage we'd done, but as I look back it was a great lesson.

I look back, too, on that day the next week when Jeff ran up the porch steps and through the front door. I was still going over my presents, especially absorbed with a build-it-yourself radio set, when he blurted, "You're not going to believe this!"

He was holding the photograph he had snapped on Christmas Eve. I glanced in his direction, then went back to my radio.

"Look!" he said.

"I don't need to," I told him. "I believe."

Copyright 1998, Robert A. Markwalter

Bookmark this site!