Santa Claus 

It’s hard to remember when I quit believing in Santa Claus! 

I recall being somewhere around five or six years old and my brother and I would visit our dad in Tillamook Oregon.  Our father had the dubious honor of playing Santa Claus to a large group of somewhat culturally deprived coastal children who would march from the movie; ‘Tame the guns of Cimarron’ or some other cowboy saga, across the street into the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) meeting hall.  There –they would enter the ‘man cave’ of the mostly World War II veterans and suck in the elixir of stale tobacco smoke and spilled alcohol scents through their pre-pubescent noses.  They were giddy with hubris!

Our parents were divorced, which was largely unheard of in the heady months and years following our grand defeat of the German bastards and the Japs.  On TV, I grew to love ‘Leave it to Beaver’ and the simple white picket fences of his neighborhood, let alone the multitude of cowboy shows that erupted onto the black and white screen that graced our living room in Eugene in those same months and years.  My dad had a small portable television in his dank apartment in Tillamook – and I remember thinking that if our parents were ever to reunite – we would have two TV sets.  That would surely provide an opportunity to create envy among my friends – where pity of our family due to the divorce – seemed to have taken the place of their otherwise innocent preoccupations.

Our job was to be Santa’s helpers!  It would start in the back room of the VFW hall where everything in the room was painted white.  This included the bathroom door and door handle. The door itself closed and opened reluctantly and noisily and would stay closed only because of the paint layers in the door jamb; the handle itself had long since become inoperable.  The room was cold.  The book shelves; the middle shelf was the only one that had any books – and they were hard-bound editions of something or other – whose spacing forced the wall into a perpetual frozen toothless grin.  Santa himself would slump on the chair during the break when the movies were playing across the street.  He would strip to his t-shirt and suspenders from his waist up, with his quite ample midriff poked slightly down between his legs.  Rid of his white wig, his hair was short and slicked back with a part in the middle, his white pancake-flat beard would rest on his chest, the leather boot facades of the Santa Suit would lay like small lifeless heaps over his brown wingtips and his face held a vacant stare.  He smoked cigarettes and always had a drink nearby.  Santa had sort of let himself go since the war.  Our job was to huddle nearby and wait with him until the next movie let out then we would help put him back together and go into the dark hall where we handed out bags that contained toys and candy to the line of children gathering there.  Being Santa’s helpers was not a huge job.

It seems like the weather in Tillamook was always lousy when we visited.  The incessant rain; the dimness of the light made everything appear in shades of brown and gray.   Once, during a particularly high flood – the river chose the main highway that connected Vancouver B.C. to Tijuana to deliver rapids as it diverted through Tillamook! 

Back in Eugene and during an ensuing conversation, my brother’s friend Dale, who was two years older than me, once winked at my brother when he said “You know Santa doesn’t really bring all those presents don’t you?” 

My brother and I looked at each other briefly!  “Are you sure?”  My brother said!