I Knew Santa Claus

No one ever told me to never talk about it and they didn't have to because I never did. People would have smiled that smile they smile, patted me on the head, said something along the lines of, "Sure you do son, so do I" and sent me on my way. Had they only known they were right; just like me they did know Santa even though most of them didn't know they knew.

Just like all the rest of the kids back in those days Santa Claus was about as real as you or me and may there be a curse placed upon anyone who ever said anything differently, especially to a child of five or six. For me Santa had even come to my house one year just to check up on how I was doing with that "naughty or nice" thing I started recalling somewhere around the first week or so of December. I was never sure where I stood on the chart I knew he had posted somewhere back at the North Pole but the one thing I knew I wanted more than anything else for a couple weeks in December was to keep it above that 50% line. See, I figured he had some sort of scale or gauge or the like that swung back and forth, up and down over the year and in the end my hope was that it averaged everything out for the whole year and I'd end up at least at 51% to the good side come Christmas Eve. And that evening, standing right there in that little house on Pearl Street behind Pete's tavern Santa had come to visit and see how I was doing.

It would be a few years until I learned that the visit from Santa hadn't been the main man at all but one of his helpers, a guy everyone knew as Sully. To this day I'll sometimes think about that moment, how suddenly there he was in our living room in that really red and white Santa outfit and struggle with thinking maybe, just maybe, it really was Santa.

I don't remember Christmas Day so much but I do recall Christmas Eve when we would go to church and there'd be some little play and all but most of all there'd be a brown paper bag handed out to each and every kid in church filled with amazing and wondrous nuts and candies and an orange. I think the orange was always the biggest mystery of all in those days, even topping the Big Man himself, because I knew there were no oranges to be found in Billy Rabuck's store so where did they come from? Now that I think about it I wasn't allowed to cross 12 & 16 on my own in those days so how was I to know what Kimball's or White's might have had on their shelves?

The wonders of that bag were a joy to this kid. If I was lucky I'd get a piece of candy while we sat there in those pews, not the candy cane for sure but maybe one of those green and red and white squiggly ribbon sort of things to pop in my mouth and suck on. The real fun came when my sister's and my bags were poured out into a big glass bowl, mom would bring out the nut cracker and the set of little picks to dig out every little piece of stubborn nut that refused to let go of the side of that big old Brazil Nut, a nut I'd not learn the proper name of for some years but somehow always knew that it wasn't what my folks called it. Oh what *fun it was to sit there trying to crack those shells just right so the whole nut would still be there. After a try or two the excitement seemed to dissipate and I'd no longer care that much so I'd grip the cracker with both hands, press it against the table top and put all my weight behind it if need be to crush that shell beyond recognition.

I don't remember just when it was that much of what had made the days just before Christmas magical and mysterious began to slip away but I do remember finding Santa's hiding place one year which started bringing up questions I hadn't thought about asking in prior years. The problem was that I hadn't gone looking but rather quite by accident stumbled upon the secret stash hidden in the basement of Rabuck's store. To this day I couldn't tell you why I even opened that door and walked down there that day but I did and what I saw was like pulling back the curtain surrounding the great Wizard of Oz himself. There before me were boxes of this and that and something else but right in the middle of it all was a gleaming red bike which I could only stand and stare at all the while afraid to place even a finger on it for fear of it vanishing into the shadows of that basement.

A few days later on Christmas Eve I'd walk in the front door of our house with my brown bag of candy, nuts and an orange to find that very same shiny red bike in the living room squarely in front of the tree. But how it had gotten there was a bit of a mystery because I thought I had a pretty good eye on all of the suspected Santa's and they'd been in church with me. I was to find out that some Santa's are a bit sneakier than others.

Dad would never talk much about much of anything; not around me or the rest of the family anyways. So I never knew much about him until one evening when he and I sat and talked for a moment. I initiated the conversation with a question I'd been asking the rest of the guys driving truck for Glendenning. I was working as a dispatcher that summer after high school and we'd moved to La Crosse where the station had been moved to from New Lisbon a year earlier. With no clue as to what I was going to do with the rest of my life let alone what direction to look at moving in I was asking the men there one by one if they were doing what they really wanted to do with their lives. Almost all of them were telling me they'd choose something else. Most that was but not all.

