Like most children, I believed in Santa up to the minute I was presented with incontrovertible proof that he … I can’t bring myself to say it.
Growing up in Auxvasse, Mo., population 507 according to the 1950 census, the only retail establishment in town that sold Christmas toys was my father’s, and Dryden’s General Store didn’t stock very many. Every November dad would receive a shipment of simple, inexpensive gifts his customers’ kids or grandkids might want — yo-yos, Raggedly Anns, cap pistols, scented water in plastic “perfume” bottles, Little Golden Books, and wind-up tin cars stamped “Made in Japan” on the chassis. Every boy knew those cars were destined to break after a few trips across the floor. Not that I wanted any of them anyway — I had my sights set on more sophisticated toys from the Montgomery Ward Christmas catalog, the arrival of which always sent me into a frenzy of want and greed.
I spent hours obsessing over that catalog, trying to narrow down the selections it featured to a short list of what I most wanted Santa to bring — electric trains, Tonka trucks, Lincoln Logs, battery-powered firetrucks, and, most of all, a shiny new bicycle chosen especially for me instead of the beat-up hand-me-down I had inherited from my brother. I never asked for basketballs or catcher’s mitts. Even then I knew I wasn’t destined for athletic competence, just a position at the far end of the bench of any team my parents forced me to join.
Once I made my final decisions — with approximately the same considered intensity my fellow Missourian, Harry Truman, had given to dropping the atomic bomb — my mother helped me compose a letter to Santa whose address, oddly enough, was in care of KRCG-TV in Jefferson City. A few times she talked me out of requesting a gift I wanted. I had no option but to agree to drop it — I was dependent on her to convey my list to Santa because I couldn’t yet express myself in writing (and some of you may say I still can’t in which case I hope he leaves a lump of coal in your stocking). I know now that she had already bought that year's gifts and the ones she talked me out of weren't among the presents stashed in the front hall closet.
Each weekday after school, I faithfully watched a show on KRCG called Showtime, hosted by the affable Curley Hauser. For 11 months of the year, Showtime consisted of cartoons interspersed with visits from cub scout troops and 4-H club members representing the station’s rural viewing area. But from Thanksgiving until Christmas Eve, at least half of every show featured Santa Claus reading wish-list letters from kids my age, almost all of which ended with requests for “candy, nuts and oranges.”
At some point during the Christmas season of 1958, a month after I turned seven, it occurred to me that Santa sounded remarkably like, and wore the same horn-rim glasses as, Lee Gordon, KRCG’s weatherman. That was my first clue.
A few weeks before Christmas that year, the Lions Club sponsored its traditional Christmas parade. Santa entered town by riding down U.S. 54 aboard a firetruck. Once he reached the block-long commercial district, he was met by the pitifully sparse, spectacularly untalented Auxvasse High School band. Santa tossed small bags of candy to the kids along the parade route — the same satiny ribbon hard candy, peanut brittle and chocolate-covered cherry bon-bons Dryden’s Store, whose proprietor was an active Lion, stocked for the holidays. My second clue.
That same year, the local telephone company began giving subscribers’ children the opportunity to call a special line it had built all the way to the North Pole — a remarkable engineering feat for a company that only a few years before had begun offering direct dial phones instead of requiring callers to go through a central switchboard operated by a woman named Millie. Kids who called heard a pre-recorded message from Santa which changed each day, reminding them how many days until Christmas and how he was preparing, with the help of his elves, for his visits to good little boys and girls.
Auxvasse, in case you haven’t figured it out, was a tiny town. Everybody knew everybody else. One day it struck me that Santa sounded exactly like Woody Rice, the phone company’s general manager. Mr. Rice was from Texas — maybe Kansas, I wasn't sure. But I was almost sure that "Santa" was actually Mr. Rice because I recognized his voice. It was distinctive in a town the size of Auxvasse because he, unlike every other man in town, didn’t have a central Missouri twang.
That’s the moment I decided to put my growing doubts about Santa to the test.
I didn’t attend the Christmas parade that year. choosing, instead, to stay home where, from our dining room window, I would be able to see Santa riding into town. When I saw the firetruck coming down the highway, I tuned in to Showtime. Santa was reading letters.
That’s when I knew.
For added confirmation, I dialed Santa who answered my call with a jolly “ho-ho-ho.”
How could Santa be parading around Auxvasse, reading letters on Showtime from Jeff City, and talking to me on the phone from the North Pole?
I regretfully concluded he couldn’t.
I received a package or two from Santa that year, but didn’t confess to my parents what I had figured out about that deceitful old man who had lied to me for years in case someone could give me a perfectly reasonable explanation for his ability to be in three places at one time.
I’m still waiting for that explanation and hoping that, just maybe, someone will.
