A Christmas Excerpt...Touring with Santa

It was the Friday night before Christmas, a crisp starlit evening. We were cruising the township roadways with Santa Claus on the rescue. It was an annual event, much enjoyed by many of the smaller members of the community and, truth be told, by many of the bigger ones as well.

The lights were flashing, the siren screaming, the air horn blasting and regular sounds of “Ho Ho Ho” were echoing in the night air from behind me. I rode the officer’s seat in the cab, just enjoying the atmosphere and the smiling children we encountered on our slow tour. My fun was broken by a radio call.

 “Comm Center to Chief 36,” the radio query came. After I responded, the dispatcher asked, “You wouldn’t happen to be out with Santa Claus by chance, would you, Chief?”

“Affirmative,” I answered.

“Can you call in by phone?” the dispatcher asked. 

I didn’t have a good feeling as I reached for the cell phone mounted on the dash. Was some scrooge upset by the siren noise, I wondered. When I got the dispatcher on the line, it was nothing like that.

“Hey, Chief, we just had a call from a grandma on Greenfield Road. She was upset ‘cause she had been out when you went by and her grandchildren just missed Santa.”

"Please tell me she didn’t call in on 911?” I asked the dispatcher, almost dreading his response. The 911 emergency line is certainly not the proper method to obtain a visit by Santa Claus.

“Oh yeah, she did,” he said with a laugh.

“Sorry about that, we’ll take another run down that road.” We have to take care of a grandma like that, I thought to myself.

“Thanks, Chief, and Merry Christmas,” the dispatcher answered, as we both disconnected the line. 

 

 

Christmas Memories....Doing Santa's Work

Christmas was always special when I was growing up. We were always up before dawn to see what Santa had brought us. I truly believed in him. Once, I even thought I heard the hooves of reindeer tapping on the roof of our house while Santa was making his delivery.

One year, one of the presents I received was a multiple level gas station/ parking garage in which you could drive and park and pretend to work on your matchbox cars. My sister was receiving something called the “Imagination Dollhouse”. Both had “some assembly required,” somewhere in excess of a gazillion pieces.

My sister and I were sound asleep in bed, which we knew was important, because Santa wouldn’t come if we were awake. Mom and Dad were getting out the hidden presents and the toys that needed assembly when the Grinch decided to pay a visit in the form of a house fire. The Plectron went off and so did my father, leaving Mom to finish putting the presents under the tree, and more importantly, begin the toy assembly.

Dad barely made it back before we woke up that Christmas morning. As usual, we were wide-eyed and thrilled with everything Santa had brought.

Years later, in the post-Santa period, Mom would regularly retell the story of that Christmas Eve, complete with uproarious laughter as she described the “millions of pieces necessary” to assemble the toys that year. She stayed up all night, the elf completing Santa’s work.

An excerpt from Fire Men: Stories From Three Generations of a Firefighting Family