When I finally got the chance to ask dad my question he answered by telling me a short story about when he'd been young and on the farm. He told me that one morning he saw a cloud of dust in the distance on the gravel road that ran past his grandma's farm. As he watched he saw something that he'd never seen before getting bigger and bigger the closer it got to where he was standing in the front yard. It was the first eighteen wheeler he could remember ever seeing and he said in that moment he told himself that one day he'd drive one of those big trucks. When we talked that evening he was closing in on twenty years of driving those big rigs over the highways of Wisconsin and into Illinois between New Lisbon and Chicago. He told me that night that it was all he'd ever wanted to do and he wouldn't know what else he might ever want to do.

Several years prior to that conversation there had been a whole bunch of kids and a few parents as well in a small town along the route he most often drove that thought he had another job.

The way I remember the story dad was hauling a load to Chicago in early to mid-December. It was the middle of the 50's and in those days not all railroad crossings had signals. Dad said he didn't see the train coming until the last moment. He said he jumped out of the cab as the engine smashed into the right side of the truck and he watched as the hood of the cab passed under him. Years later when thinking about that moment in my father's life I'd realize that somehow the scenario just didn't seem to add up without either divine intervention or just a small amount of magic. But on that day there must have been a bit of spare magic floating around because when that train hit that truck the next thing anyone knew it looked like Santa's sleigh had exploded and toys of all sorts and kinds were scattered everywhere. Dad said kids appeared out of nowhere and before anyone knew what had happened toys were disappearing in every direction.

Dad was a proud man, proud of his driving record with the company and the fact that he had years and years of accident free driving after that day. The one time I do recall him mentioning anything about that day was when he was talking with a friend in the bar one day. He told him that for several years after the accident whenever he would drive through that little town and the kids would see him they'd wave and shout, "Hi Santa!"

Knowing my dad I have to believe that he would have smiled, winked, maybe blown those air horns and waved back. We all know that's what Santa would do.

A Blonde, A Bike and Blood

How does one forget how it came to be that one of the prettiest girls he’s ever known ended up as his girlfriend? You’d think that something like that would be etched in his memory like a lighthouse telling him that in spite of himself he was on the right trail.

For the life of me I don’t remember how we met though living in such a small town the truth is we all had to bump into each other sooner or later. And for me it wasn’t a bump as much as a head first, full on crash, literally; finding myself holding hands with one of the most beautiful girls in all of the county and absolutely believing that she was all I ever wanted or needed in life.

Of course I was all of fourteen or so and how could I possibly know?

She was Beauty and I was Beast. That was how I saw it and so for me that was how it was. And because of that I had to try to prove to her, in my totally adolescent ways, that she hadn’t made a mistake when she let me hold her hand. I wanted her to know that she hadn’t made a mistake when she let me kiss her. But more than all of that I wanted, no needed, for her to know she hadn’t made a mistake when she’d kissed me back.

New Lisbon, for the most part, is a town built on level ground although there are one or two “hills” to be found. At the intersection of County Road A and Division Street if you’re headed north on Division you’re going to find a place to sled in the winter and in the summer to take your hands off the handlebars, raise your feet off the peddles and close your eyes. At best it’s a slope but when you’re looking for a helping hand from gravity you take what you can get.

The launch point was right there alongside the Methodist church and when you were sledding you’d pretty much run out of steam at the parsonage. To this day I’m not sure whether God is a Methodist or not but the one thing I can say is that no one ever got hurt when we were sledding down that slope. Well, not hurt in an ambulance calling, emergency room sort of way. There were the moments when if you didn’t get out of the way you were going to end up a sort of hood ornament on the next Flexible Flyer. But usually that was more of an intersection of time and lack of coordination and not much of anything else.

When the snow was gone the bikes came out.

