“Okay, Simon? Okay…”
Dateline: 1958 Christmas: Buffalo, N.Y.
“Never worry about the size of your Christmas tree. In the eyes of children, they are all 30 feet tall.”
~ Larry Wilde
It is the night before Christmas and all through Buffalo, N.Y., every child my age, 6, is sitting in front of a black and white television screen.
My TV is a white and gold PHILCO and my father is frantically crawling around the living room floor looking for the crumpled up aluminum foil thing that sits on top of one of the rabbit ears so we can watch Channel 4.
“What time is it mother?”
“Five minutes to five.”
“DAD COME ON…”
“We have plenty of time.”
I may or may not know all the times on the clock but I do know one of the times for sure … the one with the big long hand straight up and the short hand on the “V.”
“DAD!”
“Got it,” and he gets up and puts it back in its place and then moves the antennas to line up with the lines on the tape he has stuck on top of the TV, the lines that are marked WBEN.
It is the night before Christmas, and tonight all the children in Buffalo, N.Y., will watch Santa in his workshop get ready to bring presents to us while secretly hoping that Forgetful The Elf “won’t forget my Maverick Double Criss Cross Belt Holster Set With Revolving Barrel Cap Guns.”
Sixty years ago, and I still remember sitting on a 1950s Danish Modern couch in my parents’ living room at 5 p.m. every night from Thanksgiving until Christmas Eve watching WBEN-Channel 4’s 15 minutes of The Santa Show.
I believed every moment of it. I laughed at Forgetful the Elf, worried about Grumble the Elf, but when Santa talked I sat straight up and always pretended to having “been a good boy,” most of the time anyway.
The show ran for 25 years, let me say that again, 25 years, from 1948 until 1973, 25 years 15 minutes at 5 p.m. during the week, a little longer on Saturdays.
And it was live, two “elves” and Santa who read the letters he got in the mail from all the kids in Buffalo. “Forgetful,” it turns out, wasn’t a real Elf at all, was actually a copywriter at the station but from Thanksgiving until Magic Eve played the funny Elf for the entire time the show was on the air.
In 1970 I delivered a pizza to the back door of the station on Elmwood Avenue. WBEN was only a mile or so from Valente’s Pizzeria where I delivered pizza at night, it was snowy, cold, blowing, about 5:30 at night, I rang the bell by the door and stood there shivering.
Within moments the door opened and when I turned around to hand the person the large cheese and pepperoni there stood “Forgetful” in full costume.
I handed him the box and walked away.
“Hey here’s the money,” to which without even looking back I just waved my hand in the universal “don’t worry about it,” symbol.
But before climbing back into my car I yelled, “Merry Christmas Forgetful…and thank you.”
Through the blinding snow I saw “Forgetful” wink and smile at a young man who he knew then he had handed “Santa” a letter written from a child who was now grown, and for whom he hadn’t forgot to put in Santa’s sleigh the Maverick Double Criss Cross Belt Holster Set With Revolving Barrel Cap Guns so long ago.
“…okay, Theodore? Okay…”
“Christmas was on its way. Lovely, glorious, beautiful Christmas, upon which the entire kid year revolved.”
~ Adult Ralphie from A Christmas Story”
I don’t know about you but for me Thanksgiving Day was the Mendoza Line for starting to be good and look, you know, angelic. (See above photo, it was my best shot at looking like, “What, who me?”)
My parents saved this photo of me and Santa because as the note my father sent along with it said, “When Donnie asked Santa what color was his room when Santa told him he knows when he is good or bad.”
Frankly I thought that to be a pretty legit question, even back then I needed two sources before I believed it.
As a little kid at Christmas I was blessed to be the son of a bigger little kid at Christmas, my father Don Sr.
That is the look of a man who is just as excited to play with the Outer Space Ray Gun Complete With 3 Revolving Lens To Shoot Alpha, Beta & Gamma Rays as the little kid (me) standing next to him.
The Saturday before Christmas was the day my father lived for, early in the morning he would hang the lights outside, that Saturday in 1958 the high was around 12 degrees. As soon as the lights were all strung up and each bulb checked to see which one was “the bad one” before any of them lit up, once that was done he would be in the house using some kind of white paint like stuff to paint all the windows in the house to look like they were covered in snow (even though most years the windows were covered in real snow). Right at noon he would walk out of his bedroom with a Santa hat on and announce, “Now it’s Christmas,” which meant a trip “downtown.”
Downtown Buffalo in the late 1950s may or may not have been magical to the adults but to a child at Christmas time, it was the nothing short of the North Pole (with possibly more snow).
And there wasn’t any more magical spot downtown in 1958 than the front window of the JN Adam & Company “Night Before Christmas,” window display, later in 1960 to become known as the A. M. & A.’s Christmas Window after a change in ownership.
It shouted, “Toyland,” and was confirmed by the hundreds of tiny nose prints at about the 3-foot level of the block long window.
Don’t know how long I spent looking at all the toys, it never seemed long enough. I do remember my father standing next to me and picking out all the toys he wanted, many of which seemed to end up on my side under the Christmas tree that morning. Before leaving though it was always a stop at the counter at Woolworth’s for some “hot chocolate” to warm up, then back home where on the Saturday night before Christmas I would fall asleep in my bed listening to my parents decorate the tree while they watched Have Gun-Will Travel followed by Gunsmoke.
“…okay, Alvin? Alvin? Alvin? Okay!…”
“One of the most glorious messes in the world is the mess created in the living room on Christmas day, don’t clean it up to quickly.”
~ Andy Rooney
Christmas 1958 in Upstate New York, Oswego that holiday got a present of more than 6 feet of snow.
Santa, I was told, made it through.
After most of the Christmas paper had exploded throughout our living room my father stood up and announced in his best Santa voice, “Mother…do you think the boy here, Donnie, is old enough to be a man?” to which my mother replied with the simple “what the hell is my husband up to now” look.
“Young man Donnie, give me your hand and follow me…” and then loudly said from his big Santa belly which he didn’t really have, “…Christmas isn’t over yet.”
He then led me to the empty bedroom that always seemed to be locked at Christmas for some reason, threw open the door in the manner Kirk Douglas would do if he was playing Santa, hit the light switch and there before me at my feet about to disappear under the bed was this…
…a real, real life big-boy-almost-a-man toy train!
I don’t know if “OMG” was invented back then but that was what I was thinking but ended up saying, “Holy Cow is that my train?” to which I heard my father say, “Um.”
I did get to play with it … in 1992 when I was 40 years old and set it up for my kids who will someday get to play with it, maybe.
Seems for “playing” with “my” train I wasn’t quite “old enough to be a man” until I was in fact, a man … with kids.
Still makes me nervous to even take the engine out of its box, but whether I “play” with it or not, at Christmas I always dig it out of the closet in the back room, and just look at it because on a flap from one of the train boxes, in very faded pencil is written the word “Donnie’s.”
Written when I was a child, and my father was Santa … 60 years ago this coming Christmas.
Next week – Part 2: “The Treble Hook Christmas” or “Christmas Night in the ER”