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The Night Santa Claus Saved My Life
At the age of 17, I’m walking the late-night long walk home from my job as a radio announcer at WUOA-FM. It’s nearly Christmas and, like many Tuscaloosa days, this morning began warm and humid, so I’m wearing my short-sleeved shirt and jeans. Now, a cold front is upon me, and suddenly I’m walking home from work in sub-freezing weather circa 1959 A.D.
It’s cold, so cold.
My Cushman motor scooter, held together with duct tape and optimism, has finally broken down, and the only way to get from the University Campus to Eastwood Avenue is to trudge. I have to walk east on University Boulevard and cut across the railroad tracks to get to 15th Street, but it’s getting harder and harder to do this, and my breath is coming in short and frosty gasps.
Everything is starting to freeze up.
My painful nose and painfully cold toes are protesting. My bare arms are screaming for fur.
Gloveless hands are poked down into my too-thin pockets. Thighs are cold for lack of thermal underwear.
My teeth are gritted tight against their chatter and at this point, I’m wondering whether I can make it. I remember all those tales about people freezing to death without knowing it, and at this moment, I don't know if I can make it.
I’m tired of painful walking.
It’s too cold to walk.
Now I’m feeling drowsy...
What will be the last thing I see?
Childhood comes ‘round in my mind. There’s Santa, coming to take me back into his arms. I can always depend on Santa. He’s made me feel good in the worst of times.
Wait—where am I? I’m walking along in the darkness—and I’m hallucinating about SANTA!
But now I hear Santa, I actually hear him.
This has got to be the end of me, I chatter to myself, leaning into the wind.
What I hear are sleigh bells, and who has sleigh bells in the Deep South on a snowless, freezing-cold night?
I look around to find Santa, and see an old pickup truck, trundling along, a loose chain dangling from its rear gate, making those sleigh bell sounds. The truck slowly passes, heading toward the distant railroad tracks. I shake my head and laugh involuntarily.
The rush of adrenaline gives me enough energy and body heat to jumpstart myself.
I’m inspired and ready to walk faster, now. The truck’s chains have given me the boost I need to survive.
Then, squinting ahead, I see a red-mittened hand and a flash of fluffy white cuff poke outside the driver’s window of the pickup truck for an instant, as it disappears in the distance. A wave?
I rub my eyes and the truck is gone.
My pace quickens, and soon I am home, warming my hands and thighs over the floor furnace, drinking hot chocolate, and remembering with a sheepish grin and unclenching teeth the moment when I really believed Santa was coming to rescue me.
Now, fifty years later, I really do believe it
- Jim Reed (C) 2006 A.D. Submitted by Phillip LaMoreaux
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