I still remember that bike and all it meant to me. I don’t remember how many years it and I rode together but I do remember that Santa Clause brought it. It was red and white and gloriously beautiful with a frame large enough for a full grown man. The philosophy was that “he’ll grow into it” and it mattered little whether it was a pair of pants, a winter coat or a two wheeled red stead just waiting to carry you away to places you never before dared to venture to. In the end that would be true, he would grow into it, but for the moment the sheer size of his stead was something of a problem for that kid of eight or so.

My best friend taught me how to ride a bicycle by holding on to me from the landing of to his house as I tried to find some sort of center. He’d shove me and holler that I could do it and in the end he was right, I could do it.

In the years to come after Denny gave me a shove, yelled at me that I could do it and then picked me up when I’d fallen for the third time, that bike became my means of escaping almost everything but my imagination. It became Trigger or Champion or the best cow pony out of the remuda for doing the days’ work of rounding up cattle and running off the bad guys. As the years past it would become the machine that I hoped would carry me to another place and another time as I pumped harder and harder on those rubber peddles. If only I could go a little faster, if only I could turn down this road, if only…


In a little town you don’t always have to ride your bike here or there or somewhere else, you can walk and everything is fine, besides if you don’t use your bike you don’t have to try to figure out where to put it when you aren’t riding it. Of course that was all very true until you got to the age where you weren’t a kid anymore but you weren’t driving either. You found yourself in that twilight time where and when you knew the difference between being a kid and, well, thinking you weren’t a kid anymore. So, the only way around it was going to be that trusty old friend of yours with two wheels and a brand new set of high rise handlebars. It was a cool as you could get without a license and a car. And that was still a lifetime away.

She lived in the white two story house at the southeast corner of Main and Pearl. And though it wasn’t the most significant thing about that street there was just a slight slope to Pearl as it ran east toward the river. I valued any slant of the road simply because though I didn’t know anymore about gravity than anyone else I did know that it worked and it worked one hundred percent of the time which ultimately meant if you were headed down that slope you were going to pick up a bit of extra speed in the process. Of course as with most of my theories in life this one had at least one flaw. There was a stop sign at the end of the block which meant that about the time I’d built up a good bit of velocity it was also time to see whether or not the brakes still worked. Also there was the fact that if she was outside with me then what was the point in trying to ride as fast as I could away from her? The point was to keep her attention and validate her giving me her attention.

You’d think that young love would be simple, uncomplicated and something that moved along in starts and stops but without much in the way of conflict. How could I ever, even in those early days, keep something so easy and innocent?

And of course that was exactly why on this particular summer day I was doing my best to try and impress her and win her attention all over again for the umpteenth time. It was the dance we danced and for some time it would work well for us, that pushing away and then drawing back together that couples do when they haven’t learned how to simply let go and let their feelings for each other be what they are.

The object was to pull as hard as you could on the handlebars and at the same moment throw your weight back toward the rear wheel of the bike thereby performing the near death defying “wheelie” that all young guys knew full well could bring instant fame or at the very least something of a smile from the girl you were trying to impress. And no I wasn’t the world’s greatest at it. Ed Sullivan’s people weren’t going to be calling any time soon to have me perform on his show but there were moments when I could, well, sort of do it fairly well.

There are certain laws of nature that just can’t be gotten around no matter how hard you try. And when you start off not even thinking about what the eventual consequences could be there’s a good chance you’re headed toward a problem or two and from everything I’ve learned over the years since that day gravity is not to be toyed with and even more so not to be ignored.

She was standing there, gloriously, with golden hair brushing across her shoulders and a face to make the angels jealous and all the while watching me as I rode back and forth, here and there in front of her. Of course I should have gotten off that stupid bike, sat down in the grass beside her and just talked about whatever it was we talked about and pressed our shoulders against each other only because that was as much as we were going to be able to do sitting out there in front of God, all the town and most of all her mother. But no, that would be the sensible thing to do and certainly not the way I would do it. After all there were amends to be made to that beauty standing there and the only way I knew to do that was to try and impress her with manly death defying feats of strength and agility.

If your bike is on level ground a wheelie makes sense mostly because there aren’t many variables to have to deal with. A bit of an incline makes getting the front wheel off the ground a lot easier but there’s always a risk of too much incline and too much wheel off the ground which leads to you on the ground and the bike on top of you. Trying such a stunt on a decline is, well, just plain dumb.

Not only was I pointed downhill but the bike likely weighted close to a ton and a half, or so it felt when I went to pull the front wheel off the ground. Oh I got it up a ways just as I pushed down on the peddles and shot forward faster than I’d figured on. And about as quick as I pulled that front wheel up it was falling back down only to land on top of a broken tree branch. It’s amazing how laws of nature, when they meet head on right there on Pearl Street one sunny day in summer can cause such amazing results. In that moment gravity and friction met square on which meant that suddenly my bike wasn’t going anywhere and the problem for me was that I was - going somewhere that is. Over those handlebars and face first on to the asphalt and then into her mothers’ kitchen to sit at her table while blood did its’ best to get out of me and on to the floor.

Her mom patched me up as best she could but there was nothing that anyone could do for the two broken teeth I now had. I don’t remember much about all of that other medical emergency moment than that she seemed to be more concerned about me and how I was than anyone I’d ever known. When she was sure I was patched up about as good as could be she sent me on my way and I think that somehow she knew the sort of reception I’d get when I got home.
For years after that day whenever I laughed I would consciously put my hand over my mouth to hide those chipped teeth. It would be a decade and more before the results of that day would be dealt with. But in all the time to come I would forever remember a woman caring for me in a way I’d never before experienced and a beautiful girl who sat beside me not quite sure what to do but sitting beside me none the less.


In time she would find herself once more in that very same place - beside me and not knowing what to do.

A Story Unfinished

It was cold and wet that day in March, cold for the area around Phoenix anyways and wet for most any time in the Sonoran Desert. The dark, almost black, clouds trimmed with white, loosely bunched and racing east across the sky seemed hell-bent on being somewhere else and the sooner the better. Still they came from the west that morning as I drove north out of Phoenix and headed to New River, my mood sharing the emotions of the sky, dark with only a bit of something less so around the edge.

The invitation had been made, the kind that says if you’re around sometime stop in, and so that day I’d decided I’d “be around” and see if he was there. I wanted to talk, I wanted someone to listen and I wanted him to talk so that I might listen and learn. He knew things, I was comfortable around him and I knew that he would listen.

On that day the clouds never stopped their race across the sky, the rain would start, then stop then sometimes simply drip and drizzle enough to watch big drops fall from the roof and splat on the ground with a steady rhythmic beat. He was busy getting ready for more of what he did so well, telling his stories and singing his songs, but he took the time, made some coffee, talked and most of all for me on that day he shared a kindness of one man in the company of another who simply sat and listened.

I left that cozy little house with a horse out back that day better than the weather around me. I drove away from that place that had become a shelter from my storms if only for a couple hours feeling that though I hadn’t found all my answers I’d been heard and maybe, just maybe, there was hope in tomorrow after all.

We’d never been close and we would never be close but it was a relationship where if he’d have ever picked up the phone I’d have been there. The man I knew was a good man and a man worth the helping if or when he needed it, no questions asked. That’s what you do when you call someone friend. But, like so many he kept much close in and so there never was a call and I never got to return the favor he’d shown me so many years before.


We’d just reconnected; he’d written me a couple emails that had shared a bit of his journey over the past years and in his last note he’d mentioned about a trail he’d like to go “poking his nose into” as he put it and thought maybe we could try it out. Of course there were perfectly fine reasons why I couldn’t make it just then but I’d kept thinking about it and thinking of what a great adventure it might be just spending a day, two maturing men hiking a trail out Perryville Mesa way and just seeing what he meant when he talked about “poking his nose” into a place. I knew I’d learn some things and I knew there’d be new stories but like I said, there were other things that really needed being done, or so I thought.

And now I find myself wondering if perhaps that was the phone call I’d been waiting for.


A voice has gone silent; a voice that once sang and laughed and told stories to countless children and adults. And God the songs that voice would sing and the stories that voice would tell. I want to believe there should have been more for the telling.

I will miss you Dennis Richard Freeman.